What aspect of reading do Elkonin boxes primarily assist with?

Elkonin boxes are a pedagogical tool designed to help students segment and manipulate the sounds in words, an important step in phonemic awareness. By using these boxes, learners can visually represent the individual phonemes—sounds—of a word by placing a marker or a phoneme inside each box. This practice not only aids in developing the ability to isolate and identify sounds but also supports the skills necessary for decoding and encoding words.

The emphasis of Elkonin boxes is on breaking down words into their fundamental sound units, which is crucial for early reading and spelling development. This hands-on approach assists students in understanding that words are composed of distinct sounds that can be manipulated to form new words, thus fostering their phonological processing abilities.

While other options address important aspects of reading, such as fluency and comprehension, they do not directly relate to the primary function of Elkonin boxes, which is focused specifically on the representation of sounds in words.