Sorting Activity
Out in the field, scientists gather as many specimens as possible often without knowing exactly what they have caught. To find out the species name they sort their samples back in the museum or other lab space. Animals are classified based on shared characteristics, such as the number of legs or presence of an exoskeleton (the outer covering of an insect).

With these general groups, scientists use field guides, research papers and dichotomous keys, to give each specimen its Latin name, if it has one. Sometimes they do not know they have discovered a new species until months after they have collected it. Your students can go through a similar process in this easy sorting activity.

What you need:
- A collection of at least 15 objects of varying shapes, sizes and colors, such as miniature plastic animals, shells or buttons for each group of 5 students. Student groups do not have to have the same collection.

What to do:

- Divide students into groups of 4 or 5 and have them sit at tables.

- Give each group a bag full of 15 items, and ask them to divide the objects into groups according to size, shape, color or anything else that makes sense to them. They should leave their items in groups on the tables.

- Let them work independently for about 10 minutes.

- When all of the groups have finished, visit each table with the whole class and look at the sorted items. Ask students not in that group to guess what the classification scheme was, such as “animals that live in the ocean,” and “animals that live on land” or “shells with a spiral on them” and “shells that are open on one side, like a clam.”

- Discuss how it is sometimes hard to guess how something is classified if you don’t know what the characteristics are. Scientists in general have agreed on features that are appropriate to use when classifying organisms because they do not vary in all animals of that type (backbone or no backbone, number of legs). Some features are not used in classification because they vary among individuals, such as color and size.

- See if groups with similar collections can agree on one classification scheme. Does that change their groups? What happens when people can’t agree?