PECT Module 2
Which of the following emergent readers show clear evidence of having begun to develop phonemic awareness? A. A child who can identify the initial sound of spoken words. B. A child who is able to recite the letters of the alphabet. C. A child who can indicate the syllables in multisyllable words. D. A child who is able to recognize words that rhyme.
A. A child who can identify the initial sound of spoken words. **The first phonemic-awareness skill to develop is usually the ability to isolate and identify the first sound, or phoneme, of a word.
A new kindergarten classroom teacher has concerns about a student's "at-risk" scores on the developmental screening of emergent literacy skills. Which of the following steps should the kindergarten teacher take first? A. Developing a plan for direct instruction to address the student's areas of need as indicated by the screening. B. Establishing what type of assessments should be administered to evaluate the extent of the student's difficulty. C. Clarify the time frame for notifying the parents/guardians of the teacher's academic concerns. D. Conferring with the student's previous teacher to determine whether this pattern of decline was exhibited last year.
A. Developing a plan for direct instruction to address the student's areas of need as indicated by the screening. **In general, a screening provides some basic information regarding a child's strengths and needs. A teacher can take the screening information and develop a short-term plan for remediation of a students are of need. Frequent monitoring of the student's progress and identification of any additional areas of need would be beneficial.
A prekindergarten teacher is creating a music center for a classroom of three- and four-year-olds. Which of the following musical instruments would be most appropriate to include for children of this age? A. Drums, rhythm sticks, and bells. B. Small keyboards and accordions. C. Recorders, kazoos, and flutes. D. Guitars and autoharps
A. Drums, rhythm sticks, and bells **Musical instruments for prekindergarten-age children must be chosen with an understanding of the level of fine-motor development typical of most three- and four-year-olds. Children of this age are most likely to be able to participate successfully in musical activities involving simple instruments that may be struck or rung, such as drums, rhythm sticks, and bells.
A prekindergarten teacher would like to improve students' listening skills during morning circle time. Which of the following strategies would best promote this goal? A. Incorporating activities that require active listening (e.g., identifying the sources of various sounds, listening for words that start with a specific letter) B. Reminding students to use their "good listening ears" whenever important information is about to be presented. C. Presenting challenging concepts (e.g., yesterday, next week) that require students to listen attentively in order to fully understand their meaning. D. Providing students with frequent verbal reminders to take turns and listen to one another during circle time discussions.
A. Incorporating activities that require active listening (e.g., identifying the sources of various sounds, listening for words that start with a specific letter) **Good listeners pay close attention to, think about, and respond to what they hear. Setting a purpose for children's listening by asking them to attend to specific things is one effective way of helping them develop the habit of active listening.
A second-grade student tells his teacher, "I keeped my picture." The teacher responds, "I'm glad you kept this interesting picture. Will you tell me a story about it?" The teacher's response is an effective strategy for: A. Increasing the student's expressive language skills. B. Promoting the student's ability to summarize a main idea. C. Enhancing the student's phonological awareness. D. Developing the student's understanding of academic vocabulary.
A. Increasing the student's expressive language skills. **Teachers should take advantage of the many opportunities during the school day to provide natural language enhancement through expansion and elaboration. In this scenario, the teacher responds to the student's statement in an interpretive way, adds additional information using standard English grammar, and asks a question that is designed to elicit an explanation. Responding in this manner will help develop the student's expressive language skills.
A fourth-grade teacher is assessing students' use of the inquiry process during a unit on electricity and magnetism. Which of the following assessments would be most effective for this purpose? A. Observing the students and taking notes while they are engaged in investigations. B. Having the students answer open-response questions at the end of the unit. C. Filling in a KWL chart with the students at the beginning and end of the unit. D. Giving the students a multiple-choice test after every investigation and experiment.
A. Observing the students and taking notes while they are engaged in investigations. **Assessing student knowledge and progress can and should involve multiple measures. Research supports the use of observational assessments including event recording, checklists, narrative, and/or recorded observations to informally determine students' learning behaviors, competencies, and understanding. Understanding and participation in the inquiry process is a scaffolded skill. By observing students involved in a meaningful problem-solving tasks, such as a science experiment, the teacher can determine each student's level of proficiency as well as identify instructional needs and areas for enrichment.
