Teachers working with a language experience approach to reading may use word-sorting activities as a means of exploring the letter/sound concepts and semantic concepts that children are forming. Using words that are already in a child's reading vocabulary, words that the child has made into sight vocabulary, and words that the child has requested while composing stories, the teacher asks the child to decide on categories into which the words may be divided. Words may be sorted according to letter/sound relationships, prefix of suffix likenesses and differences, etymological kinships, or semantic relationships. As teachers help the children to see that words may be categorized in different ways, children may recategorize their set of word cards many times. Experience has shown that the less useful categories will be used less and less frequently and that the more useful categories will be used often. As children become more adept at working with words and begin to read more widely, they are encouraged not only to sort old words but to seek out new words for their categories. Such word-sorting activities help children to explore words in a way that is related to other meaningful exploration in reading and using language. (GW)