ELAR Proficiency Exam
Which of the following is NOT a technique used during prewriting?
Anticipatory set
Examine the sentences listed below. Drag each sentence and drop it in the box which correctly describes the type of sentence.
Declarative: I went to the store. Exclamatory: I made a 100 on my test! Imperative: Shut the door. Interrogative: How are you today?
Mrs. Clarinton is working with her first-grade students on recognizing phonemes. She is presenting them with various words and asking them to count the phonemes in them. Of the following words, which ones has four phonemes?
Little
The following excerpt is a persuasive paragraph written by Jordan: Everyone should wear sunscreen to protect your skin form the sun. The reasons why are because sunburns hurt, the sun can damage your skin and make you look old, the sun can cause cancer. Which of the following text features is most appropriate for the classroom teacher to review prior to the writing assignment?
Organization of procedural text
Examine the spelling patterns listed below. Click in the box with the corresponding stage of spelling development.
U for you - Prephonetic bik for bike - Phonetic mite for Might - Transitional would - Correct
A first-grade teacher has several students who are having difficulty applying the alphabetic principle. When assessed on letter knowledge, the students know the letter sounds, however; they still seem to have difficulty with blending the sounds together to pronounce words. What further assessment would you suggest the teacher give to pinpoint the nature of the students' difficulties?
An informal assessment of the students' phonemic awareness
Students in a fourth-grade class have been reading and discussing a story. Which of the following informal assessment strategies would likely be most effective in evaluating students' ability to analyze story elements and make personal connections with the text?
Each students pretends to be a character from the story and writes a journal entry reflecting on the significant events of the story
Mrs. Firebaugh is teaching her students how to analyze several visual images she put on display in her classroom. The images include photographs, political cartoons, and propaganda posters. She wants her students to understand and interpret the visual images. She wants to enhance their observation and interpretive skills. Which of the following questions should Mrs. Firebaugh pose to her students that will most likely guide the students' interpretation of the visual images?
Given what you see and what you know about the image, what is the creator trying to express?
A fifth-grade teacher plans to supplement studies in the content areas with a research project. Which of the following answers might the teacher consider? Select ALL that apply.
Have student use multiple resources while researching. Encourage students to research and collaborate outside of the classroom. Review web literacy skills with students.
A first-grade teacher is trying to get her students to recognize the sound made by the letter /b/. Which of the following activities is most likely to accomplish that?
Have students clap once every time they hear the sound of the letter "b" in a story the teacher reads to them
Mrs. Firebaugh, a second-grade teacher, notices that one of her students is reading well overall but still struggles with words such as "though" and "been". Which of the following instructional strategies would most benefit this student?
High-frequency words with irregular spellings
After reading Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, a fifth-grade student writes the following summary. Number the Stars is set during World War II and is about Annemarie Johansen and her Jewish family. The family had to escape from Copenhagen to Sweden to avoid being deported by the Nazis. Which of the following is most likely the genre of Number the stars?
Historical Fiction
Mr. Lathan's fourth-grade social studies students are engaged in the following activity: 1. Each student is assigned a reading buddy 2. Each buddy reads a section from the social studies text aloud while the other listens. 3. After the reader finished the listener asks questions focused on the reading which both then discuss 4. After the discussion the listener briefly summarizes, out loud, what the section was about. In order to best improve his students' speaking ability Mr. Lathan should implement which additional activity?
Partners take turns describing to each other what they have learned from their reading and their discussion of the text
A kindergarten teacher hands a book with predictable and patterned text, closed and faced down, to a child and asks her to open it and to point to the words as the teacher reads it. What skill does this activity most likely nurture in the student?
Print awareness
When having students write about personal experiences such as Mr. Brandon is doing here, what would be the most effective activity to undertake first?
Put students in groups and have them share their stories with each other
Based on this writing sample, what suggestion would Mr. Brandon want to make to Kyle in revising it in order to obtain the most immediate improvement?
Reorganize the sequence of events into a more logical order
In planning an order of introduction of letter-sound correspondences, which of the following would a kindergarten teacher most likely introduce first?
Single consonants and short vowels
Mrs. Ramirez facilitated oral language development during small group interactions with her students. She was deliberate about her word choice and language during her discussion with students. Which of the teacher prompts is a weak response?
That's right - toys!
A sixth grade student wants to present research on World War II to the class. If the student wants to demonstrate the sorrows of the holocaust, which media might be most powerful?
The student will share photos of holocaust survivors
A teacher introduces new social studies vocabulary words to her students. The new words describe various landforms. First, the class reviewed "kid-friendly" definitions of each word. Which of the following activities requires students to select, organize, and produce visuals to complement and extend the meanings of the words?
