First Grade Phonics – Sound Boxes Phoneme Segmentation

Sound Boxes Reinvented

I recently discovered something that has helped my students with spelling and phonics, more than anything I’ve ever used in my career of 25+ years. The thing that has helped… SOUND BOXES for Phonics instruction.

Sound Boxes help kids isolate sounds so they can spell and read words. Originally, I found information where sound boxes were used with only one letter per box. For instance, the word fan has 3 sounds. /f/ /a/ /n/. And flag. /f/ /l/ /a/ /g/. Each letter in these words only makes one sound.

But what about when it takes more than one letter to make a sound? Could we add more than one letter per box?
I tried it and guess what? It worked! It worked better than I’d imagined it would.

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So now I use Sound Boxes for Phonics Instruction to break up or isolate sounds in different way. Every sound gets a box, not every letter gets a box. Since some sounds need more than one letter, some boxes will have more than one letter in them.

The word “bath” has 3 sounds. /b/ /a/ /th/ But the “th” in bath makes one sound. So I put it in one box because you don’t hear /t/ and /h/. Kids❤️ LOVED❤️ this and they really got it.

Sound Boxes Results ✅

I have been using sound boxes extensively with my students this year and their spelling skills have skyrocketed as a result. Which, as you know, also transfers to their writing.

Sound Boxes and Writing ✍

When they are working on a writing piece in writers workshop, I hear my students talking to themselves “Ok, how many sound boxes does ‘play’ have?” Then they start “finger spelling” the word and writing every sound that they hear. Finger spelling is when they put out one finger for each sound they hear. They still spell some words wrong, but the difference is that I can now read their writing so much better because they aren’t leaving out sounds.

This also helps their reading. They are much more aware of the letters combinations that make one sound.

Like r controlled vowels, consonant digraphs, vowel teams, and diphthongs.

Interested?

If this sounds like something you might want to try, here’s a FREE Sampler of my Multi-Skill Sound Boxes.

In this free download, you’ll get 4 Picture Cards, 4 Cards with Sound Boxes, a worksheet to assess, 2 Question cards to use in guided reading and the answer keys.