Category Sort — Animals vs. Food
Sort pictures into animal and food categories.
Drop here
Drop here
0/10 sorted
How to run it
Say the category name every time a card is placed — that's an animal, that goes with the animals — because the label is what the child is learning, not the placement. Once the sorting is easy, turn it around and ask the child to name three animals with the cards face down, which is retrieval rather than recognition and considerably harder. Eight minutes is a full pass with the retrieval extension.
Cueing ladder
Start at the top. Add support one step at a time.
- IndependentPresent the item and wait 5 seconds of quiet before helping.Log as correct
- HintGive a clue about the word's category, what it does, or where you find it.Log as cued
- Two choicesOffer two answers, the right one not always second.Log as cued
- ModelGive the answer in a sentence; the student says it back and uses it once more.Log as cued
Adjust it
Use fewer items and start with the ones the student already knows, such as 'cat' and 'dog'.
Ask for the word in a sentence of the student's own, or a second example from the same group.
Matching IEP goal
Given vocabulary cards, Student will name, sort or define target words in 8 of 10 opportunities across 3 consecutive sessions, given no more than an indirect cue.
Send it home through the parent portal →About this activity
Ten familiar pictures into two bins: cat, dog, fish, bird and frog are Animals; apple, cake, milk, bread and pizza are Food. Two categories with a clear boundary is where semantic sorting starts, and every item here is a word a five-year-old already owns, so the only new demand is the grouping.
What to listen for
Watch for the edge cases. Fish sits in both categories depending on context, and a child who hesitates there is thinking well rather than failing. Notice whether the child can say why an item belongs — because you eat it is a function reason, because it's an animal is a category reason, and children who only give function reasons need the category labels made explicit.
Carrying it home
Mealtimes and pets supply this category pair for free. Asking is a banana food or an animal takes a second, and doing it daily beats a session of card sorting.
What's in this activity
- Animals
- Food
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- Kindergarten through second grade, and any student at the beginning of semantic categorisation work.
- Is it free?
- Yes, no account and no card needed to play.
- My student sorts perfectly but can't name animals on request. Why?
- Recognition and retrieval are different skills. Sorting is recognition — the word is in front of them. Naming three animals from memory is retrieval, and it is the harder half worth targeting next.
Use this board with your caseload
With a free account, every correct, cued and incorrect mark is saved to the student and scored against their IEP goal, with the data written up for you. Assign it as home practice through the parent portal.
Track progress freeFree for SLPs. No card, no trial clock.