Long or Short Sort Task Box

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 22 pages, 151 type-in fields

• 24 picture cards in 9 rounds across 3 levels (12 long, 12 short), 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, LONG and SHORT, 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 — 5 rounds of two cards: one obviously long thing beside one obviously short thing (a snake and a mouse, a giraffe and an ant). The first sorts are nearly impossible to get wrong.
• Level 2 — 2 rounds of three cards. The split varies — one round carries two long cards, the other carries two short — so a child looks at each card instead of counting.
• Level 3 — 2 rounds of four cards, cut as 2 × 2 blocks. Every round pairs the SAME everyday thing in a long version and a short version: a pencil against a paperclip, a necktie against a sock, a banana against a strawberry, a worm against a snail. A child has to judge length, not guess by what kind of thing it is.

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.

Honest count: this is a smaller box than some siblings in the collection — 24 cards from a checked, closed word list, not 72. Ship thinner rather than pad it with a repeated or borderline word.

The Words

• Long (12): snake, giraffe, ladder, ruler, pencil, train, broom, crocodile, worm, necktie, banana, carrot
• Short (12): mouse, ant, ladybug, lock, key, snail, sock, paperclip, strawberry, cherries, watch, game die
• Mat icons (never cards): baguette, cookie

Every picture was checked for both a Noto Emoji (color) and a Fluent Emoji High Contrast (ink-saver) picture at the same codepoint, and every codepoint's real Unicode name was read before the word was placed on a card. One supplied word, "coin," was dropped and replaced with "lock" — see Verified, below.

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. Every set in the collection, including this one, is also sold in the Task Box Collection Bundle.

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