ELAR Practice Test
A seventh-grade student, Nora, is reading aloud from a nonfiction text about the Civil War. She comes to the following sentence and pauses. Brigadier General Twiggs surrendered his Union army and supplies to the Confederate cause. The student attempts to sound out "brigadier," but she becomes self-conscious and decides to just skip the word and continue reading. Which of the following statements is the best option to encourage the student to continue reading while also helping her to learn the word?
"I noticed you struggled with the first word of the sentence. Lots of military titles are difficult to pronounce. That word is bri/ga/deer. It's a French word, which can sometimes make the spelling and pronunciation tricky. Everyone, practice saying it with me. Bri/ga/deer/."
A seventh-grade teacher conducts a read-aloud of two expository texts with opposing viewpoints. Next, the teacher conducts a guided discussion to help students complete the form below. Taking part in this writing exercise helps students develop their abilities to comprehend and analyze expository texts by:
. D. helping them compare and contrast multiple viewpoints and evaluate evidence presented by the authors of the texts.
A fifth-grade teacher wants to improve her students' listening vocabulary skills. Which of the following activities will best promote this development?
. C. Reading aloud to students from a variety of texts and discussing the texts as a class.
An eighth-grade teacher would like to evaluate the class's understanding of how the inclusion of subplots contributes to the reader's understanding of the plot as a whole. Which of the following would best achieve this goal?
A discussion of how the subplot gives further insight into character motivations and actions.
Use the following excerpt from The Story of a Bad Boy (1870) by Thomas Bailey Aldrich to answer the questions that follow. Which of the following quotations from the text is an example of an allusion?
A. "...I didn't think the missionary tracts presented to me by the Rev. Wibird Hawkins were half so nice as Robinson Crusoe..." B. "Lest the title should mislead the reader, I hasten to assure him here that I have no dark confessions to make." (WRONG) C. "This is the story of a bad boy. Well, not such a very bad, but a pretty bad boy..."(WRONG) D. "...no more like the impossible boy in a storybook than a sound orange is like one that has been sucked dry."
A sixth-grade student has strong reading fluency skills but below grade-level vocabulary knowledge. While reading informational texts, the student can answer literal comprehension questions, but struggles with inferential or evaluative comprehension questions. Which intervention activity would most benefit this student?
A. A preview of content specific or challenging vocabulary terms.
An eighth-grade class is working on composing argumentative essays. The teacher meets with a student to discuss the following paragraph from his essay on the benefits of traveling. Traveling to see new places and experience new cultures is an important part of the modern human experience. Many things can be learned from immersing yourself in a new culture. Some travelers worry that not speaking the local language will make visiting a new place difficult, but this can be overcome with the use of modern technology. Which of the following changes or additions should the teacher suggest to improve the paragraph's use of supporting evidence?
A. Add examples of what people learn from new cultures while traveling.
A middle school teacher wants to do more to promote reading to her students. Which of the following strategies should she try? Select all answers that apply.
A. Allow students the ability to occasionally choose what to read from a list of pre-selected options. B. Provide students with occasional independent reading time only on the days when instruction ends early. C. Make books accessible to students by setting up a system where students can easily borrow and return books.(WRONG?) D. Ask students to present to the class a summary of a chapter within the book they are reading.
A sixth-grade class will be participating in a cross-curricular research assignment on human migration and settlement patterns. The teacher provides the class with a list of 10 major cities across the world and includes a skyline and aerial photo of the city. The students are broken into small groups and asked to brainstorm a list of things these cities appear to have in common, including their knowledge of the cities and the information in the images. After discussing the brainstorm results, which activity would likely occur next in the research and writing process?
A. Compare demographic data between two cities on the list to determine which city is more popular. (WRONG) B. Students select one of the ten cities and complete a KWL chart about the city. C. The class reads and annotates an essay about migration patterns and causes of migration.(WRONG) D. Watch a video about migration patterns of wildlife and compare them to human patterns.