A first-grade spelling curriculum includes instruction in word families related to recently taught phonics elements. For example, after explicit phonics instruction in the consonant digraph ck, spelling instruction includes a focus on words with the phonogram -ack (e.g., back, sack, pack). Coordinating spelling instruction with phonics instruction in this way contributes to students' growth in reading proficiency primarily by: A. Promoting their automatic recognition of complex letter patterns within words. B. Increasing the number of high-frequency words in the students' reading vocabulary C. Promoting their use of structure analysis as a decoding strategy. D. Increasing students' word consciousness and interest in learning new words.
A. Promoting their automatic recognition of complex letter patterns within words. **Both decoding (identifying words from oral vocabulary when they are presented in print) and encoding (representing words in oral vocabulary using their orthographic representations) rely on a reader's or writer's knowledge of orthographic forms; thus, encoding and decoding are reciprocal skills. Scientifically based reading research has shown that practice in spelling words reinforces students' proficiency in decoding the words during reading.
An elementary student typically reads aloud grade-level passages expressively and at a rate appropriate to support comprehension. In addition to these reading characteristics, which of the following performance indicators would be most important for a teacher to consider when evaluating the student's fluency development? A. The student's accuracy reading words in continuous text. B. The student's background knowledge related to the passages. C. The student's stamina and level of engagement during reading. D. The student's relative skill reading narrative and informational texts.
A. The student's accuracy reading words in continuous text. **Accurate decoding skills are foundational to reading fluency, the ability to decode words effortlessly with speech-like expression and phrasing that supports comprehension. As such, accuracy is regarded as a key indicator or fluency.
A prekindergarten teacher is planning to include a read-aloud time for a class of ten children ranging between the ages of four and five years. In planning the activity for this time, the teacher should first consider the children's: A. Varying attention spans and levels of exposure to concepts of print. B. Interest level in the genre of text and the text's level of complexity. C. Understanding the vocabulary and the number of characters of the story. D. Ability to distinguish between real and make-believe.
A. Varying attention spans and levels of exposure to concepts of print. **Reading aloud to children is an important literacy activity, especially in the early grades. For this teacher, it is important to consider the varying attention spans and knowledge of concepts of print as the lesion is developed. In general, frequent read-alouds of short books with time for discussion and to elicit student participation will aid in keeping students attention.
A prekindergarten teacher's classroom is filled with print. Labels of individual children's names are placed on tables and in cubbies. Commonly used objects, such as chairs and boxes of crayons, are also clearly labeled. Strips of the alphabet are hung at children's eye level, and children's books are easily accessible. In addition, children have frequent opportunities to observe the teacher write a word or phrase related to a topic they are learning, and are also explicitly taught word meanings. The teacher in this scenario most likely demonstrates an understanding that: A. Spelling is an important skill that preschool students should begin acquiring. B. A language-rich environment promotes early literacy skills. C. Receptive language skills are mostly developed in a natural language environment. D. Early reading skills develop when children are exposed to the spelling of frequently used words.
B. A language-rich environment promotes early literacy skills. **Research shows that young children who are exposed to language-rich environment (e.g., object labels, name labels, writing materials, environmental print) gain early literacy skills such as print awareness and letter knowledge.
A miscue analysis is a procedure of assessing reading comprehension that is based on: A. A student's self-assessment of his or her reading skills. B. A sample of student's oral reading of a passage. C. A teacher's observations of a student during a period of close reading. D. A reading conference between the teacher and student.
B. A sample of student's oral reading of a passage. **A miscue (or error) analysis is an analytical observation of a student's oral reading and comprehension. A miscue analysis is more concerned with the type of errors than the number of errors. Passages are generally between 50-100 words (depending on the student's age/grade) and are chosen based on the student's independent reading level. The student reads aloud the text and the teacher records any errors such as omissions, self-corrections, or substitutions. The teacher then analyzes the miscues based on three specific criteria. By analyzing error patterns and responses, the teacher can identify what types of intervention (or enrichment) should be provided to the student to meet his or her needs.
A first-grade teacher gives students oral practice in blending an onset with a rime. For example, when the teacher says, "at-add /k/ to at," students respond with "cat." This kind of activity most directly supports the development of which of the following skills? A. Spelling consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. B. Blending single phonemes into spoken words. C. Recognizing word structure. D. Mastering letter-sound correspondences.
