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Categorization and Sequencing Activities

Tags

Mathematics ^21st Century Skills ^Extra-curricular/At-Home Elementary School Strategy

Skills

Organization Abstract Reasoning

Categorization and Sequencing Activities

If your child wants to strengthen their complex reasoning skills

How To Apply It!

  1. Encourage students to look for distinctions in a category of objects to develop organization and classification skills.
  2. Pick a subject and then look for differences in sub-categories of that subject (e.g. flowers, trees, coins, etc.).For example, how are oak leaves different from maple leaves?
  3. Bird watching and identifying the specific make/model of cars passed on the road improve observation skills and use of descriptive language.
  4. Recycling teaches sorting skills as children consider what containers might be made of similar materials.
  5. Try this website for practicing visual patterning. Younger students can describe what they see. Algebra students can find the equation.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

When children explore the differences between objects (e.g. How is a car different from a motorcycle), they develop categorization and sorting skills which can help improve visual discrimination as well as reasoning. As they make decisions on how to categorize they are using generative learning strategies. Generative learning strategies require students to make sense of new information by selecting important known information, reorganizing and integrating the newly acquired information with what is already known.