Sorting Hoops

About this tool

Sorting Hoops is two overlapping hoops on a mat. Children drag things in, and the place that matters is the middle: something that belongs in both hoops has nowhere else to go. That is the whole idea, and it is why the hoops overlap rather than sit side by side.

The part that makes it a lesson is Guess My Rule. You set a hidden rule for each hoop and the children bring things to it. The HOOP decides — it keeps what fits and lets the rest go. On the carpet a grown-up has to say “no, not that one”, and children stop thinking and start reading the grown-up's face. Here nobody judges, so you can stand back and listen to them reason. And the things the hoop let go do not disappear: they gather outside the ring, where they become the other half of the evidence. That is exactly how children crack these — as much from what is out as from what is in.

Sort thirty-two logic blocks by colour, shape or size, or sort the illustrated pictures by things a five-year-old can argue about: is it alive, did people make it, can we eat it, does it move by itself, does it live in water. The word rules are the ones no other tool has — how many beats the word has, what letter it starts with — and they work in all eleven languages, because they are built on our own gate-checked word data rather than translated from English.

How to use it in class

• Open it on the class screen. Two hoops, a tray of twelve things, nothing to set up.
• For a free sort, leave the hoops unlabelled and let the class decide what each one is for. Unlabelled is the better lesson — they have to agree on a rule out loud before anything can go in.
• For Guess My Rule, tap “Set the rules” and choose one for each hoop. The labels read “Secret” until you reveal them.
• Send one child at a time to the board. Before they let go, ask the class: do you think it will go in? Nothing lights up until the item is released, so it is a real question.
• When somebody says the rule out loud, tap “Show the rules” and let them check themselves.

Classroom ideas

• Start with one hoop and one rule. Add the second hoop only when the class is confident — the overlap is a big idea and it deserves its own day.
• Put something in yourself, silently, when they are stuck. Placing one example is the oldest hint in this game and it costs you no words.
• Ask for a thing that would go in the middle. Predicting the overlap is much harder than filling it, and it tells you who has understood.
• Run it with the pictures and a word rule — how many beats, or the starting letter — and the same apparatus becomes a phonics lesson without changing anything on the screen.