Circus & Carnival Matching Binder

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 19 pages, 113 type-in fields

• A Circus & Carnival Request board: three request/identify slots (I want, I see, Show me) and a seven-picture match — with its own 7 cut-apart cards on the same sheet
• A You Can Hold It, or Not board: two sort slots and a three-picture and a four-picture grid on the same seven circus and carnival things, split by what each picture shows — with its own 7 cut-apart cards on the same sheet
• Both boards twice: a full-color set for a laminated binder and a black-and-white ink-saver set for the photocopier
• 21 cut-apart picture cards in all, counting the color set and the home page once
• A weekly tracker: 8 board jobs down, Monday to Friday across, one letter per cell (no help / pointed once / said the words / not run), a "no help" count per row and a week total
• A binder organizer: a front cover, a spine strip and 9 divider tabs (3 of them blank)
• A home version: the same seven-word bank, split into its two sort groups, for the kitchen table, with a seven-day "we did it" row
• A family update with a team hand-off block for the next adult who runs the binder
• A phrase bank: 24 lines in 6 groups (spoken lines for running the boards, written starters for the note afterward)
• A filled example — an invented student, one week, every count re-counted from its own row
• An answer key listing every board, the cards it takes and what correct looks like, plus the full word list (classroom set and home set)
• Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, and a "what's next" back page

A circus and carnival vocabulary binder built on one seven-word bank (circus tent, clown face, performing arts, ferris wheel, ticket, person juggling, lollipop) run through two different boards — naming and requesting any of the seven at the first board, then sorting the same seven by whether it is something a person actually holds in one hand at the second, each with its own tracker row. Most matching binders stop at the board; this one adds the tracker, the family update and the phrase bank behind it, so a circus or carnival unit's matching turns into counts a case manager can bring to a meeting.

The Boards

• Circus & Carnival Request (page 6 in color, page 7 in ink-saver) — the board stays whole above a cut line; the card band below cuts apart. Three request/identify slots (I want, I see, Show me), and a seven-picture match (circus tent, clown face, performing arts, ferris wheel, ticket, person juggling, lollipop): the child matches the identical card onto its picture.
• You Can Hold It, or Not (page 9 in color, page 10 in ink-saver) — two sort slots ("You can hold it," "You cannot hold it") and a three-picture and a four-picture grid on the same seven things, so the exact seven words appear on both boards (see WHY "YOU CAN HOLD IT, OR NOT" IS A REAL-OBJECT SPLIT, below).

The Words

• Circus & Carnival request cards (7): circus tent, clown face, performing arts, ferris wheel, ticket, person juggling, lollipop
• Hold-it cards (3): ticket, performing arts, lollipop
• Not-hold cards (4): circus tent, clown face, ferris wheel, person juggling
• Home page — hold-it cards (3) and not-hold cards (4): the same seven words, split the same way

Every picture was chosen to be named in one word by a young child, in color AND in the black-and-white set. This binder is built around circus and carnival vocabulary specifically — a tent, a clown's face, the theater masks, a ferris wheel, a ticket, a person juggling and a lollipop are the things this collection's binder names, requests and sorts. It does not say what any real school or family includes in its own circus or carnival event.

WHY "YOU CAN HOLD IT, OR NOT" IS A REAL-OBJECT SPLIT, NOT A RULE ABOUT EVERY REAL TICKET, MASK OR LOLLIPOP

The second board sorts by the THING each picture shows, not by a rule about every real ticket, mask or lollipop everywhere: a ticket, a theater mask (performing arts) and a lollipop are each a small object a person actually holds in one hand; a circus tent and a ferris wheel are structures, and a clown's face and a person juggling show a person, not an object. This board is only a claim about what these seven pictures show, the same kind of checkable, picture-only split this collection's other sort boards (wear-it-or-not, sit-or-lie-on-it-or-not, on-the-road-or-not) already use.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: type into the tracker, the organizer, the home page and the family update, or print and use a pen. The board pages print on cardstock or plain paper; the card band cuts off the bottom and the board stays whole. 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 count means for a student or when a board is done with. The hold-it sort is a claim about what each picture shows, not a rule about every real ticket, mask or lollipop anywhere. The tracker counts which boards were done and what help was given, and nothing else.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers and paraprofessionals running functional-vocabulary or naming practice with early, pre-reading or low-verbal students around a circus or carnival unit, case managers who need that practice to show up as data, and the families who get the home page.

More In The Collection

This binder is part of the Morning Work & Adapted Books Collection; more matching binders are being added to the collection regularly, all on the same boards-plus-tracker shape.

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