The students use safe internet sites to find and draw visuals for each landform
A teacher anticipates students will have a difficult time reading an expository text associated with content planned for a science lesson. Which of the following strategies might the teacher implement prior to reading the text?
The teacher may have students skim the text for difficult words, which the class will discuss before reading
Which of the following is most likely to foster print awareness among preschoolers?
The teacher models one-to-one match by pointing words in the lyrics while singing a popular song that the entire class knows
A kindergarten teacher reads a book aloud to her class. She begins by introducing the author and the illustrator. What might she do next in order to evaluate the role of these persons?
The teacher will ask her class what the author and illustrator do in the book
A first-grade student is reading a story aloud. The student attempts to read the sentence, "Jill likes to play on a swing." Printed below is an excerpt from the student's comments as he attempts to read the sentence. Student: Jill likes to play on a [makes a /s/ sounds]... I don't know that word. Sing? Swim? No, that's not it. Swing? Maybe that word is swing. In the comments above, the student most clearly demonstrates which of the following reading skills?
Using graphophonic cues to help analyze and decode an unfamiliar word
A teacher uses the "pie" analogy to teach her students about author's purpose. The acronym stands for the most common purposes - the P stands for persuade, the I stands for inform, and the E stands for -
entertain
Mrs. Swanson is attempting to help students select books they can read on their own. As part of this process she must determine each student's independent reading level. In order to accomplish this task effectively Mrs. Swanson should select books in which students-
have 5 or less word recognition errors per 100 words of text
Ms. Habib is teaching a unit on fiction to her fourth-grade class. To begin, students read several simple fairy tales and discuss the moral or meaning of each one. The teacher then assigns a more complex story and leads a discussion about the moral of the story after students finish reading it. This instructional strategy is most likely to promote students' reading proficiency by -
helping students identify and understand the theme of a literary text
Mrs. Ramirez facilitated oral language development during small group interactions with her students. She was deliberate about her word choice and language during her discussion with students. In her response to "it was funny," the teacher used the word amusing to -
purposefully model an alternative word that the child is not accustomed to using
A middle-school teacher designs the following instructional activity. Using the board, the teacher writes and pronounces dict. She explains that dict derives from the Latin word for "speak." She then asks students if they can think of English words that start with or include dict. The teacher uses students' suggestions to create the diagram shown here. This activity is likely to promote students' vocabulary development primarily by helping the students-
use word roots to determine the meaning of related words
A third-grade student is struggling in reading. The teacher notices the child devotes too much attention to decoding and not enough attention to the meaning of the text. The teacher could best help the student by-
working on fluency skills
Mr. Simmons has used the graphic organizer pictured above in his physical education class in the unit on baseball. Mr. Simmons also teaches English Language Arts and Reading. In ELAR, Mr. Simmons' graphic organizer would be particularly useful for helping students -
write a summary describing the game of baseball
Mrs. Graton's sixth-grade language arts class is studying modern British novels. There are a number of English Language learners in the class. Which of the following strategies will best facilitate these students involvement in class discussions?
Distributing the ELL students in mixed groupings of other students for discussion of cultural references
The boy went to school YESTERDAY. He surprised his wife and bought flowers FOR her birthday. The FOOTBALL game went into overtime. Everyone dislikes MONDAY mornings. The words underlined in the sentences above are shown boxed below. Click and drag each boxed word and drop it in the area of the diagram below that correctly identifies the part of speech the word represents.
Preposition - FOR Noun - FOOTBALL Adjective - MONDAY Adverb - YESTERDAY
A kindergarten class is learning about the letter m. The teacher plans homework around this focus. Which of the following activities best reinforces student knowledge of the alphabetic principles?
The teacher has students cut out and label objects which begin with the letter m
Jodi is writing a story about her experiences playing basketball for a book about sports. She wants to revise the draft to create a better flow. Read the draft of the composition below and select the best transition word from the drop-down menu to complete the blank. College basketball was very different from high school ball. ____ the coach was strict, college life included far more independence. It was too easy to overeat or to neglect my studies. The rigor of basketball practice often left me too tired to concentrate on my studies. It was all I could do, _____ to make it to class on time.
While though
A first-grade teacher is delivering explicit instruction in letter sounds. The teacher begins the lesson by writing the letter 'n' on the board and says, "This is the letter 'n'. It makes the /n/ sounds". The teacher then has the students name the letter and sound three times. Students say, "This is the letter 'n', it makes the /n/ sounds". The students then stand up and write the letter with their finger as onto an invisible board in the air while saying the letter's name and sound. The students then sit at their desk and write the letter 3 more times while stating the name and sound. The purpose of the writing step of the lesson described above is to -
Associate the letter name, sound and shape
Mr. Batista's sixth-grade class has been studying volcanoes. He designs the following activity for the class, which includes a number of English Language learners. Paragraph-Building Activity 1. The teacher leads a whole-class discussion on a topic related to the science unit on volcanoes. 2.Students form heterogeneous cooperative learning groups with three or four students in each group. The students in each group continue discussing the topic 3. Each student writes one or two sentences about the topic on sentence strips. 4. The members of the group then decide how to put the various sentences together, editing the sentences as necessary to form a comprehensible paragraph about the topic and correcting any errors in grammar or spelling. After participating in this activity, all of the students review the chapter in their science text about volcanoes. Which of the following best describes one important way in which this activity is likely to benefit English language learners?
