The objects you'll need are (and you don't even need all of them, use the ones you already have around):
- Snap wooden clothespin
- Sharpened pencil
- Unsharpened pencil
- Wire coat hanger
- Metal fork
- Metal knife
- Metal spoon
- Bolt
- Nickel
- Penny
- Small paperclip
- Jumbo paperclip
- Paper fastener
- White shirt button
- White paper plate
- White piece of chalk
- Whilte plastic fork
- White plastic knife
- White plastic spoon
- White candle
- White soap
There are a couple of ways you can use this activity:
~Provide each group of students with a set of objects and have each student identify the name of every object (or a specified number of objects).
~Provide each student with one object and have them each identify the name of that one object. This works well as a quick assessment tool.
There are a few things I really like about this particular activity:
~There's some similarities between the objects (lots of utensils, lots of white objects, etc.), which means students need to work through the key carefully.
~The dichotomous key includes extra names, which means students really have to work their way through the key for each object; they can't rely on the process of elimination.
