ABSTRACT
Children learn new concepts by sorting into categories, at first through physically sorting pictures or artefacts into groups, using trial and error and discussion. The teacher may initially suggest the categories, for example ‘old’ and ‘new’ objects can generate a great deal of discussion among young children of what these concepts mean. Later they can sort images into categories they select. The same set of pictures about, for example, Elizabethan England, may be divided into town and country, rich and poor, adults and children, work and leisure. (They might collect pictures from books and photocopy them, or from the internet, to make the cards themselves.) This is an activity through which children can learn key concepts through images and talk. It is open ended: more able children may create categories and subcategories, country and rich/poor; town and children/adults; leisure and different types of leisure activities. They can create diagrams or lists based on the sets, or write paragraphs describing images of rich and poor children and speculate further about their lives. Perhaps they will suggest more complex categories: contemporary images or those produced later; different levels of validity, techniques and media used to create them.
