Inside vs Outside Sort Task Box

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 22 pages, 151 type-in fields

• 28 picture cards in 10 rounds across 3 levels (14 inside, 14 outside), 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, INSIDE and OUTSIDE, 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 task box that comes with its own data. Most 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 — 4 rounds of two cards: one card you would find inside a house beside one you would find outside in a yard or park (a bed and a tree, a laptop and a kite). The first sorts are nearly impossible to get wrong.
• Level 2 — 4 rounds of three cards. The split varies (one inside and two outside, or two and one), so a child looks at each card instead of counting.
• Level 3 — 2 rounds of four cards, cut as 2 × 2 blocks. Every card here belongs squarely inside or squarely outside on purpose — nothing borderline made this box — so the difficulty comes from the four-card mix, not a near-miss object. Splits run from one inside card to three.

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

• Inside (14): bed, calendar, clock, computer, dice, laptop, lightbulb, phone, piano, printer, puzzle, robot, television, toothbrush
• Outside (14): bee, butterfly, cloud, flower, kite, mailbox, rainbow, snail, snowman, squirrel, tractor, tree, truck, worm
• Mat icons (never cards): house, tent

Every picture was chosen to be named in one word by a young child, in color AND in the black-and-white set; a word that failed either check was left out of both. Two more words from the original word list — chair and car — were left out on purpose, not for an art defect: both are ordinary objects that sit indoors as often as outdoors (a porch chair, a garaged car), which would have made the "nearly impossible to get wrong" first sorts genuinely arguable. "Book" and "bicycle" passed every check but were not spent on a card; the round count that clears this file's own print-fit rules landed one word short on each side.

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 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

Part of 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.