Phonics with Sound Boxes (Elkonin Boxes)

There are many components of reading. The main five are Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension. For the purposes of this blog post, we will be focusing on Phonics.

STEP 3 Phonics with Sound Boxes

Blending is an essential skill for decoding. However, I have learned from personal experience and from research by Torgesen, Morgan, & Davis (1992) that emphasis should be placed on segmenting words into phonemes.

A phoneme is simply the smallest unit of sound. I always think of the word phone inside the word phoneme. You can hear sounds through a phone, so that helps me associate the word phoneme with sound.

“A Focus on Phonics” is a TPRI (Texas Primary Reading Inventory) Newsletter that reviews scientifically research based best practices for teaching Phonics. It was written by The Children’s Learning Institute at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

We will use Elkonin Boxes also know and Sound Boxes. Elkonin boxes are named after D.B. Elkonin, the Russian psychologist who pioneered their use. They are used in early elementary, especially with children that need additional support in phonemic awareness and reading.

We will use the same boxes and counters as before.

This strategy is best explained on page three of the TPRI.org Newsletter, “A Focus on Phonemic Awareness“. I know it has phonemic awareness in the title, but it also explains how to add letters to Elkonin Boxes.

Model the activity. Say, “Listen as I segment the word man. I will move a counter for each sound I say. /m/ /a/ /n/. The first sound I heard was /m/. I am going to write the spelling for that sound in the first box, m. The next sound I hear in the word is /a/. /a/ is spelled with the letter a. Watch as I write the letter a in the second box. The last sound I hear is /n/. /n/ is spelled with the letter n. Watch as I write the letter n in the third box.

When I worked as a Literacy Specialist for the Texas Literacy Initiative, I had the opportunity to be trained on many Spelling Routines and Strategies.

You can find Spelling Routines and strategies in this book: “Graphophonemic Knowledge: Routines and Teaching Tools ” written by The Children’s Learning Institute at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Using movement during instruction is more engaging for students. I love to use the first two Kinesthetic Scaffolds on page 21 of the GK book.

The CVC Sound Box Dry Erase Activities are a fun activity I developed for kids to practice phonics with Sound Boxes. Students look at the picture segment the sounds and write the letter that makes that sound in the box with a dry erase marker. I just printed and inserted them into a sheet protector.

I have also incorporated many Sound Box Spelling pages into the NO PREP CVC Words Cut and Paste Worksheets (Phonics Cut and Paste Set 1). Like the Alphabet pages, they fit into a composition notebook with just one cut, and implementing them is as easy as print and go.

See all my Phonics Cut and Paste pages.

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