Elkonin boxes build phonological awareness skills by segmenting words into individual sounds, or phonemes. To use Elkonin boxes, a child listens to a word and moves a token into a box for each sound or phoneme. In some cases different colored tokens may be used for consonants and vowels or just for each phoneme in the word. Here are some reasons why you should use elkonin boxes:
-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.
