Categories list in developmental order:

Basic – animals, body parts, clothes, colors, days of the week, desserts, food, letters, names, numbers, relatives, rooms, shapes, sounds, toys, words

Early Elementary – beverages, birds, book parts, buildings, characters, coins, collectables, condiments, containers, dinosaurs, directions, emotions, flowers, fruits, holidays, ingredients, insects, instruments, jobs, jungle animals, liquids, things that magnify, things that measure, months, movies, parts of stories, patterns, planets, plants, punctuation, reptiles, rhyming words, seasons, senses, silverware, sizes, solids, sounds, sports, transportation, tools, vegetables, vowels, writing utensils

Late Elementary – abbreviations, abilities, adjectives, businesses, cities, consonants, countries, communication, continents, currency, exercises, habitats, hazards, mammals, materials, measure units, metals, nouns, oceans, odd/even numbers, parts of speech, presidents, punctuation, school subjects, seasonings, sizes, states, symbols, textures, trees, verb tenses, verbs, weather

Secondary – adverbs, 13 original American colonies, ancient civilizations, constellations, cuisine, elements, famous landmarks, fasteners, government types, gasses, gems, internal organs, languages, minerals, mountain ranges, music types, precipitation, reference books, religions, traditions

---

---

Category Printable Worksheets and Activities – Basic Activities

Click on picture to view a small preview of each activity. Click on Doc or PDF to download worksheets in preferred format.

(1)(2) (3)

(4) (5)(6)

(1) Category Directions Activity – Basic 1:  Doc PDF ;      (2) Category Directions Activity – Basic 2 Doc PDF;      (3) Category Seek and Find 1: Doc PDF;     (4) Category Seek and Find 2:  Doc PDF;      (5) What doesn’t belong?: DocPDF;      (6) Category Puzzle:  Doc PDF

Category Worksheets and Activities – Tic Tac Toes and Grids

Click on picture to view a small preview of each activity. Click on Doc or PDF to download worksheets in preferred format.

(1) (2) (3) (4)

(5) (6) (7)

(1) Category “grid” or squares 1:  Doc PDF;    (2) Category “grid” or squares 2:  Doc PDF; (3) Category Tic Tac Toe – Connect 3 – Basic Doc PDF ;     (4) Category Tic Tac Toe – Connect 3 Elementary Doc PDF ;      (4) Category Tic Tac Toe – Connect 4 Higher Level Doc PDF;     (5)  Tic Tac Toe Template 16 squares Doc PDF;       (6) Tic Tac Toe Template 25 squares Doc PDF

Category Word and Sentence Searches

Click on picture to view a small preview of each activity. Click on Doc or PDF to download worksheets in preferred format.

(1)(2)(3)

(1) Basic Category Word Search Doc PDF;     (2) Later Developing Category Word Search Doc PDF;     (3) Sentence Search: Doc PDF;

Category Pictures

Click on picture to view a small preview of each activity. Click on Doc or PDF to download worksheets in preferred format.

(1)(2)(3)(4)

(5)(6)(7)(8)

(1) Appliances Pix Doc PDF;     (2) Communication Pix Doc PDF;     (3) Containers Pix Doc PDF;     (4) Countries Pix Doc PDF;     (5) Currency Pix Doc PDF;     (6) Hazards Pix Doc PDF;     (7) Materials Pix Doc PDF;     (8) States Pix Doc PDF

Other Category Worksheets and Activities

Click on picture to view a small preview of each activity. Click on Doc or PDF to download worksheets in preferred format.

(1) (2)(3) (4)(5)(6)(7) (8) 

(1) Examples Doc PDF;      (2) Category Naming: Doc PDF; (3) Category Charts: Doc PDF;      (4) More Category Naming Doc PDF; (5) Extra Activities:  Doc PDF;     (6) Early Elementary Remember It 1 Doc PDF;     (7) Early Elementary Remember It 2 Doc PDF;     (8) Pointy Puzzle odt PDF

Background Information

Information that can be organized in some manner is most easily retrieved (Nippold, 1998). The organization of words into categories provides effective neural “hooks” for retrieval and an effective “filing cabinet” for storage. Many words fall neatly into categories that help this storage and retrieval, while many other words require some linguistic manipulation to find category relatives. The philosopher Immanuel Kant claimed that categories are essential in understanding the world (Pojman, 1998). The notion that things exist independently of human categories which are then imposed upon those things in order to better understand them has long been a deeply influential concept in human thought.

Examples are the opposite of categories. For example, spring and summer are examples of the category of seasons. The term “superordinate” is frequently used in linguistic circles to refer to categories. “Subordinates” is used to refer to category members. For example, trumpets and flutes are subordinate members of the superordinate class of instruments.

The use of categories is especially relevant to memory (McCormick and Schiefelbusch, 1990). Short term memory relies on techniques such as chunking, while association is key to long term memory. Chunking and association both use categories. The use of categories also aids us in describing related words, allowing us to more effectively communicate our knowledge of these words.

Commonly used assessments with categories include the EOWPVT, PLS, TOSS-P, TOSS-I, and the LPT assessments.

Goal Suggestions

Grumpy will identify one picture of an age appropriate category when presented with various foils, e.g. “Point to a vegetable.”

Sleepy will identify three pictures of age appropriate categories when presented with various foils, e.g. “Point to three reptiles.”

Bashful will name age appropriate categories when given three members, e.g. “What are ostriches, robins, and cardinals?”

Doc will label three category members of age appropriate categories, e.g. “Name three consonants.”

Elicitation Ideas