Reading Development: Comprehension

A teacher wants to model for students how to determine the meaning of words within a nonfiction text. Which activity below would be the most effective way to demonstrate this for the students?

While reading aloud to the class, the teacher pauses to define vocabulary terms using context clues.

How is teaching word consciousness different from typical vocabulary instruction?

Word consciousness should be driven by curiosity and interest, while typical vocabulary instruction is based on defining words, comprehension, and clarity of language.

A third-grade teacher is going to read a story about two children visiting the aquarium. Which of the following activities is the best way to introduce the text to promote comprehension?

complete a KWL chart

A first-grade teacher would like to model metacognitive reading strategies with her students. Which of the following activities would be best for the teacher to implement to accomplish this goal?

conducting a think aloud in which the teacher reads the text orally, stopping along the way to ask questions and model making predictions

Before reading a literary piece, an elementary teacher will ask the class, "What do you know about...?" Which of the following best describes the purpose of this question?

connect to the student's schema

While reading, a student comes across the unknown word "sanitize." He notices in the sentence the words "dirty, " "but," and "now clean." He determines that sanitize must be the opposite of dirty. Which strategy did he use to define the unknown word?

defining meaning from context clues

A student comes across the unknown word "resurface" while reading a story taking place on a lake. She thinks about how "surface" means top of the lake and determines that "resurface" must mean coming up to the top again. Which strategy did she use to define the unknown word?

defining meaning from structural clues and morphology

While reading, a student comes across the unknown word "extracellular." He notices the prefix "extra-" and determines that the word means something like "having more cells." While he did not correctly define the word, which strategy did he use in his attempt to define the unknown word?

defining meaning from structural clues and morphology

Which of the following is not a goal teaching word consciousness?

developing dictionary skills

There are several English language learners in a class. Before starting to read a text on a new topic, what should the teacher do to increase the likelihood of student comprehension?

draw on students' prior knowledge and experiences

A teacher is reading aloud to her class. At the end of a paragraph, she stops to ask the students a question like, "Where do you think the tiger is headed now?" In asking a question like this, the teacher is trying to:

encourage students to make predictions based on textual evidence.

A teacher is presenting a unit about propaganda to her students. The teacher shows various propaganda advertisements and asks the students to detect faulty reasoning among the advertisements. Which of the following levels of reading comprehension is primarily being targeted in the lesson?

evaluate

Mr. Brand is wanting to promote the vocabulary development of his students. Which of the following strategies would best align with current research on promoting vocabulary development among students?

...

Ms. Smith is trying to help her student's distinguish between fact and opinion. She assigns an article and asks them to underline facts and circle opinions. What instruction could she give to help her students distinguish between the two?

A fact is something that could be proven true or false, even if the supporting evidence isn't included in the text.

Which of the following scenarios describes incidental vocabulary learning?

A student visits his grandparents and listens as his grandfather reads interesting articles from the newspaper aloud

What is the difference between academic vocabulary words and high-frequency vocabulary words?

Academic vocabulary words are specific to particular content areas or necessary for comprehension-related tasks. High-frequency vocabulary words are selected based on how often students will encounter them in texts.

An English teacher notices that her students are struggling with visualizing a story as she reads it aloud. Which of the following strategies could she implement to help students improve in this area?

After reading a section of the story out loud, the teacher asks the students to draw what they "saw" in their minds on a blank piece of paper.

Mr. Glaser, a kindergarten teacher, is looking for ways to assess his student's ability to summarize or retell reading material. Which activities could he use to help assess this skill? Select all answers that apply.

Ask students to draw what happened in the text. Ask students individually to act out a scene from the text.

While reading aloud to her students, Ms. Cearing hopes to improve students' reading comprehension. Which activity could she choose to accomplish this goal?

Ask students to pause and visualize what was just read in their minds.

Which of the following tasks specifically requires a person to use tier-three vocabulary words?

Explain how to graph the answer to a math problem.

Which of the following should a teacher do before giving the first science textbook reading assignment to a class?

