LETRS Units 5 - 8 Pre & Post Test

During a teacher-mediated reading of a story such as The Three Little Pigs, which of these questions is most likely to facilitate construction of a mental model of the texts meanings?

"What have we learned so far about the third pig?"

The research consensus on the teaching of comprehension strategies during reading instruction indicates that:

- after 1-2 lessons, strategies easily generalize to students' independent reading. - strategy instruction is more effective in grades 4 and up than in grades 1-3. (Not sure on this one, but it's between these two)

Which of the following sentence-writing skills is the most challenging for students to learn?

- distinguishing among the four basic sentence types - writing complex sentences beginning with adverbial phrases* - combining two simple sentences into a compound sentence

Students must learn the meanings of several thousand new words every year if they are going to meet grade-level expectations for vocabulary growth. About how many of those word meanings should teachers aim to teach explicitly and thoroughly per week?

10-12

About how many American students demonstrate "proficient" or "advanced" writing skills by grade 8, according the National Assessment of Educational Progress (2007)?

33 percent

Which statement best describes the relationship between foundational writing skills (handwriting, spelling, punctuation, capitalization) and composition?

An equal emphasis on learning foundational skills and composition will work best for most students.

A primary-grade teacher who wants to implement research-based vocabulary instruction should try to emphasize:

word relationships, including antonyms, synonyms, categories, and semantic families.

When a student is an accurate but slow reader, which of the following practices is most effective?

Focus instruction on foundational reading skills that address multiple aspects of language.

Which criterion best describes a high-quality text for use in read-alouds or comprehension instruction?

It is worth rereading for new meanings.

Which would be the most essential step to take in preparing students to write a complete narrative?

Talk out ideas and make notes within a Story Framework.

Of the topic sentences below, which one would be most appropriate for writing an opinion?

This book about wolves is one of my favorites.

Which of the following would be a good example to use while teaching students to identify compound sentences?

The rain came but the team played on.

In what way should the vocabulary instruction of English Learners (ELs) be distinguished from the vocabulary instruction of native English speakers?

They may need to learn the meanings of the Tier 1 words in a passage.

Once students decode well, which statement describes the relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension?

Vocabulary is the best single predictor of reading comprehension.

During the editing phase of writing, a personal editing/proofreading checklist should contain:

a few specific reminders of skills the student has learned and practiced.

To select the best vocabulary words to teach before reading a text, the teacher should prioritize which types of words?

words that are central to understanding key meanings in the passage

When students are still learning foundational reading skills, the recommended division of instructional time between word work and language comprehension is:

about 30-40 minutes on word work during a 90-minute reading lesson.

When students read about a topic for which they already have well-developed background knowledge, they are more likely than uninformed students to:

acquire new knowledge faster from the text.

The most practical way for teachers to assess student progress in writing is to use:

all of the above.

Which teaching strategy is most likely to help students construct a mental model of a texts meanings?

anticipating the takeaways and building background knowledge

To introduce a Tier 2 vocabulary word explicitly and systematically before reading, which of these strategies would be the least effective?

asking students to write the word 10 times until they can spell it

A valuable first step before reading a text with a group of students is:

clearly stating the purpose for reading the text.

Good readers will stop and reread a portion of the text for clarification if they don't understand it. This behavior demonstrates:

cognitive flexibility and metacognition.

Which kind of text structure organization is suggested by the topic sentence, "Here are some easy steps for making pancakes"?

process (time sequence)

Dialect differences characterize students in many regions of the United States. Research supports handling these language differences by:

explicitly contrasting "home language" with "school language" in frequent, brief lessons.

Standardized tests of reading comprehension have been shown by research to:

give varied results depending on the content and format.

Which of the following activities would help students identify cohesive ties in a text?

having students draw arrows between pronouns and their referents

Writing is sometimes called the "quintessential mental juggling act" because:

it requires more cognitive, motor, and language skills than any other academic activity.

Which one of the following is not a key difference between narrative and informational text?

its appropriateness for classroom libraries in all grades

Which of the following is the best description of the comprehension process as it relates to reading?

linking the surface code with ideas in the text base

The most important reason for systematically teaching and valuing good handwriting and spelling is that:

mastery and automaticity enable higher quality compositions.

In teaching the word invisible, the teacher broke it into the parts in - vis - ible and talked about the meanings of the parts. Which aspect of language was emphasized?

morphology

Which technique would be least relevant for teaching an informational passage about the difference between frogs and toads?

outlining the elements of story grammar

One of the most important follow-up activities to deepen student understanding of and memory for the content of a specific text is:

retelling or summarizing the text, either orally or in writing.

If an English Learner (EL) is confused about the meaning of a reading passage, a teacher might be more successful conveying the meaning by:

supplementing the language in the text with pictures, actions, and objects.

The Hart and Risley study (1995) identified a "30-million-word" gap. This gap refers to:

the difference in the number of words heard by preschool children raised in high- and low-language family environments.

The act of transcribing words into print by hand or by keyboarding is part of which phase of the writing process?

translating

Students with comprehension weaknesses benefit from teachers actively mediating comprehension because these students:

typically make fewer, lower-quality inferences on their own.

Which of these techniques is least helpful for encouraging comprehension monitoring (e.g., students noticing and reacting when the text does not make sense to them)?

waiting until a reading is completed and then asking students to summarize

Which of the following is least likely to narrow the vocabulary gap between language-rich and language-poor students?

watching children's television programs