Beginning Sound S or T Sort Task Box

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 22 pages, 151 type-in fields

• 47 picture cards in 17 rounds across 3 levels (28 S words, 19 T words), each round boxed to cut apart as a strip
• Every card twice: a full-color set for a laminated classroom box and a black-and-white ink-saver set for the photocopier
• 2 sort mats (color and ink-saver) with two labeled bins, S WORDS and T WORDS, six card slots each
• An answer key listing every round by level, plus the full word list
• A task box data sheet (16 rows: date, level, rounds given, cards correct, cards given, percent, help given, initials)
• A percent graph, 14 sessions across, with a level box under each session
• A filled example — an invented student, 8 sessions, every percent re-counted from its own row
• A family practice page with the same six cards and a mini mat
• A phrase bank: 25 lines in 6 groups (spoken lines for running the box, written starters for the note afterward)
• Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, and a "what's next" back page

A beginning-sound sort with the same data-and-graph system as the rest of the Task Box Collection: a child sorts pictures by their first sound, not by what the picture is a picture of, and every session lands on the data sheet behind it.

The Three Levels

• Level 1 — 7 rounds of two cards: one S word beside one T word, picked from unrelated topics so the first sound is the only thing to notice (shorts and taxi, snowflake and teapot). The first sorts are nearly impossible to get wrong.
• Level 2 — 7 rounds of three cards. The split varies (most rounds carry one T word and two S words, two rounds flip it to two T words and one S), so a child looks at each card instead of counting.
• Level 3 — 3 rounds of four cards, cut as 2 × 2 blocks. Each round hides one T card among three S cards from the same everyday topic: a turtle among a squid, a shark and a seal; a tomato among a spoon, a sandwich and spaghetti; a toolbox among a screwdriver, scissors and a shield — so a child has to listen for the sound instead of guessing by category. Every Level 3 round keeps the same one-and-three split on purpose, since T is the box's scarcer letter.

Nothing on a card says its level except a dot code in the corner (one, two or three dots), so a mixed-up box sorts itself back together and nobody at a shared table can see who has the two-card rounds.

The Words

• S words (28): salt, sandwich, saxophone, scarf, scissors, scorpion, screwdriver, seal, shark, sheep, shell, shield, shirt, shoe, shorts, shower, skunk, sloth, snake, snowflake, snowman, sock, spaghetti, speaker, spider, spoon, squid, sunflower
• T words (19): taxi, teapot, telescope, television, tent, ticket, tiger, tomato, toolbox, tooth, toothbrush, tractor, train, tree, trophy, truck, tulip, turkey, turtle
• Mat icons (never cards): star, trumpet

S is the abundant letter here, so this box ships its full 28-word bank rather than being trimmed to match T; T is the tighter side and the box is sized around it. A few plausible pictures were checked and left off rather than stretched in: a sailboat picture whose honest one-word name is "boat," not "sailboat" (the wrong first sound), and a ski-and-boot picture that reads to a young child as "boot" before it reads as "ski." Every picture that stayed was chosen to be named in one word, starting with the right letter, in color AND in the black-and-white set.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: type into the data sheet, the graph header, the family page and the example-style notes, or print and use a pen. The card pages and mats print on cardstock or plain paper and cut along dashed lines. It works offline with no account or subscription. It is NOT an editable online slideshow or word-processor document, and it is not a test of anything.

It carries no prompt hierarchy, fading schedule or mastery rule, and it does not decide what a percent means for a student or when to move up a level. It does not teach letter names, letter formation or phoneme blending — it only sorts pictures by first sound. The goal line and the criterion field are blanks for your district's own wording and your team's own number. It measures one thing: cards placed in the right bin.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers and paraprofessionals running independent work stations, task box rotations or beginning-sound phonics practice with early or pre-reading students, case managers who need that practice to show up as data, and the families who get the practice page sent home.

More In The Collection

This is one set in the Task Box Collection; more sort and matching boxes are being added to the collection regularly, all on the same cards-plus-data shape.

Pictures (color pages): Noto Emoji by Google, Apache License 2.0. Pictures (ink-saver pages): Fluent Emoji, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, MIT License.