A teacher wants to demonstrate to students the importance of strong opening lines to engage the reader's interest. Which of the following opening lines would best achieve this purpose in an informational essay about jackals?
A. Did you know that a jackal is an omnivore who eats all kinds of foods including berries, small birds, grass, and even insects? (WRONG) B. Jackals can weigh anywhere from 10-25 pounds, and usually have two shades of brown on their coats. (WRONG) C. On the plains of Africa lives a quick, four-legged creature, but is it a dog, fox, or something else? D. Jackals are medium-sized canines that live throughout Africa.
An eighth-grade class has read two nonfiction texts covering the same topic. The teacher led students in a whole-group discussion of the texts and now would like the students to write a short-response essay comparing the main points of each text and analyzing how well the authors presented the information and their writing styles. Which of the following represents a best practice the teacher could use to prepare students for this writing assignment?
A. Have students work with a partner to find examples of literary devices used by the authors.(WRONG) B. Read an example essay and discuss what makes the example successful. C. Model for the class how to rearrange sentences and incorporate transition words to improve their essay's flow. (WRONG) D. Discuss as a class ways in which the main idea of the texts affects their individual lives.
A middle school teacher wants to develop her students oral communication skills. She separates the students into groups and provides each group with a jigsaw activity, in which they read a text and write down answers to questions. The students then change groups and share their information. Which of the following additions would best promote oral communication skills?
A. Having students take notes as group members share the information that they have gathered. B. Asking the students to cover their papers when sharing their knowledge with the second group, to avoid reading aloud what they have written down. C. Dividing the students into heterogeneous groups so that different ability levels help to support one another.(WRONG) D. Asking students to use full sentences in their written and spoken responses. (WRONG)
A fifth-grade teacher is using student examples to demonstrate how to edit and revise writing. After reading the excerpt, the teacher presents the class with options on how to best edit the writing. Jack is a really strong character. He is brave and not scared of anything. I enjoyed the part when him and Tony played at the park. I would be scared to fight a mountain lion, but Jack wasn't. It reminded me of my best friend that I always play with. Which of the options below best modifies the underlined sentence to improve the paragraph's organization?
A. Move the underlined sentence so it comes after the second sentence.
A teacher instructs her students to write in a journal a few times a week. Sometimes she provides them with prompts, but most of the time their entries are reflections on their day or thoughts on topics of their choice. She occasionally asks the students to bring their journals to class so she can check whether they have been writing in it. She asks them to share one piece of writing. What is the purpose of this?
A. Writing in a journal can help students to develop their analytical thinking skills. (WRONG) B. Writing in a relaxed format allows students to write freely. C. Having students write in a journal is a good way to informally assess their writing.(WRONG) D. It builds a relationship of trust between the teacher and student.
A teacher has just finished teaching her class how to write a strong thesis statement. Now the students need to choose supporting details that are relevant to the topic and will provide sufficient support for their arguments. To scaffold this skill, which of the following could the teacher provide to the students?
A. a list of details for them to order from strongest to weakest
A teacher might ask students to compare the words go, goes, and undergo in order to support an understanding of:
A. how syllable analysis supports decoding. B. short vowels. (WRONG) C. morphemes. D. the purpose of an affix.(WRONG)
An eighth-grade teacher is planning a lesson to encourage students to independently define new words while reading. Many students already pause to use a dictionary or footnotes to define academic terms, but the teacher would like students to be less reliant on a dictionary. All of the following review activities would help students meet this goal except:
A. review how transition words relate sentences and ideas to create meaning
While reading a fiction text, a student stops at the unfamiliar word "hemorrhaged" in the following sentence. Chase jumped the fence, not realizing his bag of loot snagged on a sharp corner; the fabric hemorrhaged jewels and coins all throughout the field as he ran. Which of the following strategies would best help the student determine the true meaning of the word as used in this sentence?
