Praxis 2
A teacher gives students a set of cards with headlines written on them and a set of clippings of news articles. The teacher asks the students to match each news article with its corresponding headline. Which of the following skills is the activity most likely to develop?
Identifying main ideas
Ms. Anderson, a kindergarten teacher, greets the children as they enter the classroom and encourages them to look out of the window to determine the weather. She then writes the following "Morning Message" on a story board and reads the message aloud as she writes. Good morning! Today is Thursday. It is rainy today. Question: Which of the following best describes the primary purpose of the activity? A.Guiding students as they begin to develop an understanding of the writing process B.Providing students with opportunities for social interaction C.Showing students how to use punctuation appropriately D.Promoting students' oral reading fluency
Option (A) is correct. The question requires an understanding of best practices for students at the beginning stage of the writing process. The teacher's actions demonstrate a basic tenet of the writing process — the importance of the relationship between speech and writing. The teacher has provided a model of clear and coherent writing, which will help students become successful, independent writers.
Which of the following instruments would be found in the woodwind section of an orchestra? • A.Clarinet • B.Violin • C.Trombone • D.Triangle
Option (A) is correct. The question requires an understanding of fundamental concepts, principles, skills, and terminology related to dance, music, theater arts, and visual arts. Woodwind instruments produce sound by vibration of mouthpiece reeds (e.g., bassoon, clarinet, saxophone) or by passage of air over the mouthpiece (e.g, flute).
While teaching a unit on plotting points in the xy-coordinate plane, Ms. Santos noticed that some students were confusing the x-coordinate with the y-coordinate. Which of the following strategies will help these students correctly plot points? • A. Beginning at the origin and moving right or left the number of units of the first coordinate of the point, then moving up or down the number of units of the second coordinate of the point • B. Beginning at the origin and moving up or down the number of units of the first coordinate of the point, then moving right or left the number of units of the second coordinate of the point • C. Beginning at the first coordinate of the point on the y-axis and moving up and down the number of units of the second coordinate of the point • D. Beginning at the first coordinate of the point on the x-axis and moving right and left the number of units of the second coordinate of the point
Option (A) is correct. The question requires an understanding of how to design instruction to help students learn strategies for plotting points in the coordinate plane. To plot points, a movement left or right of the origin is made according to the value of the first coordinate in the ordered pair for the point, and then a movement up or down is made according to the value of the second coordinate in the ordered pair for the point.
Mount Rainier is located in which of the following mountain ranges? • A.The Cascade Range • B.The Rocky Mountains • C.The Appalachian Mountains • D.The Alps
Option (A) is correct. The question requires an understanding of physical features in the United States. Mount Rainier is the highest mountain in Washington State and in the Cascade Range.
Fifth-grade students create Table A to represent the number of sandwiches they each ate during the last month. The teacher then shows the students that redistributing the pictures of sandwiches equally among the students creates Table B table a Carmon 2, Pat 3, Ny 2, Luan 7, Shiela 3, Nicky 5 Table b all equal amount 3.5 Question: The activity will best help students understand which of the following mathematical concepts? • A.Probability • B.Mean • C.Range • D.Proportions
Option (B) is correct. The question requires an understanding of how to represent and interpret data. The mean is a concept of equal distribution and is also the average of a given set of numbers. Table B illustrates the mean number of sandwiches eaten by the students.
A fourth-grade teacher uses a group activity to introduce a unit. During the activity, the students in each group find all the factors of several numbers. Students then sort the numbers by writing any number with only two factors on one sheet of paper and any number with more than two factors on another sheet of paper. What is most likely the purpose of the activity? • A. To determine the number of factors for numbers • B. To distinguish between prime and composite numbers • C. To develop the concept of greatest common factor for numbers • D. To find and use factor trees for numbers
Option (B) is correct. The question requires an understanding of strategies for designing instruction to help students understand prime numbers. An inductive learning activity that requires sorting helps students build the concepts of prime and composite numbers.