Go through the text with the class pointing out headings, pictures, key words, definitions, and other assistance available on the page.

Mrs. Thorpe is an English teacher who is working with her students to promote their vocabulary. One of the activities she assigns her students is to create a self-made dictionary from the weekly vocabulary list. What is the greatest advantage of a student self-made dictionary over a standard dictionary?

It is composed of definitions that the individual is more likely to recognize and remember.

Ms. Ader reads a book aloud to her students. She introduces unfamiliar words during the reading and wants to promote the students' vocabulary development after the reading. Which of the following activities would best support Ms. Ader's goal?

Have students draw a picture that illustrates the definition of unfamiliar words.

A second-grade teacher wants to develop her students' skills in understanding new texts. Which of the following activities would best help students develop an understanding of a new text?

Have students record mental images that are generated from reading the story.

Mr. Hendrix, a third-grade English Language Arts teacher, wants to support his students in becoming self-directed critical readers. Which of the following activities would best help Mr. Hendrix accomplish this goal?

Have students use a Venn diagram to identify and compare the character traits of the protagonist and the antagonist of three different narratives.

A teacher is asking students to evaluate an argument in a persuasive text. Which of the following sentence stems would best support this goal?

In my opinion...

Why might discussing the etymology of a word encourage word consciousness?

It encourages thinking about the meaning of a word in new ways

Which of the following best describes why a teacher would prioritize teaching word consciousness in addition to direct vocabulary instruction?

It facilitates vocabulary development outside of direct instruction.

Which of the following best explains why the word "hyperbole" is a tier-three vocabulary word?

It is primarily used in a specific content area.

A first-grade teacher is assessing a student's reading. After listening to the student read a passage aloud, which of the following describes the best way for the teacher to assess the student's reading comprehension in this setting?

Listen to the student give an oral summary of the passage.

Which of the following instructional strategies would be most beneficial when providing Tier Two vocabulary instruction to a group of struggling readers?

Provide the students with sentence stems that they can incorporate new words in context.

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

Mr. Hanson asks various students to explain possible effects of different events in the narrative.

A kindergarten teacher is preparing to teach a unit about trees. Which of the following strategies will help students to gain background knowledge before beginning the unit about trees?

Prepare a sensory table with leaves, bark, branches, and pinecones to teach new words and parts of trees.

A teacher needs to make accommodations to a nonfiction reading comprehension assignment for an English language learner who is in the beginning stages of language development. Which accommodation would be most appropriate for this student's ability level?

Provide a graphic organizer and simple, direct instructions.

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

Read a text as a group and then use Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid to help form different kinds of questions and answer them in the group.

A teacher wants to model for students how to pull the main idea(s) from a nonfiction text. Which activity below would be the most effective way to demonstrate this for the students?

Read a text that's projected for the class and take notes in the margins while reading.

A third-grade teacher would like to provide practice with structural analysis for her students. In which of the following sentences is structural analysis most helpful to determine the meaning of the italicized word?

She was distrustful of the dog ever since it bit her foot.

Before beginning a new unit, a teacher provides her class with a list of new vocabulary terms they will encounter. Other than defining the words as they are used and front loading lessons with new vocabulary, which activity would help students successfully identify and understand the words in context?

Sorting words based on similarities in structure, meaning, or parts of speech.

How does speaking vocabulary differ from reading vocabulary?

Students are exposed to more varied and higher-level vocabulary while reading.

Over the course of the semester, a first-grade teacher has been reading fiction and non-fiction texts with students about the natural world. The words rocks, soil, water, streams, lakes, ocean, and wind have come up often in the texts. A recent science experiment asked students to describe the sizes, colors, and textures of different types of soil they gathered from a recent nature walk. The class walks to a nearby lake to look for frog eggs, tadpoles, and frogs after talking about the life cycle of a frog. They discussed the terms eggs, tadpole, gills, toad, frog, and leap. As part of each activity, the teacher adds to the word wall list on the wall of the classroom. Every day during class, the teacher points to the wall and invites the students to use the newly acquired terms in their writing and speaking. The activities show the teacher implementing which of the key principles of effective vocabulary instruction as described in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for First Grade?

