Sorting by Color Using Beads

Hi, today I’m going to talk about one way I teach sorting to my students. So, sorting is a really basic activity, but you it builds on a lot of other mathematical skills. So, one of the earliest kinds of sorts, children do, is a sort by color. So, what I have here are some beads. And, what I would do is, I would sit my students around me. And, I would say, “Okay, boys and girls, I have these beads here, and I want to sort them. And, that means I want to put them into groups by similarities. How are they the same?” And so, what I’m looking for my kids to do is, have a discussion, about how they can sort these objects. And, typically somebody would say you put all the same ones together. I would ask them to explain that. And they’d say well, you put all the yellow ones over here, and you put the white ones over here, and put the orange ones over here. So, what I did was after we have that discussion, I would give the kids a handful of beads, and I would say, “I would like you to sort those beads for me by color.” So, that’s a specific skill, sorting by color. So, what they would do is they would have their beads and then they would sort them by color. So, I’m going to sort some of the beads by color. I’m going to put the yellow over here, the orange over here, and the white over here. So, then what you do is you can have your kids tell, you can ask your kids, “So, how did you sort your beads?” You want them to say, “I sorted them by color.” And then, ask them to explain to you. I put the yellow here, put orange here, and I put the white ones here. And, that’s one way you can teach sorting by color to your students. Thanks.