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.

Class Playground printables are free to share, download, and print. Here you'll find printable Elkonin boxes (2-5 letters).
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Elkonin boxes help kids build phonological awareness by helping them divide words into their individual phonemes.

They help students build phonological awareness by segmenting words into sounds or syllables.
They teach students how to count the number of phonemes in the word (not always the number of letters).
They help students better understand the alphabetic principle in decoding and spelling.

Phonological awareness skills are important in order to develop good reading and spelling skills. Having good phonological awareness skills means that a child is able to manipulate sounds and words, or “play” with sounds and words. For example, you might ask your child to break the word “cat” into individual sounds: “c-a-t.”

Important: These skills deal with SOUNDS not letters. For example, /t/ represents the sound and not the letter name “tee.” You will not use any written or visual letters when working with phonological activities. These activities are done with listening and speaking only. Learning the letter names and their corresponding sounds is also very important but should be taught and practiced at a different time of the day.

This resource will have a weekly activity for your to work on with your child/student(s). It will include a handout with information and guidance, as well as a video to help support you and the learner.

CLICK THE WORDS "INFORMATION FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS" TO GET STARTED (do not click on view description).

Elonin boxes (or "sound boxes") are an effective instructional strategy to build phonemic and phonological awareness in students. This guide is full of links to deepen teachers' understanding of the strategy as well as links to lesson plans, resources, templates, and articles.