Noun Sort Picture Cards: Person, Place, Animal or Thing

About this resource

Cut, sort and glue. This deck gives a child 24 picture cards to cut apart and sort into four groups: person, place, animal or thing. The cards join edge to edge, so cutting is straight lines only, and the four groups are mixed on the page, so the page itself never gives an answer away. Three sort mats take a child from a faint picture guide to writing the words, and the adult pages score the same sort and track it over time.

WHAT IS INCLUDED -- 23 pages, 391 type-in fields

The Picture Cards

• 24 picture cards in full color, 6 for each of the 4 groups, each a big cut-apart piece laid out 6 across and 4 down, with the word under the picture -- teacher, doctor, firefighter, police, chef, baby; house, school, hospital, store, castle, hotel; dog, cat, cow, duck, frog, elephant; apple, key, pencil, scissors, umbrella, camera
• The same 24 cards again as an ink-saver set in pure black outlines, for the photocopier
• A note on the card pages naming the 2 pictures a child may name another way (police, store), and a reminder that a place picture may just be called "a building", so you can decide once how that answer is marked

Sort Mats And Answer Key

• Sort Mat 1 -- two groups (Person, Animal), a faint picture of every card to match, and a "draw one more" box for each group
• Sort Mat 2 -- all four groups, with room to glue six cards in each
• Sort Mat 3 -- write the word for each card, four columns of primary handwriting lines, plus lines to write a sentence
• Every mat has a "My name" line, one short instruction with a picture, and a small level shape (a dot, a square or a triangle, not a number)
• An adult answer key: all 24 pictures under their group, with the alternate names and a line to write your own rule

Probe And Track

• 3 quick probe forms (A, B, C), 8 pictures each, two from every group, with a + / - mark for every picture and the group printed under each word. No picture is on two forms: A, B and C together are all 24 cards
• Full-Deck Probe -- all 24 cards in one sheet, the group each belongs in, a mark for each and a line for the group the child chose
• Data Log -- 17 rows: date, form, correct, out of, percent, notes
• Percent Graph -- 14 probes across, 0-100 percent grid, a field for the team's own criterion
• Caseload Summary -- 16 rows: student, last form given, baseline, current, trend, decision

Share And Write

• Sort at Home -- a family update built from six of the same pictures, a sorting activity to do together, a weekly practice table and lines for what the family noticed
• Phrase Bank -- 19 observable-language starters across 5 groups (accuracy, which group, carryover, the log and graph, the caseload page)
• Filled Example -- an invented student, eight probes, every percent re-counted from its own row

ALSO INSIDE: Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, four section dividers, and a "what's next" back page.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: print the mats and cards for the child, and type into the log, graph, caseload page, family page and probe-form fields, or print those and use a pen. It works offline with no account or subscription. It is NOT an editable online slideshow or word-processor document, and it is not a norm-referenced or standardized test.

It carries no grammar lesson and no elicitation, cueing or modeling script. It does not decide what counts as a correct sort, a criterion, or a typical rate for sorting nouns: every one of those is your own call, written once and reused every session. It covers four groups of 6 pictures each; it is not a word list.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers, speech-language pathologists and paraprofessionals with young or pre-reading students working on sorting nouns into person, place, animal and thing, and the families who get the sorting page sent home.

Pictures: Noto Emoji by Google, Apache License 2.0 (color); Fluent Emoji by Microsoft, MIT License (ink-saver black and white).