Classifying involves organizing items into groups based on their common characteristics. In order to classify, students must be able to identify important characteristics of an item and determine the ways in which items are similar or different. Then they classify the items by grouping and labeling them according to their similarities. (McREL, 2012) Since classifying requires students to first identify similarities, some of the tools provided for Identifying Similarities and Differences will be useful in helping student identify characteristics and similarities prior to classifying.