B. Blending single phonemes into spoken words. **Teaching the concept and skills associated with onset/rime falls earlier in the phonological-awareness continuum than phonemic identification or manipulation, which are more difficult. learning to bend onset/rime orally prepares students to blend individual phonemes orally to create spoken words, which in turn prepares students to benefit from phonics instruction
The children is a kindergarten class become very excited about a new story heard during story time and repeatedly ask the teacher to read it again. When the teacher proposes that the class act out the story, the children respond with enthusiasm. The teacher's most developmentally appropriate goal for this activity would be for the children to: A. Acquire the vocal and gestural skills to develops characterization and advance a plot. B. Explore and express their own ideas and feelings about the story. C. Recognize the differences between a story written to be read and a play written to be performed. D. Presented a scripted dramatization of the story to an audience.
B. Explore and express their own ideas and feelings about the story. **For children of kindergarten age, creative drama activities should not focus on the development for technical skills or on performances for an audience. Rather, the goal of creative drama activities for kindergarteners should be to help them explore new means of expression that build on their enthusiasms and interests and expand their repertoire of communicative modes.
A three-year-old child makes a scribble with a crayon and tells the teacher, "This is my kitty." Which of the following responses by the teacher would be most developmentally appropriate? A. Asking the child to point out the head or tail. B. Expressing interest in and enjoyment of the drawing. C. Suggesting that the child add legs or ears. D. Showing the child a book that has pictures of cats.
B. Expressing interest in and enjoyment of the drawing. **For three-year-old children, art activities are primarily explorations of media and materials. To foster three-year-olds' continuing exploration of and joy in the act of artistic creation, and adult's best response is to show interest in and appreciation of their work rather than offer implicit criticisms or explicit suggestions on how to make an artwork appear more realistic.
In an informal screening assessment, a third-grade student reads aloud an unfamiliar grade-level passage and scores significantly below the grade-level benchmark for oral reading fluency. When evaluating the student's performance and the underlying cause of the students difficulty, which of the following questions should the teacher consider first? A. Did the student consistently read the passage naturally and expressively? B. Has the student developed adequate decoding skills to read a text at this level? C. Did the student appear to be at ease and engaged with the text while reading? D. Does the student have the background knowledge needed to understand the passage?
B. Has the student developed adequate decoding skills to read a text at this level? **A typical informal oral reading fluency assessment yields a measure of the student's reading performance in terms of correct words per minute. A student may score below grade-level benchmarks because the student lacks rapid automatic decoding skills or because the text includes phonics elements or requires the use of word analysis skills the student has not yet acquired.
A third-grade teacher plans to have students write book reports throughout the year. The teacher would like to have the students use self-assessment as part of the process of evaluating their book reports. Which of the following teacher actions would best support students in using effective self-assessment skills for their book reports? A. Having the students use the teacher's evaluation of their book reports as a means of guiding their own self-assessments. B. Helping the students identify specific criteria for evaluating a book report and apply those criteria in their self-assessments. C. Giving the students self-assessments written by students in previous years to use as models for their own self-assessments. D. Providing class time for the students to write their self-assessments as soon as possible after they finish each book report.
B. Helping the students identify specific criteria for evaluating a book report and apply those criteria in their self-assessments. **To evaluate any type of work product, the individual who is performing the evaluation needs to clearly define the evaluative criteria (e.g., rubric) that should be applied. Therefore, to help students engage in effective self-assessment of their own book reports, important actions for a teacher to take would include working with the students to identify specific criteria to use in evaluating their book reports and then helping the students apply the criteria effectively to their own work.
Students in a third-grade class are researching and writing reports on types of animals in various regions. Their teacher could best help the students organize their ideas and information for writing by discussing: A. The difference between facts and opinions. B. How to create and use an outline. C. The difference between an active voice and a passive voice. D. How to record data in a flowchart.
B. How to create and use an outline. **It is important that students doing research assignments be provided with assistance specifically related to the writing process itself, including the organization of ideas. An outline (one of many effective organizational tools) providing a scaffold that can help the writer sequence ideas logically, beginning with an introductory thesis statement, paragraphs with clear opening sentences followed by supporting details, effective transitional elements, and a conclusion that ties everything together and links back to the original thesis.
When determining whether to provide students with explicit instruction about a new vocabulary word from an upcoming text students will be reading independently, a teacher should first consider which of the following questions? A. Are students likely to encounter this word again in their future reading? B. Is it essential for students to understand this word to comprehend the text? C. Does the word contain a root that students already know? D. Can students easily guess the meaning of this word by using context clues?
