Paynesville elementary leaders show classroom reading work tied to LETRS; kindergarteners demo Heggerty routine

Cathy, the elementary school principal, and Maria Rasmussen, one of the district’s MTSS teachers, presented a live classroom demonstration at the Paynesville Public School District board meeting to show how recent LETRS teacher training translates into everyday instruction.

“The letters training we’ve done the last three years and applying it…this is a snapshot of what that looks like in kindergarten,” Maria Rasmussen told the board as she introduced a sequence of phonemic awareness exercises. She explained that learning to read “is not a natural process” and described the instructional progression from phonological awareness to phonics, then fluency and comprehension.

The kindergarten class performed Heggerty routines — short, daily exercises that emphasize syllable segmentation, onset‑rime and phoneme manipulation — while board members observed. The activities included vowel and consonant sound drills, blending practice and substitution exercises such as turning “set” into “sit” by changing the middle sound, demonstrating how teachers build students’ ability to hear and manipulate sounds.

Cathy framed the demonstration as part of a broader effort to implement the Minnesota Read Act and continue multi‑tiered supports. She thanked staff and noted the district will start a second LETRS cohort next year to train more teachers, saying, “behind every student success story is a staff member who championed for that student.”

District leaders described the classroom activity as an example of how sustained teacher training feeds classroom practice: teacher manuals from the two‑year LETRS sequence were displayed for board members, and staff members said the work is intended to make decoding automatic so students can focus on comprehension as they advance.

The demonstration concluded with the principal and MTSS staff dismissing the class and thanking the board for the opportunity to show instruction in action. The board’s communications period then moved on to other end‑of‑year updates.