A teacher is planning to introduce a unit on Impressionism by showing the works of famous artists. Which of the following groups of artists is most appropriate to use? • A. Jackson Pollock, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jasper Johns • B. Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne • C. Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Horace Pippin • D. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt
Option (B) is correct. The Impressionists were a group of Paris-based painters who became prominent during the 1870s and 1880s. The principal Impressionists were Edgar Degas, who is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, and Claude Monet, who was a key figure in the Impressionist movement that transformed French painting. Paul Cézanne was a Post-Impressionist painter who laid the foundations of transition to the twentieth century.
Which of the following student activities is most effective when teaching students about the interactions of the Sun, Earth, and Moon? • A. Placing a watermelon, an orange, and a cherry in a row to represent the Sun, Earth, and Moon • B. Observing the changing appearance of the Moon during the night on Earth over the course of a month • C. Digging in the school garden to uncover small meteorites that fell from outer space long ago • D. Reading about how organisms that live at the shore are affected by tides
Option (B) is correct. The question requires an understanding of Earth and space systems. Observing the changing appearance of the Moon is most
Some elementary school teachers from the same school plan to invite people from service industries to their classes as guest speakers. The activity would best fit with which of the following units from the social studies curriculum? • A.Time, continuity, and change • B.Production, distribution, and consumption • C.Civic ideals and practices • D.Individual development and identity
Option (B) is correct. The question requires an understanding of different types of productive resources. Service industries are in the sector of the economy that provides services (i.e., activities in which people offer their knowledge and time to improve productivity, performance, potential, and sustainability) rather than creates goods.
25÷10=N25÷10=N A third-grade teacher asks students to write a word problem for the number sentence above, where N is the exact answer to the problem. Which of the following student responses best satisfies the conditions set by the teacher? • A.A team of 10 students wins 25 movie tickets. How many tickets will each student get? • B.Ten students tied for the winning prize of $25 in a contest. How many dollars will each student receive? • C.Twenty-five children at a birthday party will eat 10 pizzas. How many slices will each child have? • D.A tub of paint holds 25 gallons. How many 10-pint cans can be completely filled with paint before the tub is empty?
Option (B) is correct. The question requires an understanding of how to design instruction to help students understand algorithms, strategies, models, and problem situations for dividing numbers. The context in option (A) about a number of tickets allows only whole numbers for answers. The context in option (C) requires finding 10÷25=N10÷25=N, not 25÷10=N25÷10=N. The context in option (D) requires determining that there are 8 pints in a gallon, so 200 pints in 25 gallons. The answer to the question requires finding 200÷10=N200÷10=N, not 25÷10=N25÷10=N. The context in option (B) that involves money is the only context that would lead to the correct equation and allows an answer that is not a whole number. Sharing $25 among ten students can be expressed using the equation 2510=N.
Leo has five fewer magnets than Su-Ling. A teacher in a fifth-grade math class asks the students to write an equation in two variables that represents the word problem shown. Many students write an incorrect equation. Which of the following strategies will best help the students learn how to write a correct equation? A. Translating each word into a symbol or operation as the sentence is read left to right B. Writing pairs of numbers that make the problem statement true and identifying a pattern in the numbers before using variables C. Representing the number of magnets one person has by using a variable and then representing the number of magnets the other person has using the same variable D. Using counters to represent the number of magnets Leo has and taking away five to get the number of magnets Su-Ling has
Option (B) is correct. The question requires an understanding of how to design instruction to help students understand how to write an equation from a context. By using numbers to model the word problem before using symbols, students will first use concrete representations and then use the results of what they learn from the concrete representations to understand how to represent the word problem symbolically with an equation that uses two variables.
Which of the following activities is most likely to help students understand how seeds are dispersed from the puffy balls that appear on dandelions after they flower? • A. Going to the park to see where the plants grow • B. Blowing on a handful of confetti and observing the result • C. Planting flower seeds in pots in the classroom and watching the plants grow • D. Reading a story about the journey of a spiky seed that clings to a child's shoelace when the child walks through tall grass
Option (B) is correct. The question requires an understanding of the life cycle of different living things, specifically different means of seed dispersion. Dandelion seeds are dispersed by the wind, as can be demonstrated by blowing on confetti.