B. Is it essential for students to understand this word to comprehend the text? **Research indicates that text comprehension depends on the reader's familiarity with the majority of words in the text. This finding suggests that the primary motivation for preteaching new or challenging words form an assigned text is to support students' comprehension when they read. Since preteaching every new or challenging word is impractical, the teacher should focus explicit vocabulary instruction in this situation on those words that are most essential for facilitating students' reading of the text.
As part of a science unit on plant growth, a third-grade teacher has each student plant a seed in a container and care for it as it grows. Once a week, the students are asked to draw a picture of their plant as it appears that day, then compare the teachers and note the changes that occur over time. This activity best illustrates how the visual arts can be used to help students develop: A. Flexible thinking. B. Observation skills. C. Eye-hand coordination. D. Problem-solving skills.
B. Observation skills **In the science project described, the students are being asked to record changes as the seeds they have planted sprout and grow to maturity. Drawing the plants at different stages is an exercise in observation: what the first leaves look like, how tall the plant has grown, what textures begin to appear. The students' series of drawings creates a record of the changes the students have observed over time, thus illustrating how the visual arts can be used to help develop students' observation skills.
A prekindergarten teacher would like to add opportunities for creative expression for the four-year-olds in the class. Which of the following activities would be most effective for this purpose? A. Leading an art project using an example for the children to model. B. Offering colorful scarves and streamers to use during music time. C. Playing a game where the children take turn adding a sentence onto a story. D. Adding dolls and stuffed animals for the children to use during center time.
B. Offering colorful scarves and streamers to use during music time. **Music can have a positive impact on a child's mood while also promoting creative expression. Giving a child scarves and streamers is an ideal way to promote creative movement, physical activity, and listening skills. Playing a variety of musical compositions across genres exposes children to a wide range of ideas, feelings, and emotions, which stimulates creative expression.
Which of the following arts-related activities is most likely to contribute to young children's understanding of the mathematical concept of pattern? A. Mixing paints to create different colors. B. Practicing rhythmic dance movements. C. Cutting squares of paper into snowflakes. D. Identifying musical instruments by their sounds.
B. Practicing rhythmic dance movements. **One meaning of pattern in mathematics is a repeated sequence or series. Having children do dance movements to a rhythmic beat helps them develop a kinesthetic understanding of pattern, as they move their bodies in time to the repeated pattern established by the beat.
A kindergarten teacher uses the space above eye level on all four walls of the classroom to create an "in-the-round" pictorial calendar. On it the teacher shows months and days and marks significant events such as holidays and students' birthdays with a symbol or picture. This approach can be expected to benefit students' learning primarily by: A. Promoting students' ability to use precise and accurate time classifications. B. Providing meaningful reference points to help students visualize basic time concepts. C. Fostering in students an understanding of their own history and location in time. D. Helping students recognize relationship between events and people through time.
B. Providing meaning reference points to help students visualize basic time concepts. **Learning experiences for kindergartners are especially effective if the experiences are linked to the student's own lives. Creating a calendar that represents the whole year with important events marked on particular days gives students a visual image that provides reference points to foster their understanding of time concepts (e.g., they can count the number of days until an anticipated event, differentiate between things that will happen soon and things that will happen in the distant future, and notice which events occur on the same day).
An elementary teacher is planning a geography lesson to introduce students to the concept that the resources available in a region influence the size and distribution of the region's population. The teacher is likely to be most successful in promoting student understanding of the targeted concept by implementing a lesson that: A. Prompts students to explore the specific cognitive skills they will be using in learning the concept. B. Relates the concept to familiar situations or to concepts that students have previously learned. C. Provides concrete reinforcement for students demonstrating significant effort to learn the concept. D. Allows students to take the lead in determining procedures to be used to learn the concept.
B. Relates the concept to familiar situations or to concepts the students have previously learned. **The elementary curriculum includes conceptual content that many students at this level are likely to find difficult to grasp. Various instructional strategies have been shown to be particularly effective in helping students comprehend abstract concepts such as the one described in the question. One such strategy involves making the concept more concrete and "real" for students by showing them how it is similar to everyday situations with which they are already familiar. Another strategy teachers can use is to help students see how the new, unfamiliar concept relates to content and concepts that they have already learned.
