Routine · Phonological awareness
Sound boxes with tokens
Push one token into a box for each sound in a spoken word.
- Time
- 3 to 5 minutes
- Skill
- Phonological awareness
- In a session plan
- Warm-up
When to use it
For students who miss middle or end sounds when they spell, or who cannot say how many sounds a word has.
Materials
- A card with three or four boxes in a row
- Counters or coins, one per sound
Steps
Shown with example words: word ship.
Get ready
Lay the box card on the table, tokens lined up underneath.
I do
Say ship. Say it again slowly, pushing one token up into a box for each sound. Run a finger along the tokens and say the word whole.
Say: Ship. One sound, one box. Now I run my finger along and say it.
We do
Say the next word. Push the tokens together, the student's hand on yours or side by side.
You do
Give five or six words. The student says each word, pushes a token per sound and sweeps to say it again.
Student: Pushes one token for each sound, then reads the row back.
Check
Point to one token and ask which sound it stands for, such as the middle one.
If the student...
Pushes a token for each letter they imagine, not each sound, as with two tokens for sh.
Say the sound slowly and show that it comes out as one sound, so it gets one token. Push it together, then have the student redo the word.
Skips the middle sound.
Say the word again, stretching the vowel. Push the first token, then pause and say the vowel, and let the student push the next one. Start the word again.
Tips
- Keep the boxes card the same across weeks. Later the same boxes take letters for spelling.
- In a group, give each student their own card and tokens so every child answers every word.
Example words
- Word
- ship
Original routines written by Literacy Trail. In the app, every routine is filled with your student's lesson.
Related routines
- Segment to spell with sound boxesSay a word, push a token for each sound, then write the spelling of each sound in its box.4 to 7 minutes · Dictation
- Say it slow, say it fastBlend spoken sounds into a word, then break a spoken word back into its sounds.2 to 4 minutes · Warm-up
- Clap the syllablesJoin spoken syllables into a word, then clap a word back into its syllables.2 to 4 minutes · Warm-up
- First sound plus the restJoin a first sound to the rest of a word, and split a word after its first sound.2 to 4 minutes · Warm-up
Have this routine filled in for every lesson
In Literacy Trail, the session plan picks a routine for each block and fills it with the words, sounds and sentence from your student's lesson. Every plan starts with a 15-day free trial.