Money or Not Money? Sort Task Box

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 22 pages, 151 type-in fields

• 24 money-object cards in 9 rounds across 3 levels (12 money cards, 12 not-money 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, MONEY and NOT MONEY, 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.

This Box Sorts Money Objects — Not Coin Values

Read this before buying: this box does not teach a student to tell a penny from a nickel from a dime, or to count change, or to identify any coin's or bill's real value. It asks one simpler question — is this thing a money object, or not — and sorts pictures of a coin, paper bills, a money bag, a credit card, an ATM, a receipt and a currency-exchange symbol away from everyday objects that have nothing to do with paying for things. If your goal is coin or amount identification, this is not that resource.

The Three Levels

• Level 1 — 5 rounds of two cards: one money object beside one clearly not-money thing (a coin and an apple, a dollar bill and a soccer ball). The two look nothing alike, so the first sorts are nearly impossible to get wrong.
• Level 2 — 2 rounds of three cards. The split is not always one and two, so a child has to look at each card instead of counting.
• Level 3 — 2 rounds of four cards, cut as 2 × 2 blocks. Both rounds pair two of the four banknote pictures (which are not all the same color or currency symbol) against two everyday objects — the harder judgment here is recognizing that bills which do not look alike are still both money, not spotting a look-alike decoy on the not-money side.

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 word bank for a money sort is 12 per side. Rather than pad it with a word that could argue either bin, this box ships honestly at 24 cards / 9 rounds instead of the collection's usual 72 cards / 26 rounds.

The Words

• Money (12): atm, coin, credit card, currency exchange, dollar bill, dollar sign, euro bill, flying money, money bag, pound bill, receipt, yen bill
• Not money (12): apple, balloon, bicycle, book, drum, hat, key, kite, pencil, soccer ball, teddy bear, umbrella
• Mat icons (never cards): wallet, puzzle piece

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 four banknote pictures (dollar, euro, pound, yen) are each a different color with a different currency symbol in the color set, and are told apart by their printed symbol alone in the black-and-white set — a child only needs to recognize each as "a bill," never to tell one currency from another.

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, and it is not a coin-identification or money-counting resource (see above).

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

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.