Hilda Taba’s time-tested strategy (1967) called List-group-label is a great way of helping students connect to their own background knowledge and organization skills. This activity can be used with students of any level, in any content area and with any degree of proficiency. Give students a topic and ask them to brainstorm all of the words they can think of that are related to the given topic.  When students have their lists of words they connect to the topic, the teacher may want to have each group share out and write the words on the board. Students are then instructed to find commonalities under which they can group the words. Each category must then be given a label to identify the commonality of the group. If students can think of additional words that fit the category but that have not been listed on the board, they may add them to the grouped category list as they are working.

When students have completed the task, each group shares with the whole class their method of categorization and any words they may have added to the category which were not on the original brainstorming list. A lively discussion might take place as students discuss their methods of grouping and defining the characteristics of their groups. Groups or the whole class can extend their work by creating a wall sized semantic web of the topic. This web can be added to during the unit as new words that may not have been known during the web creation phase are encountered.  The students enjoy the activity and have a visual representation of not only the content but how the various vocabulary terms interconnect.