Word Classes: Sort Fifteen Words into Three Bins

Fifteen chips is the fullest this sort gets. They run across the top of the 2nd grade word-classes page in two rows, all plain text, no pictures anywhere: loud, swim, gentle, small, car, run, crane, bulldozer, hot, tiny, climb, laugh, gather, airplane, motorcycle. Five of them are vehicles, five are things a person does and five describe how something is. The three bins underneath each carry six dashed lines, more than the sort needs, and the same lid icons and printed labels as the rest of the family. Every chip has to be read and placed.

Length is not the only thing that changes at fifteen. The vehicle nouns are longer and less common than the ones on the earlier pages, so bulldozer and motorcycle test reading as much as grammar, and crane is a word that names a machine here but doubles as a verb elsewhere in English, which is worth a conversation if a child hesitates over it. Gather is the least obvious verb in the set, and tiny and gentle push the adjective bin beyond color and size into quality. With five words per bin, an incomplete column is an immediate signal that something has been filed in the wrong place.

Print the PDF free and let children cross each chip off the list as they write it, since fifteen is enough for one to be missed entirely. Check the columns before the answers: five, five and five is the shape of a finished page. The twelve word version is the same task one word lighter in each bin, and the nine word version brings the pictures back for children who need the nouns confirmed. Write about the picture is where a full page of nouns, verbs and adjectives turns into sentences.