"Sort It Out" Introduction Model Activity

This is an example of an introduction segment of a lesson

Understanding Goal

There is more than one way to see everything.

Investigative Question

How might these images be connected and what might grouping the images tell us?

Overview

Use evidence from primary sources as well as creativity to make multiple connections between images in a set by forming several different groupings considering similarities and differences.

Performance Task

• Sort images and create a title for each group
• Connect the two groups with a larger understanding

Best Instructional Practices

Teaching for Understanding

Teaching for Understanding challenges students to connect learning to large scale themes that are central to the discipline being studied while enabling students to apply what they have learned outside of the original discipline or subject.

• Using knowledge flexibly to connect disparate items to a concept
• Relating those concepts to the subject under study

Handouts Required for Model Activity

The following Images and directions are required to complete this Model Activity:

• Individual or Group
• Edible or Non-Edible
• American Revolution or Civil War
• Colonists or Native Americans
• Middle Ages or Mesoamerica
• Individual or Group
• Water-Related or Dry-Land Environment
• Buildings or Transportation
• Simple Machines
• Economic Resources

More information about the educational research behind this sorting strategy:

Getting Acquainted with the Essential Nine by Laura Varlas summarizing the main ideas of Robert Marzano’s study of the nine instructional strategies that are most likely to improve student achievement across all content areas and across all grade levels.

The first chapter of Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering and Jane E. Pollock is available online at www.ascd.org (Choose publications, books, browse by author, Marzano).