STRATEGY FOCUS
List-Group-Label
PURPOSE
List-Group-Label helps students identify, organize, and connect important content. This strategy builds on students’ prior knowledge and activates critical thinking. Through the use of this strategy, students are better able to organize new concepts as they relate to previously learned content while developing their categorizing and labeling skills.
PROCESS
- Select a reading selection, vocabulary list, or other artifact related to the current unit of study (text, picture, quote, cartoon, map, etc.).
- Divide students into groups of two or three. Provide each group with materials such as paper, sticky notes, or index cards for their List-Group-Label.
- Students work together to brainstorm and record a list of words related to the content.
- Students work together to group the words into categories based on their understanding of or connections to the content. Note that there are no right or wrong answers here, as long as students can justify their groupings. Students should determine a label for each group of words.
- Have each group of students share their List-Group-Label work while explaining their justification for the words selected, how they grouped them, and the labels they provided.
- Engage the whole class in a discussion about the similarities and differences found amongst the group work. Ask students, “In what ways was the thinking alike? In what ways was the thinking different? What changes might you make to your work after considering the work of your peers?”
PROBING QUESTIONS
CONSIDERATIONS
- What additional artifacts might you add to your groupings?
- What different perspectives did you discover that you hadn’t previously considered?
- How did the process support your own thought processes?
- Consider using an Alphablocks organizer for the listing phase of List-Group-Label to help students keep their words (or list) organized.
- The teacher can provide students with a predetermined list of words in order to see how different groups organize the same list of words similarly and differently.
- List-Group-Label work can serve as content for Gallery Walk.
SCAFFOLDS
General Scaffolds
- Consider using an Alphablocks organizer for the listing phase of the LGL to help students keep their lists organized.
- Use the Gradual Release model (I do/you watch, I do/you help, you do/I help, you do/I watch to provide scaffolding for students.
- Provide a students with a predetermined list of words.
- Pre-Teach/front-load key vocabulary.
- Provide additional wait time for students to process, think, write, read.
- Encourage and allow students to access and use vocabulary resources and tools as they engage in this strategy.
- Provide routine exposure to academic language/vocabulary. Say it, read it, write it, review it, repeat it.
- Model this strategy using non-content related words to focus on the process before using content vocabulary.
- Encourage and allow students to access and use vocabulary resources and tools such as anchor charts, word walls, word bank, and personal dictionaries.
- Provide students with sufficient time to think and write/draw.
Scaffolds for Multilingual Learners
Entering/Emerging:
- Write down key words and essential vocabulary on your board, chart paper, or interactive whiteboard to help students identify what’s most important.
- Pre-teach/front-load key vocabulary.
- Create anchor charts with key vocabulary relevant to the unit of study.
- Provide content-specific word banks, as well as visual support (e.g., posters, diagrams, pictures).
- Provide lists of linking words and phrases, transitions and connectors.
- Have students create their own personal dictionaries that provide references to words/phenomena in their home language and include picture cues for each word.
- Model differentiating between everyday and technical language.
- Allow students to access and use vocabulary resources in order to recount, argue, and explain.
- Model how to write a variety of responses.
- Provide examples of what students’ responses might look like.
- Allow students to respond in a variety of ways (e.g., pictures, text, mix of English and home language, etc.).
- Provide sentence stems/frames and graphic organizers.
Developing/Expanding:
- Write down key words and essential vocabulary on your board, chart paper, or interactive whiteboard to help students identify what’s most important.
- Pre-teach/front-load key vocabulary.
- Create anchor charts with key vocabulary relevant to the unit of study.
- Bold key vocabulary on slides.
- Model how to provide precise words and phrases to provide details, descriptions, classifications, comparisons, causes/effects, or procedures
- Provide lists of transitional words.
- Model how to write a variety of responses (e.g., how to compare/contrast, describe a central idea, describe relationships between details or examples and supporting ideas, connect content-related themes or topics to main ideas).
- Provide examples of information presented objectively with a neutral tone.
- Provide graphic organizers.
Bridging/Reaching:
- Write down key words and essential vocabulary on your board, chart paper, or interactive whiteboard to help students identify what’s most important.
- Pre-teach/front-load key vocabulary.
- Create anchor charts with key vocabulary relevant to the unit of study.
- Bold key vocabulary on slides.
- Provide examples of research reports and summaries.
- Model how to write a concluding statement that follows from and supports the information presented.
- Model how to convey sequence and show relationships among experiences and events.
CONTENT APPLICATIONS
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
Before reading Night by Elie Wiesel, students are presented with the word ‘Holocaust’ and asked to brainstorm words, phrases, or ideas related to Holocaust and place them into groups.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Before learning about early civilizations, students are provided with a variety of terms they will encounter in the unit and use List-Group-Label to place them in groups.
ARTS & HUMANITIES
Students are provided with a wide variety of art from different time periods or different artists and work to place them into groups, determining a label for each one.
WORLD LANGUAGES
During a unit about animals, students work in pairs or triads to group their vocabulary words into categories. This is open-ended in that the students determine how they group the words. Students then give a label to the groups of words that captures why they grouped them together.
SCIENCE
In the middle of the unit, students complete the list-group-label process with the words from their interactive word wall.
CAREER & TECHNICAL EDUCATION
Students are provided with a variety of tools or materials that might be used to solve a problem related to a specific unit of study and work to place them into groups, determining a label for each one.
MATHEMATICS
Provide or invite students to record vocabulary from an upcoming or current unit of study. Students work in groups to organize the words.
HEALTH & PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Before learning about a particular sport, students are provided with a variety of terms they will encounter relative to that sport and use List-Group-Label to place them in groups.