Students should be given opportunities to use their newly-acquired vocabulary words expressively.

Which of the following statements best aligns with research-based vocabulary instruction practice?

Students should learn a selected amount of age-appropriate vocabulary words in multiple contexts.

An ESL teacher is reading a narrative with her class of English language learners. She provides the students with only the first half of the reading and then asks them to write an ending to the story with a partner. After reading their endings aloud to the class, she then asks the students to explain what details in the story helped them to write their endings. This strategy is likely to be most effective in promoting which of the following English-language proficiency standards in reading?

Students will make predictions about and draw conclusions from a text.

A third-grade teacher is facilitating literature circles for her class with books that tie into their current social studies unit. The class will be allowed to choose a title from a set of books that she has pre-selected. The teacher introduces each option by showing the front cover, reading the title, and reading the back of the book. Once students choose their book and begin reading it, they will be given opportunities to meet with other students who are reading the same book. All group members are encouraged to use direct quotes from the text to support the ideas they share with their group. Which of the following best describes the teacher's motivation for choosing books based on the current focus of their social studies curriculum?

The cross-curricular focus will both provide students with applicable background information for the text and extend their understanding of the topics being discussed in social studies.

A third-grade teacher is introducing a new unit on the different forms of energy and notices one of the English Language Learners in the class is struggling to complete a science lab worksheet. The teacher reviews the student's data and notices he scored in the 70th percentile for words correct per minute on a recent fluency assessment. He also scored an 80 on a recent reading comprehension assessment. Given this data, which of the following statements best explains why this student is experiencing difficulties?

The student does not have enough prior knowledge about the topic to be successful on the lab worksheet.

Mrs. Ruth notices one of her ELL students frequently misses word problems about fractions. She does not know why because the student has demonstrated a strong understanding of fractions and rules about fractions. Which of the following is the most likely explanation as to why the student frequently misses word problems?

The student does not understand many of the vocabulary words used in the word problems

A third-grade ELL student who normally performs well on assessments unexpectedly struggled with a recent reading assessment of a passage titled "Fourth of July Memories." Which of the following is most likely to have caused this unexpected challenge?

The student may lack the schema that supports other students' understanding of the text.

After completing an oral fluency and comprehension assessment of a student, the teacher determines that the student's errors indicate "word calling" instead of comprehension. Which of the following best describes a possible issues that the teacher observed in order to form this assessment?

The student read the passage at a reasonable rate and with few mistakes, but she lacked prosody and struggled to answer the reading comprehension questions correctly.

Why is it important for students to develop a vocabulary that includes words such as analyze, describe, justify, determine, etc.?

They are critical across content areas in order to demonstrate understanding of content.

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.

For a student just beginning to learn English, what would be the advantages of using visuals and having the student point to pictures or act out vocabulary words?

This strategy allows a student who cannot yet speak English to learn vocabulary and gain confidence.

Jessica is a student-teacher observing Mr. Preston's science class. Mr. Preston gives Jessica his lesson plan to follow along with during the lesson. On the lesson plan, she sees a note stating, "Encourage students to use Tier II words in their writing assignment." When she asks Mr. Preston what this means, he explains:

Tier II words are frequently occurring words that are important for comprehension. Students often encounter these words in reading, but don't always use them in oral and written responses.

The ELL students in a high school biology class are having trouble understanding some low-frequency content-specific words. The teacher determines that it's best to translate them or briefly explain them in English or in the ELL's native language. These are likely to be:

Tier III words.

A third-grade teacher writes the following sentence on the board: Despite being the last to use the bathroom pass, the student emphatically denied being the one that lost it. She asks the students to write down the meaning of the word emphatically without looking it up in the dictionary. How does the teacher expect the students to determine the word's meaning?

Use context clues to predict the word's meaning.

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

Venn diagrams

Which of the following texts would be the best choice to accurately assess a third grade ELL student's reading comprehension?

a story about an elementary student struggling with friend conflict in school

In order to develop student's proficiency in the third tier of vocabulary, a teacher would focus vocabulary instruction on:

academic vocabulary.

