Musical Instruments Sort Task Box

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 22 pages, 151 type-in fields

• 27 picture cards in 10 rounds across 3 levels (12 instruments, 15 not instruments), 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, INSTRUMENTS and NOT INSTRUMENTS, 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, 6 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 instrument beside one obviously-not-an-instrument thing (drum and book, guitar and chair). The first sorts are nearly impossible to get wrong.
• Level 2 — 3 rounds of three cards. One round carries two instrument cards, so a child looks at each card instead of counting.
• Level 3 — 2 rounds of four cards, cut as 2 × 2 blocks. The three least-common instrument names live here — accordion, microphone, postal horn — mixed with ordinary not-instrument objects. Unlike some siblings, Level 3 does not use near-miss objects (nothing instrument-adjacent, like a mic stand or a speaker); what makes it harder is the name, not the picture.

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 musical instrument you play" tops out at 12 — every real dual-set instrument picture found, checked against Unicode's own name for each codepoint. Rather than pad it with a mismatched or ambiguous picture, this box ships honestly at 27 cards / 10 rounds instead of the collection's usual 72 cards / 26 rounds.

The Words

• Instruments (12): accordion, banjo, drum, flute, guitar, keyboard, maracas, microphone, postal horn, saxophone, trumpet, violin
• Not instruments (15): backpack, balloon, ball, book, chair, clock, flower, gift, hat, key, kite, shoe, star, teddy bear, tree
• Mat icons (never cards): music, house

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 in either set was left out of both. A microphone is included on the INSTRUMENTS side (it amplifies rather than makes a note on its own, a genuine edge case) — its picture is an unambiguous handheld mic in both sets, so it ships as directed, placed at Level 3 rather than Level 1 because the category call is less certain than a guitar or a drum. A bell was considered for the NOT INSTRUMENTS side and left out on purpose: hand bells are themselves a musical instrument in some classrooms, and this box does not want a "makes music" claim to be false on any card.

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

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.