Discussing and writing about a content-area topic supports English language learners' reading of related texts by reinforcing key vocabulary language structures and schemata
Jordan is writing a composition for a class assignment. Read Jordan's composition and the questions that follow. Mix the blueberries into your muffin batter be sure not to drip the blueberries onto the counter they stain. After the berries are mixed the batter is ready to pour into the pan. Choose the correct way to edit the paragraph for punctuation. Select one answer.
Mix the blueberries into your muffin batter. Be sure not to drip the blueberries onto the counter because they stain. After the berries are mixed, the batter is ready to pour into the pan
Phonemic awareness is a predictor for success in reading. Which of the following is NOT a true statement about phonemic awareness skills?
Phonemic awareness involves the relationship between phonemes and graphemes in words
Mrs. Clarinton is working with her first-grade students on recognizing phonemes. She is presenting them with various words and asking them to count the phonemes in them. Another activity Mrs. Clarinton has planned is to have students attempt to spell various words given to them orally and then to analyze the spelling results of each student. Which end-result will this activity most likely assist Mrs. Clarinton measure for her students?
Phonics skills
Teacher: What is this a picture of? [The teacher displays a picture of a boat.] Student: A boat? Teacher: A boat, that's right. Now, let's say the word boat together very slowly: /b/ ... /o/.../t/. [The student pronounces the word with the teacher.] Teacher: How many sounds do you hear? /b/.../o/.../t/... [The teacher slowly repeats the word.] Student: Three? Teacher: That's right, three. Now, i'd like for you to do this for some more words. This assessment would be an appropriate way to test the student's ability to perform which of the following phonemic awareness tasks?
Recognizing how many phonemes are contained in a word
A third-grade teacher works with a struggling reader. The child reads grade-level material at 35 words per minute and has trouble with sight words. Which of the following answers best describes the child? Select all that apply.
The student lacks reading fluency The student has weak decoding skills
A teacher made several graphic novels available to the students in class. The students loved to look at the novels, which are like comic strips in novel form, but the teacher noticed that many of the students had trouble comprehending the stories and could not critically evaluate them. Which step might the teacher consider to help the students understand the meanings of the stories?
The teacher should teach students how to use visuals cues used in graphic novels to understand the text features and stories
Mrs. Swanson is attempting to help students select books they can read on their own. As part of this process she must determine each student's independent reading level. In order to determine her students' independent reading level Mrs. Swanson's best approach would be to -
administer an informal reading inventory to each student
After reading Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, a fifth-grade student writes the following summary. Number the Stars is set during World War II and is about Annemarie Johansen and her Jewish family. The family had to escape from Copenhagen to Sweden to avoid being deported by the Nazis. While reading Number the Stars, the teacher asked students to predict what might happen to Annemarie's family if they are caught by the Nazis. Which of the following levels of reading comprehension is primarily being targeted in the lesson?
Inferential
Mr. Lathan's fourth-grade social studies students are engaged in the following activity: 1. Each student is assigned a reading buddy 2. Each buddy reads a section from the social studies text aloud while the other listens. 3. After the reader finished the listener asks questions focused on the reading which both then discuss 4. After the discussion the listener briefly summarizes, out loud, what the section was about. How would this activity lend to improve students' comprehension skills?
It would improve students' engagement with the text and increase their comprehension
A classroom teacher conducted a running record with Micah. Micah's reading rate was very slow. He would come to an unknown word and stop to try to decide it. Micah would try to sound out the word phonetically, but miscue analysis showed the miscues often contained irregular word patterns. What might the classroom teacher have Micah do next?
The classroom teacher should have Micah practice using context to decode unknown words
A kindergarten teacher designs an activity in which a student uses the Alphabet Arc illustrated below. Each arc has the alphabet written or placed in an arc shape to help students gain knowledge of the alphabet with hands-on activities. Magnetic letters are used as manipulatives for phonics activities with the arc. Students participate in phonics activities with the arc on a regular basis, studying letters and their sounds, and using letters to form simple words and practice word patterns (e.g., tan/fan or mat/sat) After the initial step of having a student place the alphabet on the arc in the correct order, the teacher wanted to determine whether the student is prepared to spell simple words. Which of the following informal assessment strategies would be most effective for this purpose?
