Ask a room "Does a broken mirror go in the recycling?" and most people will nod along with whoever answers first. Ask everyone to sort twelve items into the right bins on their own phone, against the clock, and you find out what they really think. That is the idea behind Sort It, a live sorting game in EngageSlide. Everyone sorts the same items into two to four groups, and then the big screen shows, item by item, what the room got right and which items tripped people up.
Here is how it works on the phone and the big screen, how scoring works, and how to set up your first round.
What Sort It is (and why a sorting game works)
Sorting things into categories is one of the oldest ways to check understanding. UX researchers use card sorting to learn how people group ideas in their heads, and teachers have used paper card sorts for decades. On paper you see results one table at a time; a live sorting game shows the whole room at once.
In Sort It you set up 2–4 groups, such as Recycling, Compost, Landfill or Mammal, Bird, Reptile, Fish, and a list of up to 24 items that each belong to one group. When you press START, every player gets the items one card at a time and taps the group each one belongs to. A multiple-choice question tests one idea per slide. A sort tests a dozen small judgements in about a minute, and it shows exactly where people disagree.
Sort It sits in the Games tab of the slide picker, next to games like Last One Standing, the elimination quiz and live Bingo with a card on every phone. Players join with your code or the QR code, the same way they join any interactive presentation.
What players see on their phone
After joining, the phone says You're in! and shows the groups they will sort into. Then the round runs like this:
- One card at a time. The phone shows Where does it go? with the item in big letters and a large coloured button for each group. A counter (5 / 12) and a countdown bar run along the top.
- Each phone gets its own order. The items come up in a random order on every phone, so people sitting next to each other cannot simply copy.
- Undo and review. Undo takes back the last card. After the last card, the phone says All sorted! Tap an item to move it. and lists every item under the group it was put in. Tapping an item opens Move to… so the player can fix it before pressing Submit.
- Nobody loses their work at the buzzer. If time runs out before a player submits, the phone sends whatever they have sorted. Items they did not get to count as wrong.
After the reveal, each phone shows the player's result, for example 9 of 12 right, their points and their place (#2 of 8). If the setting is on, it also lists Your mistakes: each wrong item with the group they chose crossed out and the right group next to it.
What the big screen shows
Before the round, the big screen shows the title as the question, the number of items, groups and seconds, the groups as empty coloured columns, and how many players are ready. Press START (or Enter) to begin.
While players sort, the items float above the columns. A countdown ring and a chip such as 6 of 16 players done sit in the corner, a bar shows how far the whole room has got, and the avatars of players who have submitted line up next to it. The round closes by itself once every active player has submitted. If you want to move on sooner, press Reveal now.
The reveal
The items fly into their right column one by one, and each one gets a tag with the percentage of players who sorted it correctly. Tags are green at 80% or more, yellow from 50% to 79%, and red below 50%, so problem items stand out.
Then the summary appears:
- Right on average. The average share of items the room sorted correctly.
- Perfect sorts. How many players got every item right.
- Most missed. The three items with the lowest score, each with the wrong group people chose most often, for example "Broken mirror: 31% right, 69% said Recycling".
Press See the leaderboard to show the top 10 with each player's right count and points. Play again starts a new round with the same items in a new order to check whether your explanation worked.
How scoring works
Each item sorted into the right group scores 100 points. On top of that, every right item earns a speed bonus of up to 50 points. The bonus is highest for an instant submit and drops to zero at the buzzer. Wrong and unsorted items score nothing, so careful beats careless. A perfect, fast sort of 12 items is worth up to 1,800 points. Players with the same score are ranked by who submitted first.
Sort It has its own leaderboard for each round and does not change your quiz scores, so you can add it to a quiz-heavy session without upsetting the main standings.
Set up your first round in five minutes
1. Start from a template
Add a Sort It slide from the Games tab and pick a starting point under Start from a template:
- Which bin does it go in? Recycling, compost or landfill, with 12 items. This is the sample on a new slide.
- Sort the animals. Mammal, bird, reptile or fish, with a few tricky ones such as Platypus, Bat and Seahorse.
- Scrum: role, event or artifact? A quick check for agile training and team onboarding.
A template replaces the current groups and items, and EngageSlide asks first if the slide already has items.
2. Edit the groups
Under Groups, type over a name to rename it and click the colour square to choose its colour. Use + Add group for up to four groups. You need at least two. Deleting a group also deletes its items.
3. Add the items
Each group has its own box: type an item and press Enter. A slide holds up to 24 items, and 8–16 make a good round. To add many at once, click Paste list and paste one item per line as Item | Group, for example Battery | Landfill. Groups are matched by name (capitals don't matter), and the box tells you how many lines matched and how many have no known group.
4. Choose the settings
The slide title is the question on the big screen. In Settings, choose a time limit of 30, 45, 60 (the default), 90 or 120 seconds for the whole round, and decide whether to show players their mistakes after the reveal. It is on by default. Turn it off if you only want phones to show the score.
A sorting game is only as good as its tricky items. Put two or three things in the list that people often get wrong. The red tags and the Most missed panel are where the real conversation starts.
Turning the reveal into a discussion
The numbers are the start, not the end. Try this routine:
- Read the Most missed panel out loud. "Most of us put Coffee grounds in Landfill. Who can say why?" You hear the misconception in their own words.
- Explain the rule, not just the answer. Give the principle behind the right group so the room can apply it to items that were not in the list.
- Play again. Run the same items in a new order and compare. Recalling an answer again soon after feedback helps it stick, a well-studied effect called the testing effect.
- Use the phones for self-correction. With Show players their mistakes on, everyone sees their own wrong items privately,.
Ideas for your first sorting game
- Classroom. Animals, materials, word types, events by era, or prime and not prime numbers.
- Training and onboarding. Allowed or not allowed, which team owns a task, or public, internal and confidential data.
- Workshops and events. Scrum roles, events and artifacts, a must-have and nice-to-have backlog sort, or a recycling round for a green week.
For every setting in one place, see the Sort It help article or the Sort It slide page. For more game and quiz ideas, browse the EngageSlide blog. Start with a template, add two tricky items of your own, and within a minute you will know what your room really thinks.