When using categorising as a working form with students aged 6 to 8, you can easily differentiate at three levels: beginner, advanced and expert.
Beginners benefit from concrete material, clear visual support and pre-given categories, such as “animals” or “food”. They mainly practise recognising and simple sorting.
Advanced learners can already think up categories independently, work with doubtful cases and use multiple sorting criteria, such as colour, function or theme.
Experts are challenged to make abstract or multiple sorting, argue their choices and compare alternative classifications. This way, you tailor the work form to each student’s thinking and language level and encourage critical thinking.