Plant or Animal Sort Task Box

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 22 pages, 151 type-in fields

• 27 picture cards in 10 rounds across 3 levels (12 plant cards, 15 animal 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, PLANT and ANIMAL, card slots for each round
• 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 ("Nora," labeled invented on the page), 8 sessions, every percent re-counted from its own row
• A family practice page with the same 6 cards and a mini mat
• A phrase bank: 26 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 plant and animal 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 plant picture beside one animal picture (a tree and a dog, a flower and a cat). These are the pictures a child names surest, so the first sorts are nearly impossible to get wrong.
• Level 2 — 3 rounds of three cards. The split varies (2 rounds with 1 plant card, 1 round with 2 plant cards), so a child has to look at each card instead of counting.
• Level 3 — 2 rounds of four cards, cut as 2 × 2 blocks. The pictures a child names least surely live here (grapes, broccoli, blowfish, t-rex). The split varies (1 round with 1 plant card, 1 round with 2 plant cards), so a child has to look at each card instead of counting.

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.

THIS BOX HAS 27 CARDS. The plant and animal pictures that read cleanly in both a color set and a black-and-white ink-saver set come to 12 and 15 words; the box ships at that size rather than padded with a picture that reads differently in one set or the other.

The Words

• Plant (12): broccoli, cactus, evergreen tree, flower, grapes, leaf, maple leaf, pea pod, rose, sunflower, tree, tulip
• Animal (15): bear, bee, blowfish, boar, cat, cow, dog, duck, frog, horse, pig, rabbit, sheep, t-rex, tropical fish
• Mat icons (never cards): fallen leaf, lion

Every picture was chosen to be named 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.

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 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.