A. use word families to define the word B. use a dictionary to define the word C. use context clues to define the word (WRONG) D. use morphemic analysis to define the word(WRONG)
A middle-school teacher is preparing an oral language assessment for her students in which she plans to listen to and analyze students' oral language to assess strengths and weaknesses and the next steps to support growth. Which of the following skills would be appropriate to include in her rubric? Select all answers that apply.
A. uses a variety of sentence types and structures B. reads fluently and with correct pronunciation (WRONG) C. modifies speech, inflection and volume as appropriate (WRONG) D. understands and follows written directions
Which of the following best describes the degree to which an assessment accurately measures what it intends to measure?
A. validity
*CHART* While reading an unfamiliar passage for a diagnostic test, a teacher records the following errors made by a student reading at a normal pace. Based on the errors recorded, the student is struggling with which of the following while reading?
Adding consonants that are not there.
An eighth-grade class has just finished a unit on persuasive writing. At the end of the unit each student is asked to summarize their writing with a one-minute speech to the class. What activity could the teacher include to support an additional aspect of oral communication skills?
After each speech, the students participate in a question and answer session with the speaker.
A seventh-grade class is reading a short story about a family who moves out west during the early 1800s. The story depicts the hardships faced by the family while building a life on the frontier. While most students are able to answer basic recall and summary questions, many students are struggling to make deeper connections with the text. Which of the following activities would best promote the class's ability to make deeper connections with the text?
As a whole class, view a historical timeline that depicts important events and improvements in the lives of colonial settlers.
A fifth-grade class is about to begin a unit on the American Revolution, which will include numerous nonfiction articles about the Founding Fathers and important events of the war. Which of the following activities should the teacher perform with the goal of supporting her students' comprehension of these articles?
B. Conduct an informal assessment of the student's current knowledge of the American Revolution and Founding Fathers.
A sixth-grade class is individually reading "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi." While they read, students are expected to answer a series of questions provided by the teacher. The teacher walks around and reviews student answers. She sees that many students are confused by a question requiring them to make an inference, and she worries they won't be able to answer the additional inference questions. What is the best course of action at this moment to ensure all students are able to correctly answer the questions?
B. Stop students where they are, pair them up, and have them work with the partner to reassess the inference question. Discuss the new answers as a class.
A fifth-grade class is reviewing and practicing word families with irregular spellings. The teacher begins class with a warm-up sentence containing an incorrectly spelled irregular word. The class discusses the correct spelling and brainstorms other irregular spelling patterns. Next, the students are given a list of words and asked to correctly form a new version (for example, leaf to leaves). The list is reviewed as a whole class to see how well the class performed. In a systematic approach to teaching this skill, which activity would likely happen next?
B. Students are placed in groups based on performance and given an enrichment activity or remediation mini-lesson.
*SKIPPED* A fifth-grade class is working through a cross-curricular unit. The students have read primary source historical accounts and informational articles about events and new scientific inventions from the time period. The class conducted a small science experiment and wrote a report about their findings. The teacher notices that her students have begun to seem disinterested in the unit, and students who were previously engaged in the material are not motivated to participate or complete the work. What could the teacher consider that might help engage her class to complete the unit of study?
B. The teacher should diversify the readings by adding some fiction or creative pieces to the unit.
seventh-grade teacher wants to include more higher-level thinking questions in her reading comprehension activities. Which of the following questions should she ask to focus on the inferential level of comprehension?
