School Supplies Sort Task Box

About this resource

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 — 12 rounds of two cards: one school supply beside one everyday object that is clearly something else (a pencil and a dog, a book and a car). The first sorts are nearly impossible to get wrong.
• Level 2 — 8 rounds of three cards. The split varies (one school supply and two not, or two and one), so a child looks at each card instead of counting.
• Level 3 — 6 rounds of four cards, cut as 2 × 2 blocks. The harder distractors live here — things that turn up near school without being a supply a student uses to do the work: a graduation cap, a trophy, a school bell, a gift, a clock, a key. Splits run from one school supply to three.

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.

The Words

• School supplies (34): abacus, backpack, book, bookmark, bookmark tabs, books, calendar, clipboard, crayon, dividers, file box, folder, fountain pen, globe, index card, magnet, microscope, notebook, open book, paintbrush, palette, paper, paperclip, paperclips, pen, pencil, pushpin, ruler, safety pin, scissors, spiral notepad, test tube, thread, triangular ruler
• Not school supplies (38): apple, banana, bell, bicycle, bird, bus, butterfly, car, cat, chair, clock, cup, dog, elephant, fish, fork, gift, graduation cap, grapes, hat, horse, house, key, light bulb, lion, monkey, pig, scarf, shoe, socks, spoon, strawberry, teapot, tiger, train, trophy, truck, zebra
• Mat icons (never cards): pen nib, ball

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, or read as the same object as a card already in the box, was left out of both. School supplies is the tighter word bank of the two sides — no honest picture exists for glue, a calculator or a paper fastener in either art set, so those were left out rather than forced.

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 the fourth 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. Also in this collection: Food vs Not Food Sort Task Box and Living vs Not Living Sort Task Box.

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