Author: Adrian Tennant | Published on 1 March 2023
Read what a teacher says about this activity:
'Which category is it?' is a great activity to get learners to practise new vocabulary and develop their thinking skills. I often use it to recycle and review vocabulary.
Stage 1:
Dictate a list of around 20 to 25 words connected to a theme / topic.
Stage 2:
Put your learners in pairs or small groups.
Stage 3:
Say to the class: “Put the words into categories and label each category.”
Stage 4:
Put pairs or groups together and say: “Compare your ideas.” If your class is small enough, you could do this together.
Stage 5:
As a follow-up activity you could ask the learners to choose one set of words and make a story using all of the words in that set / category.
Learners will often use different ideas to group words, especially if there is no clearly defined category i.e. animals, plants etc. This is fine as long as they can give reasons for their categories.
See examples below:
Words: bee, catfish, crocodile, flamingo, gazelle, giraffe, hippo, lion, lizard, mosquito, ostrich, snake, stork, swordfish, termite, tilapia, tortoise, tsetse fly, tuna, vulture
Categories
| Birds | Fish | Insects | Mammals | Reptiles |
|
flamingo ostrich stork vulture |
catfish swordfish tilapia tuna |
bee mosquito termite tsetse fly |
gazelle giraffe hippo lion |
crocodile lizard snake tortoise |