B. Why does Little Bear leave his camp in the middle of the night instead of waiting for morning?
A fifth-grade teacher asks students to take turns reading aloud from a non-fiction text in order to conduct an informal assessment. One student reads quickly, barely pausing between sentences. He correctly pronounces each word, but lacks any emotion or rhythm while reading. After he's finished, the teacher asks him to summarize the section he read. The student is unable to recall what he read well enough to give an accurate summary. Based on this assessment, the student would benefit most from:
B. a prosody mini lesson where the student reads phrase-cued reading passages.
During morning warm-up, a teacher asks the class to respond to a journal prompt in their notebooks. While the students are working, the teacher observes one student who writes one or two words, snaps the pencil's lead, sharpens the pencil, and then repeats this process. This could be an indication that the student has:
B. dysgraphia.
Use the following excerpt from The Story of a Bad Boy (1870) by Thomas Bailey Aldrich to answer the questions that follow. Which question could the teacher use to best assess her student's ability to draw conclusions from the text?
Based on the information in the passage, do you think Tom Bailey is a trustworthy, reliable narrator?
A sixth-grade teacher had decided to use literature circles with her class to work through a new fiction text they're reading. She will provide the groups with guided questions and discussion ideas to complete during and after their reading sections. Which question stem would encourage students to cite textual evidence to support a prediction for the next chapter of the reading?
Because the character said _____, I believe s/he will _____.
At the end of the first quarter, each student participates in a district-wide standardized test. The test contains summative questions covering the district's curriculum map for the first nine-weeks as well as diagnostic questions for material coming in the next nine-weeks. Which of the following is the best way the teacher can use this data to inform classroom instruction?
Build in mini-lessons to review, scaffold, and relearn first-nine weeks material while introducing and practicing second-nine weeks material.
A seventh-grade class is working on an oral presentation project where they use persuasive techniques to market an invention to their classmates. Speeches are expected to last at least sixty seconds and include two persuasive elements that were studied in class. Which of these accommodations would be appropriate for students who struggle with oral communication and public speaking?
C. Allow students to record a video of their speech to play for the class.
A teacher is partway through a unit on a new grammar concept. The teacher used a pretest to assess the student's current understanding and has given a lesson reviewing the concept and providing activities to interact with the concept with a partner. Which activity would happen next in a classroom that uses responsive teaching methods?
C. Students are given a formative assessment activity to complete independently. .
A seventh-grade class is working on a unit of study focusing on reading and writing informational texts. The class will read and analyze multiple types of informational texts. At the end of the unit, students will be expected to compose their own informational piece, following the standards and conventions for informational texts. Which of the following statements would be true for a classroom that follows the Universal Design for Learning?
C. Students complete the final project in the format of their choice.
Which of the following is the best demonstration of students engaged in an active reading activity?
C. Students underline and highlight key points in a text and make annotations in the margins.
During independent reading, students are required to make a list of unknown or unfamiliar words. The teacher asks students to write the words in their reading notebooks and finish reading the paragraph. Then students use a dictionary to define the word, using context to determine which definition is correct. Students write the definition next to the word in their notebooks. In this scenario, students are using which strategy to develop their vocabulary knowledge?
C. using available resources
An eighth-grade English teacher is teaching her students how to identify different text structures. As part of the lesson, she asks her students to read the following excerpt about the famous philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. Although much of Aristotle's work was influenced by Plato, Aristotle was able to find many faults in Plato's theories and in time became a critic of his teacher. Their work targets many of the same aspects of philosophy, but their theories differ quite a bit. They both believed that thoughts were more powerful than senses. However, Plato believed the senses could not be used to determine reality, whereas Aristotle believed just the opposite, that the senses were needed to determine reality. So while Plato was busy imagining an invisible world, Aristotle looked to find truth in the world around him. Which of the following text structures is the teacher trying to help her students identify?
Compare and Contrast
During a unit on media literacy, a teacher plays a commercial for a new, popular children's toy. The class watches the ad once through. Then the teacher says they are going to watch it again, but this time she wants them to "listen critically." Which of the following questions should the teacher ask with the goal of encouraging critical listening?
D. "During this viewing, I want you to listen for any statements that are examples of an opinion."
Halfway through the year, a teacher stops to review her class's success and mastery. She is concerned that students are able to accurately answer recall and summary style questions, but they struggle with higher-level thinking questions. Which option below would best help the teacher review and adjust assessment strategies to improve her student's ability to answer higher-level thinking questions?