Which of the following skills best demonstrates successful reading comprehension? Select all answers that apply.

accurate decoding of new words connecting previous reading experiences and life experiences to the reading

A third-grade teacher is assigning an informational text that compares the education system in the United States to that of another country. Which of the following would be a useful strategy to use while they read the informational text?

add details to a Venn diagram

A student demonstrates weakness in story retelling. To improve the student's story retelling, the next step the teacher should take is to:

administer further assessments to determine whether the weakness is related to decoding issues, vocabulary issues, or general comprehension issues.

An example of evaluative comprehension is when a reader:

analyzes the word choice of the author.

Which TWO strategies can be used to assess a student's reading comprehension skills? Select all answers that apply.

asking a student to identify the main idea of a story that the teacher read aloud assigning a short essay question which requires students to include three details from the text

A teacher wants to create a vocabulary list from the magazines and newspapers students use during instruction. Which of the following would be the most effective method to create the vocabulary list for students?

asking students to identify words they do not know during their first reading of the article

A first-grade class has recently finished reading the story The Three Little Pigs. After reading, the teacher asks students to complete the organizer below with their table partners. After completing the organizer, the teacher asks several students to share the sentence they wrote. One student shares the following sentence: "The pigs wanted to build houses but the wolf wanted to blow them down." The teacher then says, "So, then what happened?" By asking this follow-up question, the teacher is furthering the student's oral language development by:

asking the student to verbally articulate a concise summary of the story.

A third-grade class is working on an Earth Science unit. The teacher has students read a series of articles on topics that will be covered throughout the unit. Within the articles are bolded vocabulary words the students will be tested over at the end of the semester. In order to help students familiarize themselves with these words, the teacher tells them to make a Frayer model in their notebooks for each word they are expected to know. The teacher creates the following model with the students while introducing the activity: Frayer models such as the one above help students learn vocabulary words by:

asking them to define words in multiple ways.

A third-grade teacher is introducing a unit on plants. Part of the unit plan calls for students to read complex texts on the topic, many of which contain unfamiliar vocabulary words. The teacher takes the students on a nature walk to sketch several types of plants and talk about their favorite ones. The teacher also takes the class out to the school vegetable garden to discuss the differences and similarities between the different plants. These pre-reading activities will help the students:

gain additional background knowledge before reading the texts

A third-grade teacher has just taught a lesson on identifying and describing the setting when reading a story. Which of the following activities could be used as a formative assessment to assess this new skill at the end of class?

giving students a one-page story and asking them to describe the setting in one sentence

Over the course of the semester, a first-grade teacher has been reading fiction and non-fiction texts with students about the natural world. The words rocks, soil, water, streams, lakes, ocean, and wind have come up often in the texts. A recent science experiment asked students to describe the sizes, colors, and textures of different types of soil they gathered from a recent nature walk. The class walks to a nearby lake to look for frog eggs, tadpoles, and frogs after talking about the life cycle of a frog. They discussed the terms eggs, tadpole, gills, toad, frog, and leap. As part of each activity, the teacher adds to the word wall list on the wall of the classroom. Every day during class, the teacher points to the wall and invites the students to use the newly acquired terms in their writing and speaking. After the trip to the pond, the teacher asks students to write a journal entry describing what they experienced during the field trip and to include a description of the life cycle of a frog. To accomplish this, students will need to include the terms eggs, tadpole, gills, and frog. She notices a group of English Language Learners, as well as some students with lower reading scores, are unable to describe the order of the life cycle correctly. Which of these extension activities would be the best for the teacher to implement to help students learn these vocabulary words and use them in their writing?

have students draw the life cycle of a frog and include the required terms in the diagram

A second-grade class is halfway through a class novel. The teacher is designing a formative assessment to determine each student's ability to make a prediction. Which of the following approaches should the teacher take when designing the assessment?

have students guess what happens next in the text and provide support with text evidence

Mrs. Radcliffe, a first-grade teacher, wants to support her students' vocabulary development. Which of the following activities would best support her students' vocabulary development?

have students listen to a fictional story and an informational text that use the same vocabulary

A second-grade teacher uses the following handout to introduce a new topic. Choose ONE of the following words to correctly complete BOTH of the following sentences. bus train teach show car I rode in a ________ to visit my grandmother. I hope to ________ my dog to roll over. Now work with a partner to write two sentences. Each sentence must show a different meaning of the word right. Which of the following concepts is the teacher introducing to her class?

homographs

Cindy continues to write the word "hole" when she means "whole." Cindy needs further instruction in:

homophones.