A second-grade social studies teacher has students read several articles on recycling and the use of recycled materials. After reading the articles, the students work in small groups to fill in a T-chart listing the pros and cons of recycling. This follow-up activity is likely to be particularly effective in helping students: A. Recall important factual information included in the articles. B. Improve their ability to comprehend technical content included in the articles. C. Analyze the information presented in the article. D. Evaluate strategies used in the articles to convey a specific point of view.
C. Analyze the information presented in the articles. **Elementary students often benefit from support in processing complex ideas presented in written materials. A T-chart is a type of graphic organizer that students can use to list and examine two facets of a topic, such as pros and cons or advantages and disadvantages. In the situation described, having students complete a T-chart after reading several articles on recycling would help them analyze the information contained in the articles by facilitating their ability to identify and organize the key points presented. Implementing this activity in small groups would further enhance students' analytic efforts by promoting discussion, testing, and refinement of ideas.
A teacher wishes to integrate social studies content across the curriculum in a class of four-year-olds. The teacher can best achieve this goal by adopting which of the following approaches? A. Engaging children in large-group projects that are based on social studies content. B. Creating one classroom learning center that presents children with a broad range of social studies content. C. Choosing an overall theme for learning activities that focuses on social studies content. D. Using primarily social studies content to develop children's problem-solving skills.
C. Choosing an overall theme of learning activities that focuses on social studies content. **One major benefit of choosing an overall theme related to a specific are of social studies content is that the teacher can create learning centers across curricular areas (e.g., literacy, math, dramatic play, art, and music) that will tie in with and reinforce the theme, fostering cross-disciplinary learning. Working in the various interrelated centers also allows children to employ their preferred learning modalities, promoting active engagement that will encourage deeper understanding of the targeted concepts.
A third grader is preparing to research the topic of wildlife native of Pennsylvania. Which of the following strategies would be most effective for the student to use first to narrow the score of the research? A. Reading an entry in a national wildlife magazine and nothing subtopics of interest. B. Searching online using the keyword wildlife and viewing several Web sites. C. Creating an outline detailing prior knowledge of wildlife observed in his neighborhood. D. Completing a KWL graphic organizer about the topic of wildlife.
C. Creating an outline detailing prior knowledge of wildlife observed in his neighborhood. **With the vast amount of information available to students these days, research can be overwhelming, especially in the early grades. In this brief scenario, the student is provided a broad topic. Early elementary students beginning the process of research need to be taught methods of focusing their topic. Students at this age should be able to list animals found in their environment. Even students living in cities are exposed to wildlife of some type. Creating an outline, including prior knowledge of familiar animals, would enable the student to focus on a specific animal and identify questions about his or her subject to guide the research process.
A fourth-grade teacher wants to improve the oral reading fluency of her students. Which of the following strategies would most effectively promote prosody in oral reading? A. Separating words into syllables. B. Self-monitoring for comprehension. C. Marking text for phase-cued reading. D. Applying knowledge of punctuation.
C. Marking text for phrase-cued reading. **Prosody is a feature of oral reading that addresses expression, intonation, phrasing, and timing. According to research, there is a strong correlation between general reading ability and oral reading prosody. An effective strategy is the use of phrased-cued text passages, where the text is divided according to natural pauses within sentences and between sentences. As a student reads the text aloud, he or she pauses between chunks of text, with longer pauses at the end of a sentence. This strategy also helps students to pay closer attention to varying punctuation, such as quotation, exclamation, and question marks, and to adjust their expression and intonation accordingly.
At the beginning of the school year, the teacher in a prekindergarten classroom post photographs of all the children's families/caregivers on a bulletin board. The teacher often discuss the photographs with the children, providing opportunities for them to talk about their families and learn about their classmates' families. This practice would be especially valuable for helping children understand which of the following concepts? A. People who grow up in different families often have different perspectives and values. B. A family is an example of a small community, while a classroom is an example of a large community. C. People's families share many similarities but are also different in many ways. D. Each individual members of a family has certain roles and responsibilities within the family.
C. People's families share many similarities but are also different in many ways. **Prekindergarten-aged children's experiences tend to be primarily centered on their own families. Young children have personal experiences of who their family members are, who is responsible for whom in their family, and activities the family or its various members participate in. When children share information about their families (as they are eager to do at this age), and view photos of their classmates' families, they notice differences and similarities with their own families. For example, a child with no siblings learns that a classmate has a brother and sister, or a child who lives with his mother learns that a classmate lives with her grandparents. Exchanging this type of information helps young children develop and expand the concept of same and different.
