English Language Arts and Reading

A first-grade teacher is looking at the daily journal entry of a student, Micah. Micah has written, "Yesrda i win to the prk" and has drawn a picture of himself on a slide. Which of the following spelling stages is Micah in?A student receives the following comment on h

A phonemic

Which of the following would be the most effective way to teach young children about task, purpose, and intended audience?

A Share and model writing samples that demonstrate appropriate style.

Which of these is NOT a key component in oral language development

All of these are components.

Which of the following is NOT a best practice for writing instruction?

Allow students to choose their mode of writing.

A new student has arrived in Mrs. Turner's class. She is an English language learner and is showing some shyness and trouble communicating with both her classmates and Mrs. Turner. The student is doing well with written communication, so Mrs. Turner would like to focus some instruction on oral communication. Which strategy would be most beneficial for Mrs. Turner to use to encourage more oral communication skills?

Build in multiple partnering activities so the new student can meet and interact with her peers.

A teacher organizes the class into small groups and presents an open-ended question to consider, discuss, and/or debate. Which of the following oral language skills is this most designed to support?

listening and responding

A student receives the following comment on his progress report. Mateo is consistently using capital letters while writing, though some are incorrectly formed, and occasionally using the correct letter that corresponds with the initial phoneme of the word he is writing. When I ask him what his paper says, he will "read" the writing back to me. Based on these comments, Mateo is most likely in which stage of writing development?

Emergent

Henrique, a low-intermediate level ELL student from Mexico, is having trouble with his writing skills. His parents have an advanced level of English and want to help him, but they aren't sure what to do. Which of the following should his teacher recommend? Select all answers that apply.

Encourage Henrique to keep a journal and write about topics of his choice. Encourage Henrique to tell them simple stories as they write them down. Spend time each evening reading together with Henrique.

A fourth-grade teacher is working on promoting writing development for her students, most of whom are in the proficient writing stage. While her students are capable of writing and spelling with accuracy, they moan anytime she mentions a new writing assignment. What is one strategy the teacher could use to promote her student's interest in writing while continuing to hone their writing skills?

Creating writing assignments that are meaningful to students, such as writing emails, letters, or to-do lists.

hich of the following will best support early elementary students in the prewriting stage of the writing process?

D allowing students to use verbal communication to plan their writing by talking through their ideas

Which writing type includes specific imagery and sensory details?

Descriptive writing focuses on intense details and imagery to create a clear visual for the reader

Which of the following would NOT be appropriate instructions in an editing activity for a third-grade class?

Designate that a writing template should be used.

A class is working on critically evaluating spoken words and messages. A teacher pulls together a series of Public Service Announcements. Students watch the video and then answer a few questions with a peer. The teacher wants to encourage students to actively listen to and critique the message in the video. To achieve this goal, the teacher should ask all of the following questions except:

Did you find the contents of this video interesting?

Mr. Sanchez's sixth-grade class is currently working on a research project about world cultures. Each student has been assigned a different culture to research and present their findings to the class. Mr. Sanchez notices many of his students, who are classified as English language learners, are nervous about their upcoming presentations because they are uncomfortable speaking in front of the class. Which of the following recommendations would be most appropriate for Mr. Sanchez to the students?

Each student practices in a small group and uses the feedback from the small group to improve their presentation.

An English teacher has her ELL students write a persuasive paper on a school policy they feel should be changed. The students choose to offer more juice options in the school vending machine. In writing the essay, which of the following strategies would be the most effective for supporting their argument?

Explain how other schools have implemented similar changes and highlight the positive effects in those specific campuses.

Which of the following would be the best activity for students struggling with phonemic awareness?

Have struggling students practice phonemic activities specific to the area in which they are behind.

A first-grade teacher wants to help her students develop word-recognition skills as well as increase their ability to create simple sentences. Which activity would help achieve this goal?

Have students create and read sentences using a set of sight-word flash cards.

A few months into the school year, a teacher overhears one of her ELL students having a semi-fluent conversation on the playground with her peers. She is playing and talking with ease, something this student almost never does in the classroom. The teacher wonders if this student is reluctant to speak in class because she lacks confidence in using classroom or academic language. Which of the strategies below would be most helpful in encouraging this student to participate orally in class?

Provide and practice using sentence stems to respond to classroom discussions.

A child in the transitional stage of writing would be unlikely to benefit from which of the following lessons or activities?

making different letter shapes using playdough

A sixth-grade teacher is determined to help her students become more proficient spellers. Which of the following strategies would be least effective in promoting students' spelling abilities?

Have students write all their spelling words at least thirty times.

What is one way in which written discourse differs from spoken discourse?