Which of the following instruments has the highest pitch? • A.Trombone • B.Piccolo • C.Alto saxophone • D.Clarinet
Option (B) is correct. The question requires an understanding of how to promote critical analysis and understanding of the arts. The piccolo is a type of flute and is the highest pitched woodwind instrument.
A fourth-grade class is discussing the problem shown. Sid is traveling by train from Little City to Big City. The train departs Little City at 8:30 A.M. and arrives in Big City at 9:15 P.M. How long does it take the train to travel from Little City to Big City? Question: During the discussion, one student says, "All you have to do is subtract 830 from 915, and you have the answer! It's 85 minutes." For which of the following reasons is the student incorrect? A.The student did not consider how fast the train was traveling. B.The student used an inappropriate number-base system to calculate elapsed time. C.The student did not consider the distance between the cities. D.The student made a subtraction error in calculating elapsed time
Option (B) is correct. The question requires an understanding of how to relate addition and subtraction to problems involving measurements. The student answered the question using the base-10 place value system without considering the unit of time.
Holistic rubric
are used to assess students' work as a whole, not just portions of students' writing. A holistic rubric is used to assess the overall structure and quality of the writing
After introducing students to the idea that math and science are closely related, which of the following is most helpful as a follow-up activity? • A. Discussing the health benefits of light exercise such as walking and jogging • B. Writing a script for a play about the interaction between scientists and mathematicians • C. Reading about the lives of scientists who used mathematics in their scientific investigations • D. Determining how much farther an object moves along the ground when released from a greater height on a ramp
Option (D) is correct. The question requires an understanding of the relationship of science with other content areas. The ramp activity is most helpful as a follow-up activity because it requires students to apply a math skill. How much farther the object travels is determined by subtracting the shorter measured distance from the greater measured distance.
the components of reading fluency are:
Rate, accuracy, and prosody
At the beginning of each month, Mr. Yi has Jade read a page or two from a book she hasn't seen before. He notes the total number of words in the section, and also notes the number of times she leaves out or misreads a word. If Jade reads the passage with less than 3% error, Mr. Yi is satisfied that Jade is:
Reading at her Independent reading level
Pronouns
Replaces a noun. Someone or something. Examples: I, he, she, they, it, his
Which of the following are powers of the president of the United States? Select all that apply. • A.Appointing federal judges • B.Granting pardons • C.Vetoing bills from Congress • D.Deciding the constitutionality of laws
The correct answers are (A), (B), and (C). The question requires an understanding of the basic principle that provides the foundation of the republican form of government. Appointing federal judges, granting pardons, and vetoing legislation are all powers granted to the president by the United States Constitution. The power to decide the constitutionality of laws lies with the Supreme Court.
Of the three tiers of words, the most important words for direct instruction are: Tier-two words Common words Words with Latin roots Tier-one words
Tier-two words. Tier-two words are words that are used with high frequency across a variety of disciplines or words with multiple meanings. They are characteristic of mature language users. Knowing these words is crucial to attaining an acceptable level of reading comprehension and communication skills.
The purpose of corrective feedback is:
To correct an error in reading a student has made, specifically clarifying where and how the error was made so that the student can avoid similar errors in the future
A syllable must contain:
a vowel
Antonyms
a word opposite in meaning to another (e.g. bad and good ).
Synonyms
a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language, for example shut is a synonym of close.
Structural analysis
deals with using familiar word parts (base words, prefixes, and suffixes) to determine the meaning of a word.
Homographs
each of two or more words spelled the same but not necessarily pronounced the same and having different meanings and origins.
reciprocal teaching
is an approach to instruction that features interactive dialogue between teachers and students. Initially, the teacher models comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring strategies and then gradually turns over the responsibilities to the students. The students take turns being the teacher and leading small-group discussions of the text.
Phoneme isolation
is the ability to identify where a sound appears in a word or to identify what sound appears in a given position in a word. Teacher: What is the first sound in "van"? Student: The first sound in "van" is /v/.
Nouns
part of speech that describe a person, place, thing, animal, or idea. Ex Marsha's sheep were grazing in the wide hollow between the mountains.