A third-grade teacher wants to encourage students to be more responsible for their learning as they begin a new informational text on bears and their habitat. Which of the following instructional strategies would be most effective for achieving this goal? A. Administering surprise quizzes to monitor whether students are keeping up with the material. B. Creating an outline for students to fill in at the end of each paragraph or chapter. C. Providing each student with a KWL chart to fill out and then periodically reviewing it with them. D. Having students keep track of how many pages they read of the text per day.
C. Providing each student with a KWL chart to fill out and then periodically reviewing it with them. **A KWL chart is a graphic organizer that tracks what a student knows (K), wants to know (W), and has learned (L) about a topic. It can be used before, during, and after research projects. Using a KWL chart, students can prepare to research a topic and use it to trach information gathered along the way. This tool also assists teachers in activating students' prior knowledge of a topic and encourages inquisition, active reading, and research.
A third-grade teacher is planning a language arts lesson to introduce students to fables. In an appropriately sequenced lesson, the teacher should begin with which of the following activities? A. Providing students with a graphic organizer and helping them fill in information from selected fables. B. Having students work in pairs to rewrite the morals of several familiar fables. C. Reading students several fables aloud and pointing out the key features that define a fable. D. Assigning students to work in small groups to answer comprehension questions about selected fables.
C. Reading students several fables aloud and pointing out the key features that define a fable. **When teaching any new concept or idea, one particularly effective strategy is to begin by providing students with examples and then discussing the attributes of the examples. This helps students establish the new category -in this case fables-in their own minds. Therefore, of the response options provided, the best initial activity for the teacher to choose would be to read students several fables aloud and point out the key features they include that make them fables. Although the other options involve students' use of fables, none would be effective in helping the students understand what a fable is or what distinguishes that genre from other types of literature.
A kindergarten teacher is reading a story aloud to the class. Which of the following teaching methods would best address a child's ability to extract meaning from the story? A. Asking each child, "Who was your favorite character in the story?" B. Encouraging children to share their favorite part of the story. C. Stopping periodically to ask questions such as "Why do you think ___ did ___?" D. Asking children at the end of the story to sequence the events using copies of pictures from the book.
C. Stopping periodically to ask questions such as "Why do you think ___ did ___?" **Reading aloud to young children is the foundation of literacy development. Actively engaging students in the text by stopping periodically to ask questions, make connections, and address vocabulary is meaningful in developing comprehension and listening skills. Young children's attention spans are short, and stopping periodically would most likely keep them actively engaged in the story.
A parent is reading a familiar book one-on-one with a child. The parent asks the child to point to each of the words of the story as the parent reads them aloud. This activity would be most effective for enhancing the child's awareness of: A. The alphabetic principle B. Sight words C. The tracking of print D. Structural analysis
C. The tracking of print. **The tracking of print is a book-handling skill that calls for a reader to exercise knowledge of several print concepts (e.g., the representation of words in print, the directionality of print). In the multisensory activity described, an emergent reader practices tracking print by pointing to printed words in lines of text as the words are being read aloud by an experienced reader.
Students in a kindergarten class are telling their teacher about a recent class field trip. As the students share their experiences, the teacher writes their thoughts on chart paper. The teacher then reads aloud what the students have dictated. Which of the following describes the best rationale for incorporating this type of activity into instruction? A. To foster students' social skills by involving them in a cooperative learning activity. B. To assess students' abilities to pay attention and recall events accurately. C. To foster students' literacy skills by building upon their oral language skills. D. To assess students' abilities to comprehend material presented during field trips.
C. To foster students' literacy skills by building upon their oral language skills. **The fundamental concept children must understand in preparation for formal literacy instruction is that writing represents spoken language. The best rationale for transcribing children's dictated speech as they watch and then reading the children's own words back to them is that this activity clearly demonstrates the relationship between speech and writing.
To promote creative development in young children when they are creating hand or finger paintings, the children should be encouraged to: A. Create representation of people, objects, and scenes from their everyday lives. B. Identify the colors they are using in their paintings. C. Use different parts of their hands to explore how each part makes a different kind of mark. D. Describe to an adult what they are depicting in their paintings.
C. Use different parts of their hands to explore how each part makes a different kind of mark. **The free exploration of media is the beginning of artistic creativity in young children. Rather than urging children to try and make identifiable images or explain what they are doing, prekindergarten teachers should emphasize the arts as an opportunity for experimentation, self-expression, and sensory exploration.