In order to understand written discourse, a person must be literate.

How does instruction regarding word families support spelling instruction?

It demonstrates that in words containing the same sounds made by a group of letters, the sounds will often be represented with the same spelling.

A teacher is planning instruction on the five stages of the writing process. Which of the following instructional strategies would be most appropriate to facilitate progress through all stages of the process?

Provide students with a checklist that includes each stage in the writing process and steps to take during each stage. Stop after each stage to discuss the next stage and prompt students to take steps to engage in the next stage of writing.

A teacher is working with a small group of students in the conventional stage of writing development. She has provided students with a list of simple sentences and is asking them to use their knowledge of sentence structure to combine the original simple sentences into compound or complex sentences. What would be an appropriate extension activity for this group of students to further their writing development?

Take one new sentence and use it as a starting point for a short paragraph.

While reviewing her notes, Mrs. Welsh notices that Fred has never volunteered to read aloud to his peers. She suspects he may be avoiding reading because he struggles to pronounce unfamiliar words. What strategy is best for Mrs. Welsh use to help Fred become more confident and improve his oral language and reading relationship?

Model using phonemes to sound out new words while she reads to the group.

How does motivation influence the language arts learning environment?

Students who are motivated, intrinsically or extrinsically, will participate productively in the classroom and are excited to learn.

Mr. Otwinowski is working with his sixth-grade students on why dialogue needs to be punctuated in written text. Which activity would best illustrate the need for dialogue punctuation in written text?

Present students with multiple sentences that could be misunderstood without dialogue punctuation.

During classroom discussion, a teacher notices only the same few students volunteer to speak or answer questions; however, when these students do answer, they provide very simple and short responses. In what way could the teacher provide scaffolding for these students to promote their oral language skills and encourage stronger academic responses?

Project or display sentence starters and encourage the students to reference them before providing an answer.

Which of the following best describes the primary role of mentor texts in writing instruction?

Provide a clear example of a genre that students can use to guide stylistic and/or structural choices.

How does oral language development affect reading comprehension?

Reading comprehension is enhanced by promoting oral language.

Mr. Martin provides all of his students with a wide variety of listening and speaking activities and provides purposes for each of these activities. Which of the following would be an appropriate speaking activity for the entire class, including ELL students?

Reading to a small group or a partner

In Mrs. Deaver's fifth-grade classroom, many students seem to enjoy using a word-processing program for writing. However, there are only four computers in the room. How could the teacher best make use of the limited classroom computer access?

Reserve computers for revisions; facilitate student rotations with a computer station to provide time for all students.

Addie, a kindergarten student, is consistently using object pronouns in place of subject pronouns. For example, she says, "Them took my markers." How can the teacher best help Addie correct this grammatical error?

Respond to Addie and use the correct pronoun. "They should not have done that."

Which of the following is the most appropriate way for a teacher to help students develop an understanding of parts of speech?

Show example words and example sentences to help analyze/explain how each part of speech functions within a sentence.

A student struggles to grasp his pencil correctly, resulting in oversized letters, pencil breaks, and difficulty writing for extended periods of time. Which of the following would most benefit this student?

Station time focusing on arts and craft activities.

Which of the following describes what happens in the conventional stage of writing?

Students learn to adjust their writing for specific purposes and audiences.

An English teacher is assessing the effectiveness of a class discussion on a recent reading topic. Of the following scenarios, which should be cause for the most concern?

Students were not responding to other students' comments but rather repeating their own.

Which of the following writing samples best represents a student in the proficient stage of writing development?

The blue sky met the ground at rolling hills. Tasha felt glad to see land.

As a rule, the larger and coarser ferns grow in moist, shady situations, as swamps, ravines, and damp woods; while the smaller ones are more apt to be found along mountain ranges in some dry and even exposed locality. A tiny crevice in some high cliff is not infrequently chosen by these fascinating little plants, which protect themselves from drought by assuming a mantle of light wool, or of hair and chaff, with, perhaps, a covering of white powder as in some cloak ferns--thus keeping a layer of moist air next to the surface of the leaf, and checking transpiration. Which of the following best describes this type of writing?

The paragraph provides information about ferns and the environment in which some grow.

The waves lapped lazily against the shore, sending ripples of soft bubbles across her toes. Erin exhaled slowly, taking in the sound of the waves and the feel of the breeze as it danced across her skin. Seagulls cawed in the distance, but seeing as she'd brought no food with her, they left her alone and searched far and wide for fish or food to scavenge. "The beach was surprisingly empty for such a perfect day," she thought, and Erin took the opportunity to remove her shoes, spread out her blanket, and relax with her eyes closed and her face turned pleasantly toward the sun. Waves continued to caress the shore, the seagulls called to one another, and Erin felt her eyelids grow heavy. The seagulls gave a sharp cry. A horse whinnied. Erin sat upright. She wasn't alone any longer. The primary purpose of this passage is to: A

The primary purpose of this passage is most likely to entertain, as it appears to be telling the fictional story of a character named Erin.

