Categorising to remember better
Sorting words by category makes them easier for the pupil to understand and remember, as the French preschool curriculum asks.
A word is remembered better with the words around it: “apple” calls up “fruit”, “pear” and “crunch”. This is why the words of Lexikit are sorted into categories.
The Eduscol guide on teaching vocabulary in preschool (2020) explains that memory stores words “as a network or a web” (page 29, translated from French), and the 2024 curriculum asks pupils to “organise words into categories and networks”.
The sorting and odd one out resources serve this work. When a pupil hesitates between putting the tomato with the fruit or with the vegetables, they think about the meaning of the word, and the mistake becomes an occasion to talk about it.