Halloween or Not Halloween? Sort Task Box

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 22 pages, 151 type-in fields

• 27 picture cards in 10 rounds across 3 levels (12 Halloween cards, 15 not-Halloween cards), 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, HALLOWEEN and NOT HALLOWEEN, card slots for each round
• 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 with a level box under each session
• A filled example — an invented student ("Theo," labeled invented on the page), 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 (run, fix, record, data, family, plus the fixed "Handing the box to a paraprofessional" group), spoken lines for running the box and written starters for the note afterward
• Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, and a "what's next" back page

A task box that comes with its own data. Most Halloween sort sets stop at the cards; this one adds the data sheet, the graph and the phrase bank behind them, so independent work practice turns into a line on a page a case manager can bring to a meeting.

The Three Levels

• Level 1 — 5 rounds of two cards: one Halloween picture beside one clearly not-Halloween thing (a jack-o-lantern and a dog, a ghost and a car). The two look nothing alike, so the first sorts are nearly impossible to get wrong.
• Level 2 — 3 rounds of three cards. The split is not always one and two — some rounds carry two Halloween cards — so a child has to look at each card instead of counting.
• Level 3 — 2 rounds of four cards, cut as 2 × 2 blocks. The first pairs two Halloween cards (a skull, a coffin) with two everyday objects; the second pairs one Halloween card (a bone) with three everyday objects that are not Halloween at all — the harder judgment is recognizing every Halloween picture, not spotting a fixed split.

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.

THIS IS A SHORTER BOX THAN THE COLLECTION'S USUAL SIZE. The clean, correctly-pictured Halloween word bank checked against both a color set and a black-and-white ink-saver set is 12 — not 36. Rather than pad it with a word that reads differently in one set or the other, this box ships honestly at 27 cards / 10 rounds instead of the collection's usual 72 cards / 26 rounds.

The Words

• Halloween (12): bat, bone, broom, candy, coffin, ghost, jack-o-lantern, moon, owl, skull, spider, spider web
• Not Halloween (15): apple, banana, bell, bird, bus, car, chair, cup, dog, fish, gift, light bulb, monkey, shoe, trophy
• Mat icons (never cards): star, ball

Every picture was chosen to be named or clearly recognized in one word by a young child, in color AND in the black-and-white set; a picture that read differently in either set was left out of both. The skull and coffin cards are plain, non-graphic cartoon icons (a pale skull face, a simple brown box with a tag) — not gory imagery.

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. 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 or task box rotations in October, 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.