A fourth-grade teacher is working with her students on participating in group discussions after reading a text. She has provided students with possible sentence starters to use during discussions to maintain academic conversations. The teacher projects a question on the board and allows each group to discuss their answers before sharing them with the whole class. During individual group time, the teacher is walking around the room assessing her students' oral language skills. Along with the students' abilities to respond using the sentence starters, what else would the teacher be assessing that indicates strong oral language skills?

The teacher would be watching for students to use good eye contact and appropriate volume and rate of speaking.

Below is a sample of a student written narrative. Last week my dad was out of town and my mom dragged me all over the place to run errands instead of letting me stay home alone. She should let me stay home alone because I am smart and responsible. I know how to call 911 if there is an emergency. I even knew how to make my own eggs if I get hungry and I won't get hungry because she isn't even gone that long and I can wait a really long time to eat if I need to. She could even just leave snacks for me like granola bars or chips. It is not like she buys me food when I go with her anyway. I would lock all the doors and be safe and follow all the normal rules. The student writing sample be fits the characteristics of which writing purpose?

The writer is attempting to persuade the audience that they should be able to stay home alone.

Cross stitch is a category of needleworking and has been practiced for hundreds of years. Cross stitch and embroidery both use a thread and needle to create intricate designs on fabric, but cross stitch differs in that the threads are crossed over each other to form little Xs. By combining various shades of thread, sometimes called floss, needleworkers can create intricately shaded and detailed patterns. Cross stitch as a hobby is enjoyed by people of all walks of life, and was one of the forms of entertainment employed by Mary Queen of Scots while imprisoned by Elizabeth I. The excerpt above best demonstrates which type of writing? A

This paragraph is used to give a brief, informative description of cross-stitching. This would be best categorized as expository writing.

The following student writing sample demonstrates which stage of writing development? My favrite moovie is Frozen II. I like how the rain deer sing and when Elsa rides the water horse. She has really pretty cloths two. All the peeple are happy at the end and that makes me happy.

This student is likely in the conventional stage. The writing demonstrates a stronger control of language, though the student still makes spelling mistakes and does not punctuate the compound sentences correctly.

The following writing sample is indicative of a student in which stage of writing development?

Transitional Stage Transitional writers begin to use capital letters and can usually write the first consonant sounds in a word. They may still skip letters or use irregular spacing.

Mr. Harris wants to create a writing assignment that allows students to write with an authentic and meaningful purpose. Which one of the following assignments would best accomplish Mr. Harris' goal?

Use Word to type a letter to an elected official about a student-chosen need in the community. Print and send the letters.

An author who has strong skills in clarity of writing will be able to do which of the following? Select all answers that apply.

Use precise language specific to his audience. Organize information and use transitional words.

Precise language usage is generally more important for written communication than verbal communication. Which of the following is NOT a reason why?

Visual cues are available to help the reader determine tone and meaning with written text.

Mr. Daniels has assigned his class a group project and wants to ensure the students understand the project as they complete it. Which of the following would be the best strategy to monitor student understanding during the project?

Walk from group to group while observing the students.

In a group discussion, which of the following expectations is the most effective way to require students to demonstrate active listening throughout the activity?

When responding to another student's comment, ask students to paraphrase the previous speaker's idea before presenting their own response.

Which of the following statements is true in regards to a student's progression through the stages of spelling development?

While there are specific, predictable stages of spelling development, there is no set time period or age range in which a student will enter into or advance through each stage.

Which activity would best help students master common vowel spelling patterns?

sorting words based on spelling patterns

A dialect is different from a standard language in all of these ways except:

a dialect blends words and structures of multiple standard languages.