While assessing a student's reading fluency, the teacher has her read aloud from a text while documenting errors and reading speed. At the end of the text, the student seemed to have read the passage easily, made very few errors, and has read at a reasonable rate, but she was unable to correctly answer the reading comprehension questions. Which of the following is a likely cause of the disconnect between the student's oral fluency and her reading comprehension?

limited vocabulary

An elementary-school English language arts teacher has several English learners in her class. At the start of every school year, when speaking with the parents and/or guardians of her students, she mentions the importance of continuing to read with their children in their native language. She mentions this because she knows that:

literacy skills in one language can transfer to another.

A second-grade teacher seats students in partners according to ability levels. Each pair receives one of three differentiated fictional texts. After they have had an opportunity to read the story, each pair completes the sentence stems below. Then, the teacher holds a whole group discussion in which the students share their findings. This story reminds me of a time when ___________. I felt like that character when ____________. If I were that character I would _____________. I am like_________(character name) because we both _________. If ___________ happened to me I would __________. These sentence stems prompt students to:

make textual connections.

Which of the following would best promote the increase of students' reading vocabulary?

make time for students to engage in independent reading

Which of the following best describes the primary purpose of having a student retell a story they read?

measuring the student's level of comprehension

Mrs. Mathers is reading aloud with her class. As she reads she periodically stops and asks students questions about the text to clarify important plot developments and to explain the main ideas in the text. Which of the following is Mrs. Mathers most likely trying to accomplish?

monitoring students' comprehension of the text

Which of the following is not a reasonable way to support struggling readers with a comprehension activity?

pairing them with a partner to read the text aloud

The statement, "Ask students to recall a time when they felt disappointed and what they did to feel better" is most appropriate in which of the following sections of a kindergarten language arts lesson plan?

pre-reading strategy

A second-grade student is a struggling reader with a limited vocabulary. Which of the following would best support her comprehension of grade-level texts?

pre-teaching of vocabulary words

A third-grade teacher reads the following passage from a story: "As Jimmy was brushing his teeth before going to bed, he heard a terrible roar come from the garage. Jimmy didn't know what could be making that terrible noise, but he left a light on in the closet while he slept that night." The teacher then asks students questions about their thoughts on the events of the passage and what might be happening. Which of the following would this activity best promote?

predicting

An English teacher is teaching a group of beginner English Language Learners (ELLs) common school vocabulary (pencil, book, chair) and useful phrases ("May I use the restroom?"). She has been pointing to the vocabulary words, saying them, and then having the students repeat them back orally and write them in their notebooks. The students seem to be getting words confused when they try to use them in the classroom environment. Which of the following support strategies would be most appropriate to help students internalize and use the vocabulary they are learning?

provide pictures of each vocabulary word and sentence stems for writing and speaking

A third-grade class contains students at various levels of English language proficiency. Some have been learning English for less than a year. This week, the teacher has been conducting read alouds featuring biographies as part of a unit on book genres. So far, the teacher has read from the following biographies: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Harriet Tubman. However, next week, the teacher plans to incorporate excerpts from biographies on Caesar Chavez and Frida Kahlo. Then, the students will pick another person of interest, conduct research, and complete the organizer below:

provide the students with sentence stems to guide their writing

A third-grade classroom includes several students who are English Language Learners (ELLs). The students are reading a novel, and the teacher has introduced a list of vocabulary words on a bulletin board. The ELL students are not currently reading on grade level. Which of the following strategies could help them to learn the vocabulary words? Select all answers that apply.

