Elkonin Boxes

Created Feb. 5, 2024 by Melissa Lander, Carole Butcher, Tammy German, Anne Sloboda, Marion Elliott


SUN West SchoolELKONIN BOXESAN EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION STRATEGY
VIDEOS & APPSARTICLES
  • Bos, C.S., Mather, N. Silver-Pacuilla, H., & Friedman Narr, R. (2000). Learning to teach early literacy skills – collaboratively. Teaching Exceptional Children,. 32(5), pp. 38-45.
  • Coyn, M. D., & Koriakin, T.A. (2017). What do beginning educators need to know about intensive reading interventions? Teaching Exceptional Children,. 49(4), pp. 239–248. doi 10.1177/0040059916688648
  • Lemons, J.L., Allor, J.H., Otaiba, S.A., & LeJeune, L.M. (2016). 10 Research-based tips for enhancing literacy instruction for students with intellectual disability. Teaching Exceptional Children, 49(4), pp. 239–248. doi 10.1177/0040059916662202
  • Williams, C.,Sherry, T., Robinson, N., & Hungler, D. (2012). The practice page as a mediational tool for interactive writing instruction. The Reading Teacher, 65(5), pp. 330-340.
RESOURCE BANK RESOURCES		WHAT ARE ELKONIN BOXES?Elkonin boxes, or “sound boxes”, provide a visual representation of how words are segmented into individual letter-sounds. They help students see how a word is divided into its sound parts. This will help students with the alphabetic principle, decoding, spelling, and phoneme awareness. When students can break words into their sound parts, they can learn to map the speech sound to text – they can associate the spellings of each sound part.Students are taught to:
  1. Stretch out the word to listen for individual sounds in words
  2. push markers into boxes drawn on paper (1 sound per box)
  3. once students are able to sequence sounds and differentiate between consonant and vowel sounds, letter tiles can be introduced.
  1. students with working memory limitations may find that the addition of letters makes the task much easier (Lemons et al, 2016)
CONNECTIONS TO WRITING
  • Using an Elkonin Soundbox, students can segment words to build spelling and vocabulary skills (some students may use picture cards to build vocabulary, say the word and then segment it).
  • They could move a marker into a box as they say each sound, then write the letters or use magnetic letters to place in their Elkonin sound boxes as they say each sound before copying the word into their writing activity.
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE IN THE CLASSROOM? IN GROUPS?


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