Elkonin boxes are a terrific tool for helping young learners break spoken words down into their constituent sounds. This is a key skill they’ll need as they begin to read and write. They’re ideal for group work, literacy centers, or individual practice at home. Grab our set of free printable Elkonin sound boxes, then learn how they work and how to use them.
What are Elkonin boxes?
D.B. Elkonin popularized this method in the 1960s, and the boxes have become a staple of early education classrooms in the decades since. Also known as “sound boxes” or “blend boxes,” they give kids a hands-on way to understand how sounds make up words.
Elkonin boxes help emerging readers break down spoken words into phonemes. A phoneme is a spoken unit of sound, and can be represented by one or more letters. There are 44 phonemes in the English language. For instance, the word “change” is made up of six letters. But not all of those letters are pronounced individually, so this word actually only has four phonemes: /ch/ /ā/ /n/ /j/. Learn more about phonemes and phonemic awareness here.
As students say the sounds in words using Elkonin sound boxes, they physically slide a marker into each space in the box to represent each phoneme. Many sound boxes include arrows to help students remember to read from left to right. They may also include color coding, like green at the beginning and red at the end (like a stoplight).
Why are Elkonin boxes helpful for emergent readers?
This literacy support tool provides so many benefits for emerging readers, emphasizing key skills like:
- Phonemic awareness: Being able to hear and work with individual sounds in words is a vital precursor for reading.
- Segmentation: Practicing dividing words into their individual spoken sounds helps learners as they write words, and supports them as they learn to blend written sounds together to read words.
- Understanding multi-letter spelling patterns, like digraphs and vowel teams: Letter combinations like /ch/ and /ay/ use multiple letters to represent a single sound; Elkonin boxes help kids begin to understand this challenging concept.
- Visual and kinesthetic learning: Tracing arrows and moving markers add a physical element to the process, supporting different learning styles. Using different materials for counters can help engage end excite students, like seasonal mini-erasers.
How To Use Elkonin Sound Boxes
Here’s how to use this literacy intervention tool, step-by-step.
1. Print the boxes and slide them into sheet protectors.
Download our free printable set, then slide each page into a sheet protector (or laminate it). This allows you to use them over and over with dry-erase markers.
2. Grab some markers or tokens.
Round up some markers to use with your boxes, and place them underneath each space in the box to start. Possible options: coins, math cubes, LEGO bricks, checkers, counter chips, toy cars (drive them into the boxes!), or small treats like gummy bears, M&Ms, grapes, etc.
3. Say the target word clearly.
Choose the right sound box page for the words you’re working on, based on the number of phonemes in each word. Remember, the number of phonemes may or may not match the number of letters. For instance, “go” and “egg” each have two phonemes. “Dog” has three phonemes, and “snack” has four phonemes. Showing a picture card for each word you practice supports younger students and English learners in connecting to a word’s meaning.
4. Slide markers into spaces as you say the sounds in a word. Then “slide” and say the whole word.
Have students segment the word into individual sounds, sliding a marker into a space as they say each spoken sound. If the word is “shop,” it would sound like this: “sh-aw-p,” with a counter moved into each of three boxes. Then have students slide their finger across the arrow, under the counters ,and say the whole word, “shop.” Repeat as needed.
You’ll likely need to model and support this process as students get started with this routine. You’ll also need to constantly check that they are pronouncing each unit of sound correctly.
5. Optional: Write letters for each sound in the word.
Elkonin boxes are traditionally a phonemic awareness-building tool, used with spoken words and sounds. However, as students start to learn about different spelling patterns, they can be extended to support phonics learning. You might ask students to write the letter or letters that represent each sound in each box. (So, for “shop,” the first box would have a “sh,” the second box would have an “o” and the last box would have “p.” For “night,” the first box would have “n,” the second box would have “igh,” and the third box would have t.”) You can also have students write the whole word on the handwriting lines at the bottom of the page, focusing on saying each sound as they write, then reading the entire word aloud.
Get Your Free Printable Elkonin Sound Boxes Bundle
Just fill out the form on this landing page to get your free bundle of printable Elkonin sound boxes. There are options for 2-phoneme sounds through 5-phoneme sounds.