A kindergarten teacher is designing a thematic unit on identifying signs and familiar environmental print. When designing activities aligned to Pennsylvania's Prek-4 learning standards in language arts, which of the following questions is most important to consider first? A. What type of tasks would most effectively engage students? B. What sources of information are most readily available to students? C. What essential concepts will students need to demonstrate? D. What range of student learning profiles is represented in the class?
C. What essential concepts will students need to demonstrate? **Traditionally, curriculum planning started with activities and textbooks instead of identifying classroom learning goals and planning towards that goal. In "backward design" (McTighe and Wiggins), the teacher starts with the overall goal of the lesson by using content standards and state standards, then chooses activities and materials that foster student learning and engagement. There should also be coherent curriculum design and clear distinctions between big ideas and essential questions.
In a writing program of emergent writers, a prekindergarten teacher's primary emphasis should be on encouraging the children to: A. Write grammatically complete sentences. B. Form letters of the alphabet clearly and correctly. C. Write often and for a variety of real purposes. D. Achieve conventional spelling as early as possible.
C. Write often and for a variety of real purposes. **The best way to foster prekindergarten children's interest and engagement in writing is to involve them in writing for a variety of personal purposes in many different contexts (e.g., writing their names on their cubbies, labeling pictures they have made, using scribble writing to write stories). Helping children develop a positive attitude toward writing as a tool they can use for their own purposes should be a prekindergarten teacher's main focus.
The children in a prekindergarten class are taught to follow specific routines after they have finished working in classroom centers. For example, after painting a picture, the children rinse their paintbrushes, wash their hands, and hang up their smocks. Such routines are especially appropriate and effective for helping children: A. Understand the concept of cause and effect. B. Acquire skills needed for personal goal setting. C. Recognize why good hygiene is important. D. Develop habits of personal responsibility.
D. Develop habits of personal responsibility. **Routines are an important part of prekindergarten children's lives; they instill a sense of order and help children feel secure. Routines also provide opportunities for children to learn how to become contributing members of the classroom community. By teaching the children cleanup routines that are directly related to their own activities, the teacher is helping them develop habits of personal responsibility in a context that will make logical sense to them.
A young child demonstrates awareness of some phonological structure of spoken English but has not yet developed phonemic awareness. Which of the following activities would most likely be beyond the student's level of skill development? A. Clapping once for every syllable in a spoken word or phrase. B. Counting the sperate words in a spoken sentence. C. Segmenting one-syllable spoken word into onset and rime. D. Identifying the final speech sound in a spoken word.
D. Identify the final speech sound in a spoken word. **Phonological awareness is awareness that spoken language is composed of smaller units of sound (e.g., syllables, phonemes) that can be manipulated. The phonological-awareness continuum is a model of phonological-awareness skills arranged in order of increasing complexity or sophistication. Less complex skills are easier to learn and, with appropriate experience, usually develop first. Phonemic awareness, the ability to recognize and manipulate single speech sounds, or phonemes, is a complex type of phonological awareness. A student who has not yet developed phonemic awareness may be able to exercise some simpler phonological-awareness skills, but would likely have difficultly with any phonemic-awareness skill, such as identifying the final speech sound in a word.
A fourth-grade student has very strong decoding skills and yet, when reading aloud, reads haltingly, word by word, and with very little variation in pacing or pitch. Which of the following intervention strategies would likely be most effective in addressing the student's demonstrated needs in fluency? A. Providing the student with increased opportunities in school for silent, independent reading of self-selected materials. B. Promoting the student's motivation to read more quickly and energetically using a system of extrinsic rewards. C. Providing explicit explanation and targeted review of grade-level strategies for analyzing multisyllable words. D. Modeling prosodic reading of a shared text and helping the student imitate the modeled phrasing and intonation patterns.
D. Modeling prosodic reading of a shared text and helping the student imitate the modeled phrasing and intonation patterns. **The student described has strong decoding skills, hence reads words accurately and automatically. The student's monotone delivery and lack of phrasing are hallmarks of reading that is not prosodic. In keeping with best practices of research-based instruction, modeling prosodic reading that includes guided practice imitating a skilled prosodic reader is an effective intervention for this student.
