List, Group, Label

List-Group-Label (Taba, 1967) is a brainstorming activity that is most often employed as a way for students to activate and build background knowledge prior to beginning a unit of study. It can also serve as an effective tool for reviewing words, concepts, and ideas after completing a unit of study. It can be used as an assessment of what students know about the concept and indicate areas where instruction is most needed.

Implementation

1. This is a suggested way to begin the lessonto activate the students’ prior knowledge and to get them hooked into this strategy.

· If we don’t know the vocabulary words when we are reading, we probably are going to have a hard time understanding anything we read.

· Good readers have strategies they can apply to help them learn and remember vocabulary words.

· One good strategy we can use to aid us in learning and remember important words is List-Group-Label.

· Since we all have some prior knowledge about baseball, I am going to use baseball as my topic for showing you how this strategy works.

2. Think of words that remind you of the topic baseball.

· Accept all responses unless a response cannot be justified.

· 15-20 responses should be adequate, e.g., inning, umpire, hot dogs, strike, homerun, high salaries, baseball, strike, Cal Ripken, beer, glove, catcher, peanuts, steroids, seventh-inning stretch, fans, etc.

3. Now examine the words we recorded and place them into groups that are related in some logical way.

• Now let’s give each category a label.

4. Now I am going to take a topic that you are studying and show you how I can use this strategy with a list of words and terms from your text.

5. Now students are ready to complete their own List-Group-Label.

6. Words can be left on cards on the wall or transferred to charts and be added to as the unit progresses.

Classroom Management

1. Select a main topic or concept in a reading selection.

· The teacher might list the words thought to be unfamiliar or ask the students to brainstorm words related to the concept.

· The teacher might provide category labels or ask the students to determine the categories.

· Since the concept is presented without a specific context, many of the student suggestions will not reflect the meaning of the concept in the reading selection.

· A similar activity after reading can help students absorb and comprehend the vocabulary essential to the topic.

2. Divide the class into groups of 3 or 4 to gather related terms from the larger list.

· Have the teams provide the rationale for this grouping, i.e., articulate the common features or properties of the words placed in a group.

· Ask student groups to suggest a descriptive title or label for the collections of related terms that reflects the rationale behind the grouping.

3. Have students carefully read the text selection and review both the general list of terms and their groupings of related terms.

4. Students should eliminate terms or groups that do not match the concept's meaning in the context of the selection.

· New terms from the reading can be added, when appropriate.

· Terms should be "sharpened" and the groupings and labels revised when necessary.