ELA 4-8 Practice Test: Reading (117)

Oxymoron

A figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase.

Onomatopoeia

A word that imitates the sound it represents.

altas

An atlas is a collection of maps. An atlas is a book of maps. People have been making maps for thousands of years, but those maps were not put into books until the 1500s. Today, they can even be found online. Atlases often have extra information about the map you're looking at. For example, if you're looking at an atlas of stars and planets, there may be information about the different constellations (groups of stars).

Mr. Simmons wants his class to compare and contrast information about a subject using a variety of genres. Which of the following instructional strategies should Mr. Simmons use?

Book clubs Explanation: Readers' theater involves students performing the reading. This does not promote the students' ability to compare and contrast, but rather promotes oral reading practice and confidence. »»» ««« Reading aloud would not promote the students' ability to compare and contrast. »»» ««« Popcorn reading involves each student taking a turn reading a common text while the other students follow along. This does not help promote reading fluency and can stigmatize students who are poor readers.

While reading a historical fiction book about The Great Depression, a teacher asks students to scaffold their text-to-self connections between characters in the story. Which of the following literary features is the teacher trying to promote among the students?

Characterization elements Explanation: Alliteration is the occurrence of the same sound at the beginning of adjacent, or closely connected, words. Symbolism is using symbols to represent ideas or qualities. Neither of these literary features is actively being promoted by the teacher. »»» ««« Point-of-view is the position from which a story is told. The students are engaged in elements about the characters, not the point-of-view of the text. »»» ««« The author's purpose is the reason the author wrote the text. It is not best analyzed or promoted by looking at questions about the characters.

Which of the following would NOT be beneficial in improving a student's note-taking skills?

Create the expectation from the beginning of school that there will be a grade taken on students' notes at least once a week

symbolic meaning

Deeper layer of meaning suggested by a works literal, or surface, meaning.

Students use which of the following to interpret, analyze, evaluate, and produce images and messages from various media? (Select all that apply)

Denotative and connotative meaning Explanation: Figurative meaning might or might not refer to connotative meaning. »»» ««« Symbolic meaning may be analyzed and interpreted in media messages. However, it is necessary for students to understand and produce other kinds of meaning than just symbolic.

A fifth-grade teacher could best instruct students on informational resources, such as the dictionary, thesaurus, and atlas by which of the following methods?

Designing a scavenger hunt (hands-on) in the library with students to locate and use the informational resources correctly Explanation: The other options are incorrect in that students need hands-on experience to learn about these resources, rather than someone talking about the resources.

Popcorn reading

Each student taking a turn reading a common text while the other students follow along. This does not help promote reading fluency and can stigmatize (污名化)students who are poor readers.

Evaluative Comprehension

Evaluating text may mean distinguishing between fact and opinion and drawing conclusions about a text's meaning. Evaluating as a part of the comprehension process also requires students to detect faulty reasoning or bias, construct a personal opinion about the information in the text, and make personal connections to the text. During the evaluative reading process, readers judge the quality and validity of the written material and the effectiveness of the message.

Expository text is factual material that describes and discusses something, or tries to persuade, and includes some of the following structures in which list?

Expository text structures include problem-solution, details, cause and effect relationships, categorizing, sequencing, and comparisons.

Mr. Harper wants to assess his students' reading fluency by listening to each student orally read a section from a selected text. Which of the following would NOT be a good indicator for Mr. Harper to use in assessing the students' reading fluency?

How clear students are able to pronounce words Explanation: Consistency of the students' reading rate is a good indicator of the students' reading fluency. »»» ««« Variation in the students' reading intonation, or the students' ability to vary the strength and sound of their voices along with the text, can be an indicator of reading fluency. »»» ««« Word identification is essential to reading fluency.

Inferential Comprehension

Inferring ideas and cause-and-effect relationships that are not explicitly stated in the text are examples of inferential comprehension activities. Inferring and making predictions based on those inferences requires students to "read between the lines" or "beyond the lines" to suggest meanings that are not explicitly stated in the text. Once again, a reader's background knowledge can help the reader make inferences based on previous experiences and prior knowledge that support the visualization and interpretation of implicit information shared in the text.

Levels of reading comprehension

Literal comprehension Inferential comprehension Evaluative comprehension

(Select all that apply) To teach metacognitive skills, a fourth-grade teacher will provide which strategy/activity during reading time?