The student attempts to make words with the same rimes bu different onsets (tap, cap, rap)
The teacher considers ways to use word relationships and the students' prior knowledge to expand vocabulary knowledge. Which of the following strategies would best enhance word recognition?
The use of synonyms would enhance word recognition
A teacher works with English language learners of various levels of language proficiency. Which of the following strategies provides language support for ELLs during classroom instruction? Select all that apply.
Visuals which illustrate complex concepts Access to content word lists Cooperative learning activities Sentence stems
A second-grade teacher is planning writing activities for her class. Which of the following activities would be least appropriate?
writing a persuasive essay
During guided reading groups, a teacher points out the use of apostrophes in possessive nouns to a group of students. The teacher was -
building an understanding of writing conventions through the use of literature
An elementary teacher uses an I-Chart to help students examine a topic by integrating prior knowledge on the topic with information found from a variety of sources. Which of the following tasks should the students do first when conducting research?
identify the topic
Structural analysis would be an especially appropriate strategy for a student to use to determine the meaning of which of the following words?
impassable
A first-grade teacher plans to collaborate with parents to develop student literacy development and monitor student progress in reading. To best promote literacy development at home, the teacher should encourage parents to -
read leveled books daily until the student reads them fluently
A first-grade student is reading a story aloud. The student attempts to read the sentence, "Jill likes to play on a swing." Printed below is an excerpt from the student's comments as he attempts to read the sentence. Student: Jill likes to play on a [makes a /s/ sounds]... I don't know that word. Sing? Swim? No, that's not it. Swing? Maybe that word is swing. After identifying the word swing, the student turns to the teacher and asks, "Is that right? Is it swing?" The teacher wants to encourage the student to use semantic and syntactic cues to verify the word. Which of the following teacher responses to the student's question would best address this goal?
"Now try reading the sentence again and see whether swing makes sense"
A first-grade student is reading a story aloud. The student attempts to read the sentence, "Jill likes to play on a swing." Printed below is an excerpt from the student's comments as he attempts to read the sentence. Student: Jill likes to play on a [makes a /s/ sounds]... I don't know that word. Sing? Swim? No, that's not it. Swing? Maybe that word is swing. After identifying the word swing, the student turns to the teacher and asks, "Is that right? Is it swing?" Which of the following teacher prompts would most likely be effective in eliciting helpful information about the student's use of word-identification strategies?
"Tell me how you figured out that the word was swing."
A first-grade teacher has several students who are having difficulty applying the alphabetic principle. When assessed on letter knowledge, the students know the letter sounds, however; they still seem to have difficulty with blending the sounds together to pronounce words. Based on the scenario above, in which of the following areas would the students most likely benefit from explicit instruction?
Blending strategies
Mr. Brigna's six-grade students are very knowledgeable of editing software on their computers and use spell check very effectively. Which of the following errors will spell check identify?
Errors with orthography
Complete the table to show the correct number of phonemes for each word listed
Fox - 4 phonemes Plan - 4 phonemes Sight - 3 phonemes Shin - 3 phonemes bent - 4 phonemes
A teaching strategy used in the classroom to encourage students to write without interruption of the flow of thoughts is called -
Freewriting
A middle school teacher wants to increase students' reading comprehension skills through oral language activities. Which of the following activities is best suited for this purpose?
Students watch a variety of television commercials then discuss in groups the commercials' use of selling, convincing, and propaganda
Mr. Batista's sixth-grade class has been studying volcanoes. He designs the following activity for the class, which includes a number of English Language learners. Paragraph-Building Activity 1. The teacher leads a whole-class discussion on a topic related to the science unit on volcanoes. 2.Students form heterogeneous cooperative learning groups with three or four students in each group. The students in each group continue discussing the topic 3. Each student writes one or two sentences about the topic on sentence strips. 4. The members of the group then decide how to put the various sentences together, editing the sentences as necessary to form a comprehensible paragraph about the topic and correcting any errors in grammar or spelling. After participating in this activity, all of the students review the chapter in their science text about volcanoes. The paragraph-building activity designed by Mr. Batista is likely to promote students' reading development primarily by helping students-
Transfer skills from oral language to written language
Mrs. Jenson is developing a lesson to help her students develop better critical thinking skills. One of the activities Mrs. Jenson plans on incorporating into her lesson is to have students view various commercial websites promoting various products and services. In having the students complete this activity, which of the following initial questions would most likely stimulate critical thinking in the students?
What is it about the website that appeals to you?
A fourth-grade English-as-a-Second-Language teacher is working with a group of students who are about to begin some pre-vocational training. It is important for these students to learn certain sight words before beginning this training. Which of the following words would the teacher most likely want to focus on teaching as sight words?
though, light, said, there