D. Create an assessment matrix to map questions and see how frequently higher-level thinking questions are given.
A seventh-grade class is reading an informational article on technology usage and teenagers. Which set of questions would the teacher ask in order to encourage students to analyze the author's purpose?
D. What is the tone of this article? What is the author's goal in writing this piece? What evidence does the author include to support his goal?
An eighth-grade teacher feels as though many students are not excited to participate in class. They are not engaged in the lessons and frequently act out behaviorally. The teacher hopes to make a correction to the classroom environment to address these issues. When creating an effective learning environment in which students feel valued and encouraged, the teacher would do all of the following except:
D. provide students with thorough rubrics for every class project or essay.
A sixth-grade class is researching famous inventors in order to write a brief biography of the person. The students are expected to include biographical information as well as a paragraph about the invention and how it works. In order to support students with reading challenges, the teacher should
D. show videos or images depicting the invention.
An eighth-grade English teacher is teaching her students how to identify different text structures. As part of the lesson, she asks her students to read the following excerpt about the famous philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. Although much of Aristotle's work was influenced by Plato, Aristotle was able to find many faults in Plato's theories and in time became a critic of his teacher. Their work targets many of the same aspects of philosophy, but their theories differ quite a bit. They both believed that thoughts were more powerful than senses. However, Plato believed the senses could not be used to determine reality, whereas Aristotle believed just the opposite, that the senses were needed to determine reality. So while Plato was busy imagining an invisible world, Aristotle looked to find truth in the world around him. Which of the following will help students recognize the text structure of this excerpt?
Finding Signal Words
Students are told that they are to create an online quiz regarding the unit they just finished in Social Studies. The quiz will be given to other students in the same grade level. What technology tool would be easily accessible for students to use for this project?
Google Forms
A fourth-grade teacher wants to encourage more sustained independent reading from her students. She includes 15 minutes most days for students to read a self-selected text. Once a week she checks with each student to see how they've progressed on their text and to ask a few questions. When meeting with Tina, the teacher discovers that Tina has only read 20 pages since her last check. Tina explains that she is struggling to understand what the book is saying; some words are too big and she gets distracted trying to figure out what they mean. She also says she really wants to finish reading the book because all her friends have read it already. What should the teacher do to help Tina be successful during silent reading time?
Have Tina keep a journal while reading to document challenging vocabulary and take notes on the plot or other interesting elements of the text.
An eighth-grade teacher logs onto her private social media account after work one day to see that she has received a message from one of her volleyball players about an argument she and a family member had that evening. Which of the following is the most appropriate course of action to ensure that the teacher does not breach any ethical codes of conduct?
Ignore or block the student and have a discussion in person the next day about why contacting her via social media is not acceptable
A fourth-grade teacher wants to introduce idioms to her class. She projects an image of a man and woman standing under a porch while cats and dogs fall from the sky. The caption says, "Well, Jill, looks like it's raining cats and dogs again." The class discusses the definition of an idiom and uses the image to determine the true meaning of the phrase. Which of the following activities best represents a scaffolded approach to teaching the meaning of idioms?
In small groups, students look at illustrations of new idioms and come up with the actual meaning.
While researching about the benefits of spending time outside, an eighth-grade student records these two statements in his research notes. "Researchers claim spending time outdoors leads to an increase in productivity, creativity, and a decrease in mental health problems." "After walking three miles every day for a month, research participant Patricia recorded that she could more quickly accomplish inside chores such as washing dishes or picking up after her kids, a task that she felt unmotivated to do prior to beginning this challenge." The student plans to use these notes as supporting details in his paper. Which sentence below best summarizes these two sentences into one?
Multiple research studies concluded that time spent outside improves productivity and mental health.
