#634. Shoe Sort

Mathematics, level: Elementary
Posted Sat Sep 19 13:08:02 PDT 1998 by Monica Stephenson (adsmls@gateway.net).
Sedgefield Elementary, Charlotte, Mecklenburg
Materials Required: variety of shoes
Activity Time: 45 minutes
Concepts Taught: sorting and classifying

I introduce sorting and classifying by bringing in a dozen or so of my old shoes. On the board we list things we know about shoes such as they come in different colors, they are different sizes, some have laces, ect...
The students then pick their favorite fact about shoes and we sort my shoes by that description. After several different examples the students remove their shoes and we sort them. The students have such a great time and had difficulty believing they were learning.

After the lesson we made a graph of the different types of shoes we were wearing (laces, buckles, velcro, other).