Looking back (called "Look Backs") to verify facts Reflective journal writing Explanation: Predicting is incorrect in that making a prediction does not require students to think about their own thinking (metacognitive skills). »»» ««« Connecting to student interest and real-life experience is incorrect but is a part of the way to develop a schema (build a background of knowledge for what is to be read).

Which of the following activities would most help Mr. Hanson's students understand inferential comprehension?

Mr. Hanson has various students explain the effects of different events in the narrative Explanation: "Mr. Hanson asks how the antagonist..." is literal comprehension of the text. The antagonist said a statement to other characters and Mr. Hanson is asking his students to discuss what was said. »»» ««« "Mr. Hanson has various students verbally..." is literal comprehension of the text. Mr. Hanson is asking students to present the views of characters based upon the characters' statements. »»» ««« "Mr. Hanson asks each student..." is a literal comprehension analysis.

Middle-grade teachers need to teach a number of literary devices in order to enhance their student's comprehension. Which list below contains some of these devices?

Oxymoron, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, and personification

Phonological awareness

Phonological awareness is when a student can hear distinct sounds, words, and/or syllables. They don't necessarily comprehend these words even if they do figure out how to pronounce them.

As a part of the above assignment, Mrs. Jones has students meet in small groups with others who read the same book. They will each have a turn in retelling to others chosen chapters, one at a time; i.e., John retells chapter 1, followed by Mary and then Joe. Mrs. Jones suggests that they may want to use a graphic organizer to help in this activity. What is the likely main purpose of this assignment?

Practice comparing and contrasting the same information Explanation: This should not be a time of determining vocabulary definitions or pointing out others mistakes. Determining the difference in guided and independent practice is irrelevant to the question.

Certain strategies that need to be modeled and practiced as to what students should do before, during, and after reading

Previewing, self-monitoring, visualizing, and retelling

Which of the following is the best definition of qualitative evaluation of text complexity?

Qualitative evaluation analyzes the level of meaning, structure, language conventionality, clarity, and knowledge demands of a text. Explanation: Quantitative evaluation of text complexity measures the word frequency, word difficulty, and sentence length. Quantitative measures typically use a set formula and are calculated by computer software.

Mrs. David wants to help her students to be able to ask and answer literal, inferential, and evaluative questions. Which of the following would best support Mrs. David's class in asking these questions?

Read a text as a group and then use Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid to help form different kinds of questions and answer them in the group Explanation: Students may not be able to create questions that would require a literal, inferential, or evaluative analysis of the text. It would be most appropriate for the teacher to provide support for the questions. »»» ««« Reading a text as a class and then discussing it is a great activity to teach students how to create quality questions, but this would not help students answer the questions. »»» ««« Paraphrasing themes of texts does not enhance the students' ability to create or answer literal, inferential, or evaluative questions.

** Lisa is struggling to comprehend grade-level texts during independent reading and "her oral reading is jerky and irregular." Mr. Harris wants to improve Lisa's reading comprehension. Which of the following instructional strategies should Mr. Harris focus on?

Sight-word automaticity Explanation: understands that letters represent sounds; she is struggling with quickly identifying words and their pronunciation and meaning. »»» ««« Vocabulary development is the correlation of words and their meanings. Lisa's vocabulary development could be adequate. The evidence in the question prompt first suggests an issue with reading fluency and decoding skills because Lisa's reading is jerky and irregular; this most likely indicates a reading fluency issue. If Lisa was stuck on a word(s) and could not understand the text, then that would be evidence of an issue concerning vocabulary development. »»» ««« Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear sounds that make up words in a spoken language. Lisa is aware of the correlation between sounds and words in the spoken language.

Mr. Hatfield asks each student to respond to a story. Mr. Hatfield records each student's response on the white board. The students watch as Mr. Hatfield records their words. Mr. Hatfield then teaches a lesson on the concept of print. Which of the following is Mr. Hatfield using to highlight the link between oral and written language?

The language experience approach. The language experience approach is using the students' experiences in instruction to provide better engagement and scaffolding for students.

Which of the following is a characteristic of a third-person narrative?

The narrator reveals the thoughts of multiple characters Explanation: In a first-person narrative, the narrator usually is a central character in the narrative and tells the story from his limited perspective. »»» ««« Discussing events in the present tense can be a characteristic of a first-, second-, or third-person narrative. »»» ««« In a third-person narrative, the narrator tells the story of another person or group. There are three distinct types of third-person narrative: objective, limited, and omniscient. When a narrator reveals the thoughts of multiple-characters, the narrative is a third-person narrative.