Homophones
words that have the same pronunciation but different spellings and meaning
Two whole pizzas of the same size are shared equally among three people. What is each person share of the pizza? A teacher gives the word problem shown to a fifth-grade class. Which THREE of the following concepts are most likely addressed by the use of the word problem? • A. 2323 is the same as 2×132×13 . • B. 2÷32÷3 is the same as 2323. • C. Division is thought of as repeated subtraction. • D. Division is thought of as a partitioning.
A, B, D Options (A), (B), and (D) are correct. The question requires an understanding of how to design instruction to help students understand strategies and models for dividing numbers. A discussion of various ways of solving the problem will lead students to understand that each person will receive 1313 of each pizza, or 2 times 1313 of a pizza. Since there are 2 pizzas and 3 people, each person will receive 2 times 1313 , or 2323 , of a pizza. The students will also understand that 2 divided by 3, or 2323 , can represent the division of 2 pizzas among 3 people. Finally, partitioning each pizza into 3 pieces will allow each person to receive 1313 of each pizza, or 2323 of a pizza. The students will see that all three representations result in an answer of 23.
Dr. Jenks is working with a group of high school students. They are about to read a science book about fossils. Before they begin, she writes the words stromatolites, fossiliferous, and eocene on the board. She explains the meaning of each word. These words are examples of: Content-specific words Alliteration Ionization Academic words
Content-specific words
Another name for a persuasive essay is: Argumentative essay Position paper Convincing essay Dynamic essay
Argumentative essay. The goal of a persuasive essay is to convince the reader that the author's position or opinion on a controversial topic is correct. That opinion or position is called the argument. A persuasive essay argues a series of points, supported by facts and evidence.
Which of the following is most important for a student to consider before creating a net of a geometric solid?
C. The shape of each face of the geometric solid and where the faces can be connected he question requires an understanding of how to design instruction to help students understand how to represent three-dimensional figures using nets. A net is made from the faces of a three-dimensional figure connected at certain edges so that it unfolds into a two-dimensional figure.
Students in a fourth-grade class are asked to find the length of the line segment shown. A common incorrect answer given by fourth graders is 4 inches. A teacher who is developing a lesson plan on measurement wants to help students avoid the misconception that results in the incorrect answer. Which of the following tasks is best for the teacher to include in the lesson plan?
Creating and using homemade rulers that use unit models of length so students realize that the spaces on the rulers are more important than the marks on the rulers. The question requires an understanding of how to plan for strategies to address common student misconceptions. When a student makes a ruler and uses it, emphasis is put on how it is the spaces that are important, not the actual marks on the ruler. Comparing a homemade ruler to an actual ruler will help students see that both tools have the same purpose.
A third-grade teacher has several students reading above grade level. Most of the remaining students are reading at grade level. There are also a few students reading below grade level. She decides to experiment. Her hypothesis is that by giving the entire class a chapter book above grade level, high-level readers will be satisfied, grade-level readers will be challenged in a positive way, and students reading below grade level will be inspired to improve. Her method is most likely to:
Fail, producing students at a Frustration reading level. Those reading below grade level are likely to give up entirely. Those reading at grade level are likely to get frustrated and form habits that will actually slow down their development. Giving students texts that are too far beyond their reach produces frustrated readers. In an effort to succeed, frustrated writers are likely to apply strategies that have worked for them in the past but cannot work in this case because the text is simply beyond them. Looking for contextual clues to understand the meaning of unfamiliar words requires that most of the words in the passage are familiar. Breaking unfamiliar words into individual phonemes or syllables can be effective, but not if the number of such words is excessive. In this case, students below reading level and students at reading level will become frustrated when the skills that have worked for them in the past now fail.
Which of the following is the correct definition of a river delta? • A.The place where a river empties into a larger body of water • B.A wall built across a river, creating a lake that stores water • C.A land area formed by soil left behind as a river drains into a larger body of water • D.The starting point of a river
Option (C) is correct. The question requires an understanding of physical geographic features. A river delta is formed when sediments, carried by a river, are deposited at the mouth of the river.
A fifth-grade teacher has students cut some two-dimensional shapes from paper and then fold them into three-dimensional figures. Which of the following concepts are the students most likely exploring? • A.Rotations • B.Reflections • C.Nets • D.Tessellations
Option (C) is correct. The question requires an understanding of shapes and their attributes. A net is a two-dimensional shape that can be folded to form a three-dimensional shape or a solid.
