A kindergarten teacher wants to promote students’ understanding of the alphabetic principle. Which of the following would be the most effective first step in a sequence of instruction designed to achieve this goal?
A. Talk with students about selected consonants using a series of posters that each feature one consonant and contain pictures of items whose initial phoneme demonstrates that consonant’s sound.
B. Have students trace both lowercase and uppercase letters of the alphabet and then practice reproducing the letters on their own.
C. Talk with students about the title, beginning, middle, and end of a story and point to these parts while reading the story aloud from a big book.
D. Put labels on several familiar objects in the classroom and regularly read the labels aloud to the students.
A
A second-grade teacher regularly reviews spelling patterns previously taught. The teacher also provides students with multiple opportunities to read and write connected text that features words containing the target spelling patterns and to engage in word sorts focused on previously taught spelling patterns. These types of activities are likely to promote students’ reading proficiency primarily by developing their:
A. knowledge of grade-level vocabulary.
B. reading fluency with respect to accuracy.
C. awareness of different types of morphemes.
D. word recognition with respect to sight words.
B
Which of the following best describes the relationship between word decoding and reading comprehension in a beginning reader’s development?
A. Decoding skills and reading comprehension skills tend to develop independently of one another.
B. Reading comprehension skills directly facilitate the development of decoding skills.
C. Development of decoding skills is secondary to the development of reading fluency and comprehension skills.
D. Rapid automatic decoding skills help facilitate development of reading fluency and comprehension.
D
A teacher can most effectively support first graders’ development of rapid automatic word recognition by first teaching students how to:
A. apply consistent phonics generali-zations in common words.
B. use context clues to determine the meanings of words.
C. identify the constituent parts of multisyllable words. D. look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary.
A
A second-grade teacher pairs students who are reading at approximately the same independent reading level for a partner-reading activity. During the activity, the two partners sit side by side and take turns reading aloud from a shared text. Over a period of several days, the partners read a large number of independent-level texts together. This activity is best designed to promote students’:
A. development of reading rate and automaticity.
B. awareness of key aspects of prosodic reading.
C. development of comprehension skills and strategies. D. awareness of new phonics elements.
A
Which of the following strategies would be most effective in promoting second graders’ decoding of multisyllable words?
A. giving students opportunities to read literature that offers repeated exposure to predictable text
B. prompting students to sound out the individual phonemes that compose multisyllable words
C. encouraging students to compare the parts of new multisyllable words with known single-syllable words
D. reinforcing students’ recognition of high-frequency multisyllable words using drills and flashcards
C
According to basic principles of research-based, systematic phonics instruction, which of the following common English letter combinations would be most appropriate for a first-grade teacher to introduce first?
A. ir
B. kn
C. th
D. oi
C
A second-grade teacher administers spelling inventories periodically to help assess students' phonics knowledge. The following shows one student's performance on a spelling inventory at the beginning of the school year and again several months later. Dictated Word, Student Spelling set, set star, ster drive, driv peach, pech turn, tarn join, joyn
Dictated Word Student Spelling set, set star, star drive, drive peach, peche turn, turn join, joyn
The student’s performance on the second administration of the spelling inventory indicates that the student made the most improvement in which of the following areas?
A. initial and final consonants
B. short vowels and diphthongs
C. digraphs and blends
D. long and r-controlled vowels
D
Which of the following provides the best rationale for incorporating spelling instruction into a first-grade reading program?
A. Spelling promotes phonemic awareness by teaching students to break words into onsets and rimes.
B. Spelling facilitates vocabulary development by introducing students to new words.
C. Spelling simplifies the reading process by focusing students on a limited set of decoding rules.
D. Spelling supports word recognition by helping students learn and retain common phonics patterns.
D
Which of the following statements best describes how oral vocabulary knowledge is related to the process of decoding written words?
A. A reader applies decoding skills to unfamiliar written words in order to increase his or her oral vocabulary knowledge.
B. A reader’s oral vocabulary knowledge allows the reader to derive meaning as he or she decodes written words.
C. A reader must have extensive oral vocabulary knowledge in order to learn decoding processes.
D. A reader’s oral vocabulary knowledge is dependent on his or her development of strong decoding skills.
B
My family went to the circus last weekend. I liked the clowns the best. They were very funny.
A student makes several miscues when reading these sentences aloud. Which of the following miscues represents an error in decoding consonant blends? A. omitting circus B. pronouncing clowns as clones C. saying bet for best D. shortening funny to fun
C
Which of the following sentences contains a pair of italicized words that differ from one another by one phoneme?
A. He took off his cap so that he could take a nap.
B. She works at a bank that is located near the bank of a river.
C. She told him not to buy a ticket because she had already bought one.
D. His face looked pale after he carried the pail of water for a mile.
A
Which of the following students demonstrates variation in reading development that would require intervention focused on explicit phonics instruction?
A. a kindergarten student who can recite the alphabet from memory but has difficulty distinguishing individual phonemes in words
B. a first-grade student who can easily decode nonsense words but has limited comprehension of the meaning of text
C. a second-grade student who is adept at using context clues to identify words but has difficulty sounding out the letters in unfamiliar words
D. a third-grade student who can read most grade-level text fluently but has difficulty with unfamiliar irregular low-frequency words
C
A student who has mastered which of the following skills along the phonological awareness continuum is best prepared to begin explicit phonics instruction?
A. being aware that a word is made up of one or more phonemes
B. being able to separate a word’s onset and rime
C. being aware that words can be divided into syllables D. being able to segment and blend a word’s phonemes
D