A fourth-grade class is beginning a research assignment. The teacher provides the class with the guiding question "How do humans positively or negatively impact ecosystems?" Which step of the research project should the class complete next?
Narrow the research topic down by identifying specific questions to answer.
When evaluating a text, the teacher encourages students to ask the following questions: Did the author use transition words between ideas? Does the order of the sentences help to convey the meaning? Which of the following skills is the teacher asking her students to assess?
Organization
A seventh-grade class is participating in reading groups. Each group has been assigned an article to read, and one student was designated as the group discussion leader. The teacher provides the group leader with a list of inferential and evaluative questions to ask the group. In addition to this list of questions, what could the teacher do to ensure that all members of the group are participating in a high-quality group discussion?
Provide a list of sentence stems that encourage students to elaborate upon or respond to each other's ideas.
Which of the following is an appropriate curriculum accommodation for a child with an Individualized Education Program (IEP)?
Questions on a test are read aloud to a student.
Which of the following would be the best way to conduct a formal assessment of a student's ability to use the correct homophone in writing?
Students create a short story using ten homophones from a teacher-provided list.
A sixth-grade class will be reading a historical piece of nonfiction in conjunction with a social studies unit. The teacher anticipates that many students will struggle with the content due to the archaic language and content matter. The teacher plans to include lots of scaffolding and differentiation to ensure that all students are able to interact with the text successfully. Which of the following statements would be true of effective differentiation for this purpose?
Students participate in small group activities formed using their most recent vocabulary assessment data.
An eighth-grade teacher begins the day by projecting a short poem on the board and reading it aloud. After reading, the class is asked to answer one question about the poem in writing. Then the students share their answers with a partner before the class discusses the poem as a whole. This lesson structure best demonstrates:
The importance of including expressive and responsive language activities to improve language skills.
Use the following excerpt from The Story of a Bad Boy (1870) by Thomas Bailey Aldrich to answer the questions that follow. The teacher wants to include a journal prompt to encourage students to make a personal connection to the text. Which of the following prompts best serves this purpose?
The narrator says, "I was a real human boy, [not] like the impossible boy in a storybook." Which category would you put yourself in? Are you a real human or an impossibly well-behaved one?
A small group of ELL students is struggling with recognizing how printed words and spoken language are related. Which activity below would best help the students develop this skill?
The teacher reading aloud a familiar story to the group and pointing out the text and punctuation marks as she reads.
A teacher is assigning his students a short argumentative essay. Which of the following should students be sure to include in their introductory paragraphs in order to most effectively convey their arguments?
Thesis Statement
While discussing a section of a novel, one student, Tyler, makes the following comment during group discussion. "It made me really angry when Jack didn't listen to his friend, and then Ronald ended up being right the whole time! If Jack had just listened, he wouldn't have gotten into trouble." Which question by the teacher would best help the class evaluate and expand upon Tyler's statement?
Think about Tyler's statement and what we've read of the story so far. Are there reasons why Jack should or should not have listened to Ronald?
A reading teacher has designed a lesson focused on skimming and scanning texts for significant features. What is the purpose of developing this skill?
This skill will help students locate information more quickly.
An eighth-grade English teacher is teaching her students how to identify different text structures. As part of the lesson, she asks her students to read the following excerpt about the famous philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. Although much of Aristotle's work was influenced by Plato, Aristotle was able to find many faults in Plato's theories and in time became a critic of his teacher. Their work targets many of the same aspects of philosophy, but their theories differ quite a bit. They both believed that thoughts were more powerful than senses. However, Plato believed the senses could not be used to determine reality, whereas Aristotle believed just the opposite, that the senses were needed to determine reality. So while Plato was busy imagining an invisible world, Aristotle looked to find truth in the world around him. Which graphic organizer would be helpful for students to use during the reading of this excerpt and the remainder of the text?