The meaning of guided and independent practice

The teacher first provides practice in using the study skills with his/her help and then provides additional practice time in which students use the skills by themselves Students have been typically taught some study skills in earlier grades but usually have a lot more independent work to do in the fifth grade. Therefore, there is a need for teaching and reinforcing appropriate study skills.

Which of the following is a similarity between a norm-referenced assessment and a criterion-referenced assessment?

They both formally assess a test-taker's knowledge in a specific area Explanation: Criterion-referenced exams do not categorize results based on demographics. Norm-referenced exams sometimes present scores in the context of various demographics. »»» ««« Criterion-referenced exams do not present scores by percentile rank. Norm-referenced exams sometimes present scores in the context of percentile rank. »»» ««« Assessments can use different measurements and grading strategies. Neither test only uses a correct/incorrect question format. A criterion-referenced assessment is an assessment used to tell if a student has learned the material, but it is not necessarily designed to adjust current or future instruction. A norm-referenced assessment ranks a student's performance with the student's peers; norm-referenced assessments are designed to rank students based on test performance. Both assessments will assess a student's knowledge in a specific area, but the purpose of the exams are very different.

denotative/connotative meaning

When communicating, participants must share meanings

figurative meaning

When the words mean something other than what they say.

The language experience approach

approach to writing instruction from personal experience; stories about personal experiences are written by teacher and read together until learner associates written form of word with spoken; can also be a group activity restating stories read by teacher.

One of the objectives for fifth-grade science includes the expectation that students should be able to understand the history of science and the contributions of scientists. In order to meet this objective effectively, the teacher might:

assign individual students or pairs of students a scientist to not only research but also to develop/attain visuals to help the rest of the class remember the contribution(s) of that scientist. Explanation: Having many biographies available might get the interest of a few students, but just having the availability of books is not a good way to help students meet this objective. »»» ««« It is not likely that a brief oral report about a lot of scientists would do much good in helping students meet this objective. If visuals were required, it would probably be much more useful. »»» ««« Having students read about what a scientist did is not likely to prepare them for a test or help them actually learn this information.

Mrs. Fields is teaching her students about different types of texts. She assigns a project for students to study a collection of maps and write a reflection. Which of the following would be the best resource to provide the students?

atlas Explanation: A periodical is a publication that publishes at regular intervals, such as a magazine or a newspaper. »»» ««« A dictionary lists words in a particular language and the meanings of the words. »»» ««« An encyclopedia is a collection of informational articles.

Mrs. Redd used two books, Cinderella and Bubba, The Cowboy Prince to teach her fifth-grade students about various types of texts. She has her students develop a graphic organizer in which the books are compared and contrasted. This type of comprehension strategy is called:

mapping. Explanation: Appreciative comprehension is the ability to develop one's own feelings and understanding about what has been read. Evaluative comprehension is analyzing the text by asking specific questions such as fact or opinion, character development, faulty reasoning. Personification is giving human characteristics to inanimate objects such as rocks or trees.

Various forms of persuasive media include:

newspaper ads, political cartoons, and online ads. Explanation: segmentation (節目的一段) does not relate to persuasive media

Reading comprehension is at the top of the scaffold of reading development. There are numerous skills that can affect comprehension. The following list that contains several of these skills is: (Find out pre-requisites to reading comprehension)

oral language development, word analysis skills, prior knowledge, and previous reading experience. Explanation: Other responses include satire which is a genre of literature; annotate which is to add notes or comments to a text or drawing, and use miscue analysis which is a type of assessment used by teachers to determine strengths and weaknesses of individual students. None of these are considered pre-requisites to reading comprehension.

Middle grade teachers need to teach specifically and explicitly a variety of instructional strategies in order to enhance their students' comprehension abilities. Some of these strategies include, but are not limited to:

self-connection, guided and independent reading, and question generation. Explanation: Determination of main characters is a part of comprehending narrative text but this is not considered a way to enhance students' overall comprehension. Personification is when authors give human characteristics to objects or animals and are considered a literary device. The use of similes and metaphors in a text is another literary device but is not considered a strategy to enhance students' overall comprehension.

Metacognitive skills related to reading comprehension are best described as:

self-evaluation and self-monitoring.

Teachers need to understand that many factors affect their students' reading comprehension skills and abilities in order to be more attentive to their needs. Among those factors are all but which ones:

understanding of phonemes, graphemes, and alphabetic principle.