Sort the Answers: Who, What or Where

Nine word tiles sit on a shelf at the top of this 1st grade page and three tall ruled bins stand beneath, headed Who?, What? and Where?. The tiles on the sheet shown are the avocado, at the pool, Ben, Anna, Lily, the foal, the zebra, in the tent and in bed. The child reads each tile and writes it into the bin for the question it would answer. Three tiles are names, three are things with the in front and three are phrases beginning with a preposition, so each bin takes exactly three.

This page reverses the base sheet. There the question word was chosen for a piece of a sentence; here the pieces come first and the child has to see the category in them. The three-three-three split is what stops it being a guess, and the shape of the tiles helps: a capital letter marks the names, the marks the things and a small word like at or in marks the places, which is a piece of grammar noticed rather than taught.

One sheet, nine tiles, three bins. The bins are printed the same height with more lines than three names will need, so expect the columns to end well short of the bottom. Give it after the highlighting page and before the fill-in face; it is the only one in the family where nothing is a sentence and the words stand entirely on their own.