Biomes Sorting Cards

Sorting is such a valuable educational tool that (I believe) isn't used enough in schools today. Kids naturally start sorting at a young age because humans have an innate need to bring order to our world. Sorting is a way to make sense out of chaos.

Sorting also allows us to examine relationships between objects and ideas. It allows us to dig deeper into our understanding of a topic. Plus, sorting is actually really fun - especially when you get to do it with a friend.

With all of these benefits, why wouldn't we use sorting in school?

I realize that not every is familiar with the power of sorting, so I decided to make a few videos to show how the sorting works. I grabbed one of my daughters and her friend to help me. I am not kidding you, they loved it. They loved it so much they wouldn't stop sorting when I needed to end the video. 

This is not promotional talk here. They were having so much fun. It made me think of amazing it would be to have an entire classroom of kids this engaged with their work. 

I think one part of sorting that is important for kids, especially kids who typically struggle in school, is that it doesn't require them to write. You can write to record your thinking, but you don't have to. This takes away a huge barrier for a lot of kids. It creates a level playing field where everyone can have fun and feel successful.

Can you tell I love sorting?

Anyway, the video below is all about biomes. I have taught biomes for so many years! I have reading passages in my stores which I love, but nothing has been as fun for kids as these sorting cards.

So, the girls only sorted two biomes, but there are actually 7 biomes in the sorting set. You get cards for:

1. Freshwater Aquatic

2. Marine

3. Desert

4. Grasslands

5. Rainforest

6. Tundra

7. Taiga

Each biome has two environment pictures, a description of the biome, 3 animal cards, and 3 plant cards. You also get pictures of my sorts as an "answer key", but of course, there are different sorts that could still make sense. 

That is another part of sorting that I love. There are so many correct answers that require kids to explain their thinking.

Can you tell that I love sorting?! Oh, and I love biomes!

Biomes Reading Passages and Notes Pages

I was looking through my Google Drive today, and I found a set of reading passages I had made this spring. They were awesome when I used them in the classroom, and I was so excited to put them up on Teachers pay Teachers, Teacher's Notebook, and Edmodo. Well, I guess I got busy because that never happened.

Thankfully, they are ready to go now!

In our third grade we spend the spring studying the structures of life which involves a lot of learning about animals and their environments. You may not know this, but I used to teach middle school science, and I especially love this topic! Actually, I love most of the science topics!

We went way beyond most of the other third grade classes at our school with our study of the parts of an environment. My third graders know abiotic, biotic, factors, and many other high level science vocabulary words.

One part of our study was reading about some of the different biomes. (The biomes include freshwater aquatic, desert, rainforest, grassland, and taiga.) I used this as a reading lesson, but it really helped build the students understanding of our science topics.

I did a jigsaw activity to use these passages in my classroom. I had the students work in groups to read one of the biome passages. They did all of the steps that we always do for close reading (highlighting, circling, etc...) Then, they worked together to answer the questions attached to the passage.

The next day, the groups met again to complete the notes page for each biome. This is where they organized what they had learned about the biomes according to what we had been learning about environments. It was really important to give them a chance to talk about this as a group because some of my students aren't able to synthesize this kind of information independently yet.

Finally, on the last day of the activity, students regrouped so that each group was made up of one representative from each biome. While each student shared about what they had learned, the rest of the group took notes on the final notes page.

Once students have the completed notes pages, they are ready to use the information in some way. I had students do an art project and paint one of the biomes. They had to include details in the painting that showed that they understood the important parts of the biome. They also had to write a paragraph to go along with the painting. (We were working on writing complete paragraphs at this time as well!)

You can purchase Biomes: Passages and Notes Pages at any of the store below: