1. Study Skills Lesson 3
Organizing Ideas

2. Categorizing and Sequencing
When you have a lot of material to learn it is easier to remember ideas that relate to one another. Here, you will learn two ways to link things together: categorizing and sequencing.

3. Categorizing CATEGORY: States WORDS: New York, Texas,
A category is a group of things that go together because they have something in common. For example New York, Texas, Minnesota, and Oregon would be in the category “states”.
How would you categorize the following list of words:
Noun
Adjective
Question mark
Comma’
Verb
Semi-colon
Adverb
preposition
CATEGORY: States
WORDS: New York, Texas,
Minnesota, and Oregon
CATEGORY: Parts of Speech
WORDS: noun, adjective, verb,
adverb, preposition
CATEGORY: Punctuation
WORDS: question mark, comma,
Semi-colon

4. Practice: Categorizing objects
In Social Studies, you are asked to study for a test on the world map.
How would you divide these words to help you study
them? Florida, Tennessee, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Alaska, Spain,
Hawaii, Italy, and Ireland
CATEGORY: _____________ CATEGORY: _______________
WORDS: _________________ WORDS: __________________
_________________________ __________________________

5. CATEGORY GAME
Desserts
Movies
Girl’s Names
Animals G A M E

6. Sequencing
after, before,
following, until
Sequencing is putting events in time order, what happened first, second, last, etc.
Certain words signal time. You’ll find examples of these in bubbles.
first,
second, last
finally,
later,
now, then
since
when, while,
whenever, as,
earlier
meanwhile,
next

7. Practice: Put these events in time order. CHECK YOUR ANSWERS 1.
a.The Pilgrims came to America.
b. The wheel was invented.
c. The first automobiles were sold.
d. Man walked on the moon. 2.
a. Fred climbs the mountain to save Jack.
b. Jack climbs the mountain.
c. Fred and Jack return to town to go to the doctor.
d. Jack falls and hurts his ankle.
CHECK
YOUR
ANSWERS

8. Answer Key for Sequencing
1. B, A, C, D
2. B, D, A, C

9. ANSWER KEY CATEGORY: STATE WORDS: Florida, Tennessee, Alaska, Hawaii
CATEGORY: COUNTRY
WORDS: Mexico, Canada, Japan, Spain, Italy, Ireland