A prekindergarten teacher routinely works with a group of four-year-old children on sound/word discrimination. For example, he asks them to share which pairs of words have the same sound, such as cat and car, or cat and cat. This practice most likely promotes which of the following literacy skills? A. Letter knowledge B. Vocabulary Development C. Print Awareness D. Phonological Awareness
D. Phonological Awareness **Phonological awareness is the knowledge that different sounds make up words. By encouraging children's understanding that words can sound similar or different, the teacher is promoting the children's development of phonological awareness.
In both classroom routines and explicitly focused literacy activities, a kindergarten teacher regularly includes oral word play based on sound (e.g., rhyming, alliteration). This classroom practice is likely to support the literacy development of emergent readers primarily in which of the following ways? A. Introducing them to the alphabetic principle B. Promoting their phonemic-segmenting skills C. Introducing them to common spelling patterns D. Promoting their phonological awareness
D. Promoting their phonological awareness **In a developmentally appropriate research-based program of reading instruction, instruction in phonological awareness focused on larger units of language (e.g., words, onsets and rimes) is foundational to instruction focused on phonemes, the smallest unit targeted in the continuum of phonological-awareness skills. Literacy activities that draw attention to sound patterns and the phonological structure of language are effective in supporting young children's early development of phonological-awareness training in kindergarten.
The results of an informal inventory (IRL) would be most appropriate to use for which of the following purposes? A. Surveying topics of interest and the overall reading preferences of students in a class. B. Comparing the reading skill development of individual students with national benchmarks. C. Determining students' strengths and areas of need in phonics and word recognition skills. D. Selecting instructional materials at an appropriate level of difficulty for individual students.
D. Selecting instructional materials at an appropriate level of difficulty for individual students. **In an informal reading inventory (IRI), a student reads aloud and answers questions about a sequence of leveled texts of increasing difficulty, and the students performance is used to measure his or her proficiency in reading texts at particular readability levels. A teacher can use the results of an IRI to guide the selection of materials that are at an appropriate level for different instructional purposes.
A kindergarten class includes a number of students who have little or no prior experience with books. The teacher uses various strategies to promote the students' understanding and appreciation of reading, including reading them stories aloud on a regular basis. In selecting stories to read aloud to these students, the teacher should place the greatest emphasis on identifying stories that: A. Teach the students about letters, numbers, and other elements of the kindergarten curriculum. B. Will expose the students to new ideas and points of view. C. Include characters and plots likely to be familiar to the students from their experiences outside of school. D. Will be engaging and enjoyable for the students.
D. Will be engaging and enjoyable for the students. **In working with young students who have little or no prior experience with books, a key teacher goal should be to promote the students' view of reading as an enjoyable and appealing activity and thereby motivate them to want to engage further with books. Therefore, in the situation described, the teacher should place most emphasis on selecting stories to read to the students that they will find engaging and enjoyable.
Which of the following activities in a first-grade classroom would best integrate social skills learning with arts learning? A. Divided into small groups, children learn folk dances from different cultures to perform for each other. B. Students take turns pantomiming an idea while others ask questions to guess what they are representing. C. As a holiday project, students paint pottery shapes as gifts for parents/guardians. D. The class plans and works together to design and create a thematic mural with paint and collage.
D. the class plans and works together to design and create a thematic mural with paint and collage. **Working collaboratively involves a variety of social skills, such as explaining ideas, listening to others, responding flexibly, and reaching consensus. Having the class collaboratively plan, design, and create a thematic mural would provide an excellent opportunity for children to engage such skills as they make decisions about the mural's overall composition and content, the materials and media they wish to use, and the general aesthetic and communicative effect they wish to achieve.
A five-year old girl who loves to write stories uses invented spelling for words she does not know how to spell correctly. Which of the following best describes how the teacher can build on the use of inventive spelling to support this child's overall literacy development? A. Promoting the child's understanding of the alphabetic principle. B. Encouraging the child to pay attention to word boundaries. C. Requiring the child to apply structural analysis skills. D. Reinforcing her knowledge of letter-sound correspondence.
Reinforcing her knowledge of letter-sound correspondence. **Research suggests that as young children begin to understand the complexities of language and literacy, they pass through stages of spelling development. Invented spelling is a child's beginning approximation with the sound-symbol connection and is the beginning of phonetic knowledge. Young children who have learned the alphabetic principle are attempting to put their knowledge to paper. By allowing and encouraging children to experiment with invented spelling, a teacher can teach the most complex letter-sound correspondences, develop phonological-awareness skills, and reinforce the students' basic grasp of spelling and writing.