Which of the following is best to do as part of a formative assessment that is given to evaluate students' levels of understanding? A. Have students revisit assignments after they have been graded to find and correct mistakes B. Praise students for discovering the correct solution to a problem C. Give cumulative assessments at the end of each teaching unit D. Hold student and teacher discussions on how to improve learning
Option (D) is correct. The question requires an understanding of how to design and use formative assessments to adjust instruction. The basis of formative assessment is involving students in their learning through discussions and giving feedback to help all students grow
Which of the following student activities is most useful during a lesson about the water cycle? • A. Passing wet soil through a wire mesh • B. Looking at pictures of different rivers and arranging them in order of size • C. Going outside as a dark storm cloud approaches and recording observations over time • D. Observing a teacher demonstration in which water boils, condenses on an ice-filled container, and drips off
Option (D) is correct. The question requires an understanding of the water cycle. Observation of the teacher demonstration is most useful because it shows, in an engaging way, phase changes of water and precipitation
to facilitate student ability in displaying and analyzing categorical data, a teacher gives each student in a third-grade class a collection of interlocking cubes in four different colors. The teacher uses a piece of grid paper to demonstrate how to construct a bar graph by stacking the cubes according to color and placing them along the horizontal axis of the grid paper. Which of the following questions are appropriate for the teacher to ask the students in reference to the data display? Select all that apply. A. What is the total number of cubes in the collection? B. Which color occurs most frequently in the collection? C. Of the cubes, which of the four colors is the class favorite? D. How many more cubes of the color that is most represented are there than the color that is least represented in the collection?
Options (A), (B), and (D) are correct. The question requires an understanding of how to design instruction to help students collect and display data to answer a statistical question. Questions about the total number of cubes in the data set, the color occurring most frequently in the data set, and the difference between the numbers of the most represented color and the least represented color are all examples of statistical questions that are relevant to the data display.
semiphonetic spelling
Students in this stage know most of the alphabet, have a clear understanding of letter-sound relationships, and know that we write from left to right, but have not yet mastered spacing between words.
The expression 2w+32w+3 represents the difference, in dollars, between Jane's savings and Eve's savings after w weeks of saving for a trip. Which of the following must be used to determine the value of the difference between Jane's savings and Eve's savings after three weeks?
Substitution The question requires an understanding of how to design instruction to help students understand how to evaluate expressions. The algebraic expression 2w+32w+3must be evaluated by substituting a 3 in for the w when first multiplying the 2 by the 3 to get 6 and then adding the 3 to get 9.
During the early letter name-alphabetic stage in spelling development, a student might write U for "you," BD for "bed," Y for "when," DF for "drive," and SHP for "ship." Which of the following is characteristic of what students do correctly during the stage? Select all that apply. A.Use consistent directionality B.Demonstrate letter-sound correspondences C.Spell consonant blends partially D.Use vowels in unstressed syllables
The correct answers are (A), (B), and (C). The question requires an understanding of key ideas relevant to the foundations of literacy and reading development and the stages of early orthographic development. Spellers in the early letter name-alphabetic stage focus mainly on the consonant sounds heard in words. They begin by using only the initial consonant sounds and then move into representing the final consonant. Medial vowel sounds are absent from their spelling. Students in this stage know most of the alphabet, have a clear understanding of letter-sound relationships, and know that we write from left to right, but have not yet mastered spacing between words. This kind of spelling is called semiphonetic spelling.
active listening
The first step in active listening is paraphrasing the speaker's words back. Paraphrasing requires using similar words and phrases to restate what a speaker says. This shows that a person was listening to and understands a speaker
"Language load" refers to:
The number of unrecognizable words an English Language Learner encounters when reading a passage or listening to a teacher.
Linear equation for the perimeter
The question requires an understanding of how to design instruction to help students understand how to write an equation to represent a pattern. The entries in the right column of (D) explicitly show how the perimeter depends on the corresponding entry in the left column; i.e, the value nn in the left column corresponds to the perimeter value 6+(n−1)x4.
