Card Sort: Qualitative and Quantitative Observations

I use this task in two ways

–Printed on card stock as quick table card sort to get students thinking about types of observations

–Printed on paper for students to glue down after sorting and to add notes

I have students start with the examples of observations of an apple first and ask them to sort the observations into exactly two groups and to then come up with a descriptive title or rule they used to place each observation.

I intentionally make the items to sort not have the same number of examples for each group to encourage reading of each one. Otherwise I’d find students placing the final cards based on which was the “smaller” sort pile..

After students sort the observations there are two options

–A have students share out to the class what the two different groups were called and see if the class can build a common definition

–Give students the second set of description cards and sort those into the same groups as the observations they made- I’ve used this for ELL and SPED modifications to help with language development.

* Updated on 9/22/19 with scrambled sort page is you wanted to have students cut out answers on their own.