Venn Diagram
A sixth-grade teacher wants to assess the class's current knowledge of writing formal correspondence, specifically if they can request more information through writing. Which of the following prompts would best achieve this purpose?
Your grandmother and her dog are visiting, and everyone wants to go to the zoo. Write an email to the zoo director to find out if she can bring her dog.
A teacher is beginning a unit in which students will use both textbook and internet sources to research a historical event. Which of the following lessons should the teacher be sure to include to make sure the student reports are accurate and well-written? Select all answers that apply.
a lesson on reliable and unreliable sources a lesson on citing sources and not plagiarizing
Students are reading a nonfiction article about the events leading up to WWII. Which of the following graphic organizers would most likely help them comprehend the article?
a timeline
Sarah has Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and needs extra time on homework and tests. Giving Sarah extra time is an example of what?
accommodation
To help students with comprehension prior to reading expository text, a middle school English teacher should provide students with instruction in which of the following skills?
activating background knowledge
A fifth-grade teacher is looking to supplement a fiction unit with nonfiction texts that discuss the time period in which the fiction text was written. The teacher wants to be sure the texts will not be too complex for her struggling readers to comprehend. When considering whether a text is too complex, a teacher should value which measure most?
all measures are equally important
A seventh-grade class has just finished reading "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. The teacher breaks students up into small groups and asks them to discuss and answer the questions below. When Mr. Summers brings the black box into the square, the narrator says, "the villagers kept their distance." This is an example of which literary device? The story opens upon a bright, beautiful summer day. How does the imagery of the first few paragraphs contrast the events of the lottery? Jackson spends a lot of time describing the condition of the black box. How is the black box a valid symbol for the town and townspeople? These questions are designed to encourage students to:
analyze the use of literary devices in the story.
A middle school English language arts teacher would like to incorporate problem-solving strategies that require the use of different perspectives. Which of the following strategies would be most beneficial?
asking students to explain both a character's perspective and why the character holds that perspective
A fourth-grade teacher is administering a formative assessment of her class's current phonics and word analysis skills. Below is one student's assessment. Based on this data, the student would benefit most from a review of which of the following areas?
decoding multisyllabic words
During the morning warm-up in a sixth-grade classroom, the teacher will sometimes display images of newspaper headlines, advertisements, or other mainstream media texts that have misspelled words. The class discusses what word is incorrect, the correct spelling of the word, and the effect of the misspelling on the audience. This warm-up activity is included in the teacher's lessons as a way to:
demonstrate the importance of proper spelling in all contexts, not just academic writing.
An English teacher ends each class with an exit ticket of 1-4 short questions related to the topics discussed in class that day. Students write their responses on sticky notes and place them on the teacher's door before leaving the classroom. The teacher reviews all notes and uses students' responses to determine warm-up activities for the next day of class. Which of the following methods of assessing student understanding is being used?
formative assessment
By the time many students reach middle school, teachers have often stopped reading aloud to them. But, research shows that there are still many benefits to reading aloud to students as they follow along in the text, including which of the following? Select all answers that apply.
furthers student comprehension by removing the stress of decoding words improves students' understanding of different sentence structures allows students to hear complex texts above their reading level
While reviewing her syllabus before the school year begins, Mrs. Kohne takes note of her reading selections. The following is a selection of the titles she will be teaching to her class: The Giver by Lois Lowry "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury Select Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson A selection from The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank "To Build a Fire" by Jack London Mrs. Kohne realizes that almost all of the texts on her lists were written around 1950 or earlier. In addition to the age of the texts, this list is problematic because:
it lacks cultural and ethnic diversity in both authors and content.