Which two of the following types of writing would best be categorized as narrative writing? Select all answers that apply.

a memoir a personal journal

A second-grade teacher has both native English speakers and English Language Learners in the class. The teacher informally assesses each student for language skills. Which of the following should be selected for further evaluation by the teacher?

a native English speaker who cannot clearly verbalize ideas in conversations with peers

Kirkpatrick is beginning a unit on morphology with his third-grade class. In order for his students to be most successful in using and manipulating morphemes, he should begin his unit with which activity?

a review of basic morphemes like /ing/, /s/, or /ed/

Following students' reading of a news article, the teacher has requested that they reread the text, this time annotating as they read. Which of the following would be included in this task?

all of the above

A kindergarten teacher assesses a student by asking questions based on scenarios. The teacher says, "Listen to me as I say some words very slowly. If I say /c/ /at/, you know the word is 'cat'. What would the word be if I said /d/ /og/?" What skill is this teacher assessing?

blending phonemes

A first-grade student wrote the following sentences: I did not no what she said becuz it was lowd. I had to ask her to times! Which of the following best describes this student's current stage of writing?

conventional

According to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for English Language Arts and Reading, which of these word sets would be appropriate for a fifth-grade spelling list?

inspect, inspection, select, selection, music, musician In fifth grade, students should be spelling words with consonant changes, including /t/ to /sh/ and /k/ to /sh/. This word list demonstrates those spelling changes.

Mrs. Tockert assigns a four-paragraph essay asking the students to write about a favorite memory associated with a favorite season. The rubric requests that at least 5 sensory details be included in each paragraph. Which type of writing will the students be doing?

descriptive

An ELL student who is new to the United States might be surprised to learn that people use different words to describe the same thing, such as yard sale vs. garage sale, tennis shoes vs. sneakers, and garbage can vs. trash can, across the country. These differences in word choice can be attributed to variations in: A

dialect.

The following activity is designed by an ESL teacher for introducing the present continuous tense. Step 1. The teacher acts out a series of actions that demonstrate present continuous actions in the first person, while saying the action aloud (e.g. "I am running. I am jumping.") Step 2. The teacher asks the students to repeat the statements she is making after she says them. Step 3. The teacher shows the students a series of images that demonstrate the present continuous in the second person. (e.g., You are studying. You are driving a car. You are eating lunch.) As she talks about each image, she writes sentences on the board that demonstrate the grammar structure of the present continuous tense. Step 4. The teac

drilling

Which of the following methods would be effective in helping students correctly punctuate compound sentences?

edit a student-written paragraph to create compound sentences from simple ones

A teacher has asked the class to give a 30-second presentation on a favorite book. During the presentations, the teacher expects listening students to give eye contact and clap after each. This expectation best represents which component of active listening?

encouraging

Active listeners do or can do all of the following except:

engage in other activities while listening.

A student is responding to an email from their grandmother. She is buying a new tv and is overwhelmed by the options. She asked them to tell her the difference between a smart tv and a regular tv. The student should reply to this email with which type of writing?

expository To respond to this question, the student should explain the characteristics of smart TVs compared with regular TVs. Writing that explains information is expository.

A teacher is preparing their students for a state assessment in writing and gives their students a prompt to write about an invention. What kind of writing is this? A

expository writing

A classroom teacher divides the class into pairs and gives each student a folder containing a picture of a recognizable person like a fireman or a doctor. They do not show the picture to their partner and describe the image in detail until their partner is able to correctly identify the person. Which of the following describes one of the goals of this lesson?

further developing oral language and listening skills

A teacher presents her class with a series of simple sentences. For each sentence, the teacher asks the students to identify how many times a specific letter is used. This activity requires students to use which processing skill?

graphophonemic

A student writes the following sentence to accompany a picture they drew of ducks swimming in a pond. My park has to yelo duks and I lik to fed them. This sentence demonstrates that the student has not yet developed which spelling skill?

knowledge of common word structures and spelling rules

A kindergarten teacher pulls individual students aside and asks them to tell their favorite memory from the weekend. As the student talks, the teacher writes down the words on a paper then asks the students to illustrate the story above the words. What is the teacher hoping to accomplish through this activity?

help students understand the connection between oral and written language

Which of the following descriptions best describes the linguistic term language acquisition?

learning a first or second language as a process, either piece by piece, or through a total immersive experience

During the revising stage of the writing process, which of the following would be most beneficial for students?

holding peer conferences

Transitional words and phrases are helpful in both spoken and written communication because they: Select all answers that apply.

indicate the flow of time and events. ink ideas to each other.

A sixth-grade classroom is given a transcript of a speech. The class reads through it one time together and the teacher answers any questions the students have relating to vocabulary or basic comprehension. Next, she plays a recording of the same speech for the students to listen to. She asks the class to highlight the transcript anytime they notice the speaker emphasizing a word or phrase. After the recording is done, the class compiles a master list and discusses the purpose for emphasizing these parts of the speech. In this scenario, the teacher is demonstrating for students how a speaker uses:

inflection to emphasize key points.

