Complete the Pattern Star or Heart Task Box

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 22 pages

• 12 pattern cards across 3 levels (4 cards each), every card a Star/Heart alternating strip with one blank the child fills by reading the pattern
• Every card twice: accent-colored tiles for a laminated classroom box and black-on-white ink-saver tiles for the photocopier — plain printed shapes, no picture library either way
• 2 reference strips (color and ink-saver), twenty tiles of the same Star, Heart alternation running on
• An answer key listing every strip by level, its answer, and every shape offered on the card
• A task box data sheet (16 rows: date, level, cards used, 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 six of the same cards and a short reference strip
• 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 task box built around a skill most sort-and-count sets skip: reading an alternating pattern and working out what shape is missing, not just naming a picture. It comes with the same data sheet, graph and phrase bank as the rest of the collection, so this practice turns into a line on a page a case manager can bring to a meeting.

Three Levels, And The Pattern Never Changes

• Level 1 — 4 cards, two shapes to choose from (Star, Heart — no decoy). The blank is always the LAST shape in the strip ("Star, Heart, Star, __"). One read of the alternation answers it.
• Level 2 — 4 cards, three shapes to choose from (Star, Heart, + one decoy shape that never appears in any strip). The blank is one of the two MIDDLE shapes ("Star, __, Star, Heart"), so the child has to read both sides of the gap, and the decoy tests that they are matching the actual pattern, not guessing between the shapes already on the page.
• Level 3 — 4 cards, four shapes to choose from (Star, Heart, + both decoys). The blank is the FIRST shape in the strip ("__, Heart, Star, Heart") — the child has to work out what comes before the shapes shown — with the widest choice row to scan.

Moving up a level changes the blank's position and the number of choices at the same time, so a student cannot answer by card position alone. 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.

THE PATTERN IS ALWAYS TWO SHAPES — every strip on every card, in both sets, at all three levels, is a genuine Star, Heart alternation and nothing else. The extra shapes in the choice row at Levels 2 and 3 are decoys that only ever show up as wrong answers to pick from; they never appear inside a strip. This is a two-shape pattern set with harder wrong answers at higher levels, not a three- or four-shape pattern set.

NO PICTURES, ON PURPOSE — every shape on every page is plain printed text, drawn the same way in both the color set and the ink-saver set. There is no picture library to run out of and no image to misread; the only thing a child reads is a shape.

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 reference strips 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. 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 with the missing shape correctly marked.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers and paraprofessionals running independent work stations or task box rotations with students working on visual pattern recognition, 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, counting and pattern boxes are being added to the collection regularly, all on the same cards-plus-data shape.