Before reading a short story about a character who overcomes a bully, the teacher has each student write a short journal entry about a time they were bullied or witnessed someone being bullied. After reading, students return to their writing and add a new paragraph describing how the main character acted similarly or differently to themselves. This journal prompt encourages students to practice which reading comprehension skill?
making text-to-self connections
A teacher has provided her class with a descriptive writing assignment. The students have chosen a topic and are now filling out a sensory-focused graphic organizer in which they list descriptions that align with each of the five senses. What step in the writing process are the students most likely to be in?
prewriting
A seventh-grade teacher is starting a poetry unit with her students next week. The unit contains several challenging poems featuring figurative language and abstract images. There is a student in the class with a learning disability who the teacher is concerned may have trouble interpreting the poems and keeping up with the pace of the unit. Which strategy could the teacher implement in order to help this student comprehend the text and participate fully in the assignments?
providing the student with graphic organizers and annotated versions of the poems to make the ideas more concrete
While choosing fiction and nonfiction pieces to include in her syllabus, Mrs. Lawrence takes care to include a variety of genres, authors, and perspectives. Pieces that she cannot include within the time constraints of the classroom she adds to the classroom library whenever possible. This practice best demonstrates the teacher's understanding that:
reading a variety of genres and authors builds student interest in reading both independently and in the classroom.
A student who is struggling with phoneme substitution would be unable to:
replace the letter /o/ in "dog" with /i/ and correctly say "dig."
A sixth-grade teacher assessed a student's reading level at the beginning of the school year and found that the student was reading on a fifth-grade level. The student was assessed again at the end of first semester and continued to read on a fifth-grade level, but with improved fluency and fewer sound errors. When assessing the student during the third quarter, the teacher found that the student was now reading at a 5.5 grade level with improved fluency and zero sound errors. Which of the following techniques is being used to assess the student?
running record
While reading a new passage, a student raises her hand and asks, "What does this word mean?" Instead of defining the word for her, the teacher should encourage the student to determine the meaning of the word by:
searching the sentence and surrounding sentences for context clues like synonyms, antonyms, or examples.
The following is an excerpt from an eighth-grade student's descriptive writing piece. She slowly tiptoed into the library, careful not to wake the others. Staring in awe at the grandiose collection of books, she took a deep breath and drew in their sweet, musky smell. The books were calling out to her like a newborn to his mother. She longed to turn the pages, to be engulfed in the stories inside of them, to experience all the lives different than her own. Which of the following literary techniques does the student use to enhance the reader's mental image? Select all answers that apply.
similes and metaphors personification sensory language
*CHART* A seventh-grade class will be drafting argumentative essays, but before they begin the writing process, the teacher wants to read through a few mentor texts. The teacher gives students the following graphic organizer to complete while reading.
statement is fact or opinion
A seventh-grade teacher has noticed that students are misspelling the same words repeatedly in their essays and would like to help them improve their spelling skills for the words listed below: aversion exacerbate audible benign generous edict abbreviate circulate Which of the following mini-lessons would help her accomplish her goal?
teaching the meanings of common Latin root words and the common spelling patterns associated with them
The following was written by a 7th-grade student. Last week, I went to the park with my friends. It was so so so fun! I forgot to leave my mom a note and she was so worried when she got home and didn't know where I was. It was so late when I got home. I told her that this wouldn't have happened if she would just let me have a cell phone. It wouldn't even be so expensive because she could just add me to her plan. She was so mad. Now I am grounded. Which of the following tools would be most helpful in the revision process?
thesaurus
A teacher is leading her students in the task of writing a letter to the governor to make a request for a change. She provides students with a list of changes they could suggest, such as banning plastic bags in the town, putting a speed tracker on a busy road near the school, etc. When instructing the students on how to write the letter, which of the following should the teacher emphasize?
use rhetorical strategies like logos
As part of a research paper requirement, students are expected to use at least 2 online sources. The class spends time reviewing how to determine an online source's author and credibility. What other mini-lesson could the teacher provide to ensure that students are finding high quality, reputable online sources?
utilization of advanced search features and online databases
Which of the following classroom strategies would best show sensitivities to ELL language challenges?
word wall with pictures of vocabulary words
