How to Use Elkonin Boxes

Elkonin boxes are a row of squares, one square for each sound in a word. The Institute of Education Sciences practice guide defines them as tools for phonemic awareness and for encoding: one box for each sound in the target word. It also notes that teachers call them sound boxes. The child hears the word, moves a token into a box for each sound, then blends those sounds back into the word.

Understood states the two jobs in that order. Segmenting breaks the word into sounds. Blending puts the sounds together to say the word. The boxes make both jobs visible. How to teach the pull-apart by itself is in phoneme segmentation. How to push the sounds back together is in blending sounds.

Say the word, then fill the boxes

Use a short word and the matching number of boxes. The practice guide starts with two- or three-phoneme words. Its steps are:

1. Tell the child the word. The child repeats it slowly.
2. The child pulls one disc, or later one letter tile, down into a box for each sound they say.
3. The child runs a finger under the boxes from left to right and blends the sounds into the word.

The National Center on Intensive Intervention adds a stretch: pronounce the word so each sound can be heard, have the child repeat it phoneme by phoneme, then move a token or a letter tile into a box for each sound. If the child loses count, they count the sounds on their fingers before they touch the boxes.

Start with continuous sounds. The practice guide names f, h, l, m, n, r, s, v, and z as sounds the child can hold. Fan is an easier first word than a word that starts with a stop such as /b/ or /t/. Hold the continuous sound as the token moves. Do not add an "uh" after it.

From sound boxes to letter boxes

Blank counters come first. Letter tiles come after the child knows those letter sounds. The practice guide is direct about that: if students use letter tiles, pick words whose letter sounds they have already learned, so the tile matches a sound they can already say.

NCII lists the same progression in three variations: boxes with tokens, boxes with letter tiles, and word building. Token boxes are listening. Letter boxes are spelling. Word building uses the boxes to change one sound and make a new word, such as dog and dig, which the practice guide uses when a child struggles to tell sounds apart.

A clean handoff sounds like this. Day one: three counters, the spoken word sun, boxes filled as /s/ /u/ /n/, finger sweep, "sun." A later day: the tiles s, u, n, same boxes, same sweep, then the child writes sun. The listening job did not disappear. The spelling joined it.

Digraphs and long-vowel spellings

The box counts sounds, not letters. That is the point of moving to letter boxes.

Ship has three sounds and four letters. Draw three boxes. The first box gets the spelling sh, not s in one box and h in the next. Wonster Words uses ship this way: three tiles, and one of them is sh. If the child draws four boxes because they see four letters, say the word again with print covered and recount the sounds.

Chat works the same way. Ch is one sound in one box, then /a/, then /t/.

A long-vowel word such as make has three sounds, /m/ /a/ /k/, and four letters. Draw three boxes. The Institute of Education Sciences practice guide says silent e's should be placed outside the series of boxes, since the e is silent in that spot. The boxes hold m, a, and k. The e sits outside the row. Do not put a and e in the vowel box together, and do not give the e its own box.

Right is another three-sound word: /r/ /ie/ /t/. The middle box holds igh. Think has four sounds, because th is one sound and n and k are separate. The grid only helps if the teacher has already decided the sound count. Do not ask a child to invent the count for a word you have not segmented yourself.

What a grapheme is, and why sh is one spelling for one sound, is in what is a grapheme.

The name and how to say it

Wonster Words says the boxes are named after D. B. Elkonin, a Russian psychologist whose work was on how children hear the sound structure of words. The same page says the surname is pronounced more than one way, and that sound boxes means the same grid. SpecialEdNews says EL-kuh-nin box, with the stress on the first syllable of Elkonin. PronounceNames gives ell-con-in, with ell as in sell and in as in pin. Use either spoken form, or call the grid sound boxes. The tokens and the sound count are what the child needs.

The limit of the grid

Boxes do not teach a sound the child has never heard, and they do not replace reading connected text. They show a segmentation the child is learning to do. When the tokens are accurate and the letter tiles match, move the same words into a sentence. Leave the grid on the table only while the sound count is still the hard part.

The K-2 Daily Phonics Lessons (Slides) include 44 PowerPoint lesson decks made for Google Slides, one per phonics pattern. A Start Here guide with the routine, pacing and scope and sequence is in the same download. They need PowerPoint, Keynote, or a Google account for Google Slides.