provide translated versions of the vocabulary words pair the vocabulary word with a picture and simple definition

A prekindergarten teacher reads aloud to her class each day. While reading, she will point at the text as she reads to reinforce the alphabetic principle, and she asks questions both during and after reading to improve comprehension skills. What other type of activity should this teacher regularly include to support her students' prekindergartencomprehension skills?

providing time for student questions and comments about the stories read aloud

Which of these strategies is the LEAST effective for developing student vocabulary?

providing weekly word lists for students to study and memorize

A story map would be a reasonable tool for a student requiring support in which of the following skills?

reading comprehension

A teacher wants to promote students' vocabulary development. Which of the following would be the best approach for the teacher to utilize when selecting texts to read aloud to students?

reading from a wide variety of genres and texts

The development of reading comprehension skills is important in elementary students. Which of the following is the LEAST important strategy in promoting reading comprehension among elementary students?

relate oral language to semantics

In preparation for an upcoming unit, a second-grade teacher has identified a list of vocabulary words that will support students' learning. After providing direct instruction on the words' meanings, the teacher is considering how to best support student learning of these new words. Which of the following activities is LEAST likely to help these words become part of the students' working vocabulary?

requiring students to copy definitions into their writer's notebooks

Which of the following best describes a way that a teacher could use student writing to develop new vocabulary?

requiring students to use the editing process to intentionally vary the vocabulary used in the piece of writing.

A third-grade class is working on an Earth Science unit. The teacher has students read a series of articles on topics that will be covered throughout the unit. Within the articles are bolded vocabulary words the students will be tested over at the end of the semester. In order to help students familiarize themselves with these words, the teacher tells them to make a Frayer model in their notebooks for each word they are expected to know. The teacher creates the following model with the students while introducing the activity: The teacher would like to encourage students to use their Frayer Models to incorporate more vocabulary words into their daily writing journals. The teacher could accomplish this goal by:

teaching students how to use a thesaurus to look up additional synonyms to add to their organizers, and subsequently, their writing.

Reading comprehension is:

the process through which a reader creates meaning and understanding from a text.

Which of the following would be a component of effective vocabulary instruction?

the study of roots, prefixes, and suffixes

Which strategy would best help students to self-monitor and reflect upon a text during reading?

think-aloud

A second-grade teacher reads a book to her students with the vocabulary word "ball." Which tier does this vocabulary word fit into?

tier one

Inferential comprehension is when a reader:

understands information that is not stated explicitly.

Literal comprehension is when a reader:

understands the facts or ideas in a piece of writing.

A first-grade teacher is reading aloud from an instructional text on the life cycle of a butterfly. During the reading, she stops to think-aloud with the goal of teaching the class a specific reading skill. Here is an excerpt of the think-aloud with the teacher's dialogue in italics. There are four parts to the life cycle of a butterfly. First, a butterfly lays an ovum, or egg, on a leaf. I wonder what an "ovum" is. I'm going to reread the sentence before and look at the phrases around the word to see if I can figure it out. The word "egg" is right after, and that makes sense. The butterfly chooses a plant that can provide the larvae with food. Once born, the tiny caterpillar starts eating and molts its skin often. I wonder what the word "larvae" means. After reading before and after the word, it seems like the next sentence calls the "larvae" a "tiny caterpillar." You might see pieces of skin coming off the larvae as it grows. Then, the larvae forms a pupa, or chrysalis. Inside the chrysalis, the pupa is growing into a butterfly. Finally, the chrysalis opens and a beautiful butterfly emerges to dry its wings and fly away. I wonder if a pupa and a chrysalis are the same thing? It seems like the words are used close together and that they both mean the home where the butterfly grows. While conducting this think-aloud, the teacher is modeling which aspect of textual analysis?

using context clues

A teacher has noticed that her advanced English language learners with high literacy levels in their native languages share similar reading skills and behaviors with their native English-speaking peers. In fact, when reading a grade-level text, the main difference lies in:

vocabulary size.