Space Objects Sort Task Box

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 22 pages, 151 type-in fields

• 25 picture cards in 9 rounds across 3 levels (11 space objects, 14 not space objects), 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, SPACE and NOT SPACE, 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 — 4 rounds of two cards: one space object beside one obviously-not thing (rocket and shoe, star and book, moon and backpack, sun and key). The first sorts are nearly impossible to get wrong.
• Level 2 — 3 rounds of three cards. One round carries two space 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 space names live here — comet, telescope, alien monster — mixed with ordinary not-space objects. Unlike some siblings, Level 3 does not use sky-adjacent near-miss objects (no kite, no airplane); 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 "an object you would see in outer space" tops out at 11 — every real dual-set space picture found, checked against Unicode's own name for each codepoint (astronaut cannot ship in this engine: it exists only as a two-part person+rocket picture, and the two picture libraries this store draws from key that same picture under two different, incompatible codepoint spellings, so no single word/codepoint pair satisfies both). Rather than pad it with a mismatched or ambiguous picture, this box ships honestly at 25 cards / 9 rounds instead of the collection's usual 72 cards / 26 rounds.

The Words

• Space (11): alien, alien monster, comet, flying saucer, moon, ringed planet, rocket, satellite, star, sun, telescope
• Not space (14): backpack, book, car, cat, chair, dog, drum, guitar, hammer, key, robot, scissors, shoe, umbrella
• Mat icons (never cards): night with stars, 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. Sun and telescope are kept on the SPACE side even though, strictly, one is visible from Earth in the daytime and the other is a tool used to look AT space rather than an object found there — both are standard pieces of a PreK-2 "space theme" set, matching how moon and star are treated everywhere else, and telescope is placed at the hardest level rather than the easiest one because of that tension.

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. Every set in the Task Box Collection, including this one, is also sold together in the Task Box Collection Bundle — one purchase for the whole sort-and-data system.

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