Concept sort can be one of the activities during the teaching and learning of contemporary literature.

My suggestion

• Teacher lists the vocabulary from the book based on these categories: characters, place, what are they doing? (do not tell your pupils!)

Randomly teacher writes the words on the board and ask the pupils to look at the words.

ESL learners usually will need some help with the vocabulary, therefore teacher might need to explain (you can try gesturing too!).

Having understood the words, depending on the level, teacher can reveal the categories and ask the pupils to sort OR get the pupils to determine the categories on their own.


Subsequently, pupils can fill in the categories with the words.

The later stage is very important.

Collaboratively, teacher and pupils  check the words in the categories.

Teacher must provide explanation on wrong answers but must not forget to give positive reinforcement on correct answers (many forget this!).

The ability of pupils to understand concept sort proved their ability to understand words and their affiliation.

The double reinforcement (drilling done in ambiguous way) of this vocabulary activity will further strengthen their vocabulary power thus increasing their intrinsic motivation.

A spin-off from this activity would be:
-prediction of the story based on the words
-describing the book cover
-talking about the characters

Checkout this video if you have trouble understanding concept sort.

Give this method a try, and you will be surprise yourself!