The smallest units of sound that make up a language are called:

phonemes

A first-grade student writes the following sentence on the board: "Mi mom maks soop for us wen it is kold outsid." Which of the following does the student's sentence best demonstrate?

phonetic spelling Phonetic spelling is when students spell the way they hear the word pronounced such as for come - kumor for made - mad.

An ESL teacher presents small group lessons on digraphs, consonant blends, and vowel sounds. What component of language do these lessons address?

phonetics

Mr. Lubrano teaches eighth-grade social studies. He begins an economics lesson by organizing students into heterogeneous groups. He assigns each group a prereading activity to be used with the textbook. As they read in their groups, the students are instructed to create a list of target words. Later in the lesson, they will define the words and discuss as a group.This activity fulfills a language objective because it gives the ELLs the opportunity to:

practice English as a means of expressing their ideas.

Jelena is an ELL from Serbia. She has been in the US for over a year. She does well on her content assessments, so it is clear that she has learned a lot, but she almost never speaks. As a result, she has had very little practice speaking English and using academic vocabulary with her peers. How could Jelena's teacher help her to improve her oral proficiency in English? A

provide her with sentence starters to use during partner role-play activities

A teacher wants to encourage her students to write longer essays about one topic. Which of the following strategies would best meet this goal?

read mentor texts and write essays in their style

Which of the following would not be in the conventional process of spelling stages?

revising

At which point in the writing process would a student's writing most benefit from peer input?

revision

Mrs. White has planned a field trip to a nearby history museum at the end of the month. Her sixth-grade class is made up of about 40% English Language Learners (ELLs), and the majority of the class will not have visited a museum before this trip. In order to best prepare her students for the trip and success with navigating the museum, which activity should she incorporate into her classroom activities?

role-playing activities

When ELL students hear phrases such as, "It's raining cats and dogs outside," or "This is just a drop in the bucket," they may be confused, as they probably need to have specific instruction in:

semantics.

A fifth-grade classroom teacher would like to help her English learners learn to read with more natural intonation and phrasing. Which of the following strategies would help them develop these necessary fluency skills?

sharing a read-aloud with the class, emphasizing the rise and fall of the phrases, and having the students echo-read the same text

Fourth-grade students have just completed a reading unit focusing on thematic elements and morals. Which of the following types of writing should the students undertake to best demonstrate their understanding of theme and morals?

short story

A student is having difficulty constructing full sentences out of words and phrases. Which component of language is the student having difficulty expressing?

syntax

A teacher provides her fourth-grade students with word magnets, asking them to arrange the magnets on the whiteboard to create complete sentences. She also provides them with dry erase markers to add punctuation as necessary. This activity is best suited to support the development of which skill?

syntax

What is meant by purpose with regards to writing instruction?

the intention for writing

A kindergarten class is reading the fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper." After they finish reading, the teacher asks each student whether or not they would have shared their food with Grasshopper. As students answer, the teacher reminds them to explain their reasoning and points to the words "because" and "since," which are written on the board. After the students finish discussing the text, the teacher divides everyone into small groups and hands them a collection of seeds similar to those that Ant would have collected in the story. The groups are asked to sort and categorize the food. They are given a large piece of paper with a blank table with

to allow students to experiment with descriptive language

Once a week, a teacher presents students with two or three options of nonfiction texts, usually informational texts covering topics she thinks the students would enjoy. She asks the students to independently choose one of the texts to read silently. After the silent reading time ends, the class briefly shares what they found interesting about the articles. The most likely goal of this activity is:

to build her student's background knowledge and increase their vocabulary.

Students in a fourth-grade classroom are having difficulty with their oral language skills. The teacher provides the students with many opportunities to speak aloud in order to develop these skills. The teacher does this for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:

to create situations where students can develop schema.

A teacher is preparing her class to independently read an article about a new telescope being built by a group of scientists. During their pre-reading activity, the teacher purposefully includes challenging or unfamiliar vocabulary like "Magellan," "precision," and "resolution" in both the class discussion about telescopes and their anticipation guide. Which of the following best explains the teacher's reason for incorporating these words into their pre-reading activities?

to encourage student recognition of the words and improve their ability to connect their oral vocabulary to their written vocabulary

In which of the following stages of spelling development does the child start to leave behind their phonetic dependence and rely on visual and morphemic strategies?

transitional

Which type of technology would be most beneficial to use while students practice drafting a new piece of writing?

word-processing programs

Mrs. Kulasa is working with a small group of students who are in the second stage of writing development. These emergent stage students should be given an activity that develops their ability to:

write strings of letters in a row.

Mrs. Meyers is teaching a lesson to students who are in the second stage of writing development. The writing activity she has planned for her students should focus on developing their ability to:

write strings of letters in a row.