Sharp or Not Sharp Sort Task Box

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 22 pages, 151 type-in fields

• 25 picture cards in 9 rounds across 3 levels (12 sharp, 13 not sharp), 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, SHARP and NOT SHARP, 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 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

HOW THE SORT WORKS — every SHARP card has a point or an edge on it that can poke or cut (a knife's blade, a needle's tip, a star's own five pointed corners); every NOT SHARP card does not (a teddy bear, a spoon, a balloon). This is a picture-sorting test of that one physical fact, not a safety lesson — the box never tells anyone what to do around a real knife or blade, and no card claims one sharp thing is as dangerous as another.

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 — 4 rounds of two cards: one sharp thing beside one obviously different not-sharp thing (a knife and a teddy bear, scissors and a soccer ball). The first sorts are nearly impossible to get wrong.
• Level 2 — 4 rounds of three cards. The split is not always one and two — two rounds carry two sharp cards, two rounds carry two not-sharp cards — so a child looks at each card instead of counting.
• Level 3 — 1 round of five cards, cut in a single row: a bow and arrow and an ice skate beside a pair of socks, a leaf and a bunch of grapes.

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

• Sharp (12): knife, needle, pushpin, pencil, cactus, scissors, axe, saw, star, ice skate, bow and arrow, safety pin
• Not sharp (13): teddy bear, soccer ball, spoon, balloon, socks, apple, cloud, leaf, feather, book, bubbles, watermelon, grapes
• Mat icons (never cards): diamond, large circle

A pointed shape (the star, a diamond mat icon) is included only for its own sharp corners, never described as being as dangerous as a blade. 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, and no word repeats anywhere in the box.

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 safety curriculum or a statement about any real object in a specific classroom.

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 of several sets 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. It is also planned for the Task Box Collection Bundle, at a savings over buying the sets separately.

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