Victoria Students Teach Principals

On October 1st, eleven students from Victoria walked to the RUSD Staff Development Center (on the corner of Lincoln and Horace) to help train elementary principals. Students ranged from first to fifth grade.

Principals practiced administering and scoring a Word Pattern Inventory. The Word Pattern Inventory is a tool used by classroom teachers to identify encoding and decoding skills of students. Teachers use this information to plan direct instruction on phonics and fluency.

The activity begins with a spelling quiz to assess students' understanding of encoding (spelling words). Teachers use this information to identify specific spelling pattrens that a student may need further instruction - for example long vowel words like cake or kite or knowing the correct r-controlled vowel in words like bird and shower.

The Word Pattern Inventory is also given as a decoding (reading) assessment. Again, teachers are able to identify patterns that need to be targted for additional instruction. Systematic phonics instruction is provided during Universal Access or small group. Students have daily practice with the needed patterns. The goal is for students who struggle with speecific skills to become accurate and automatic in the process of reading.