STR exam practice

Mr. Byrd's pre-k class begins the day by singing a good morning song. During the song, students say each other's names and clap out the syllables in the names. After the song, the class reviews the calendar, discussing the letters that the day and month begin with (for example, "March begins with what letter?"), the number of the date, whether it is odd or even, and what the weather is like that day. Next, Mr. Byrd introduces the word of the day. Students say the word, discuss the meaning, and try to come up with rhyming words. After this opening discussion, students break up to work on individual reading activities while Mr. Byrd circulates through the room. Mr. Byrd wants to informally assess the students' current skill levels in phonological awareness. He invites students to his desk to participate in a number of targeted activities. Which of the questions below would best assess a student's mastery of syllable awareness?

"What word am I saying when I say 'trum.....pet?'" Saying the syllables of a word separately and asking students to repeat the whole word can test their mastery of syllable awareness.

A third-grade class is working on a cross-curricular project focused on protecting natural environments. The students are reading about various local and national ecosystems, the challenges facing the survival of these areas, and ways humans can work together to protect these natural habitats. As students work, they are encouraged to write unfamiliar vocabulary words on a specific section of the whiteboard. Currently, the word lists include the terms: habitat marsh tundra extinction pollute conservation Any student who writes an unfamiliar term on the board is given the following handout to complete: word: --> Orginal sentence : (circle any contex clues in the sentence above) --> Does the word have any roots, prefixes, or suffixes? --> What do you think the word means? Most of the words on this list are tier three vocabulary words. Once students have written the terms in their notebooks, the teacher holds a discussion on each term. She reads the example sentence from the articles, points out any context clues present, and works with the class to create a working definition of the term. Which activities would most benefit student's learning and retention of these tier three terms? Select all answers that apply.

*Create a word web linking these terms to words the students already know and understand. (Breaking down complex vocabulary through a semantic map or word web helps students build connections between the new term and those they already know.) *Project images of the words and ask students to add a drawing to their vocabulary notebooks. (Because tier three words are content-specific, students may not have any background knowledge to apply to the term. Showing photos when possible gives students a visual clue for the word's meaning which is beneficial when learning tier three terms.)

After conducting a diagnostic spelling test, a teacher is developing a plan to provide direct, targeted instruction for each student. Which activity would be most appropriate for a student in the transitional stage of spelling?

Add suffixes to a root word to create various forms of the word (jump, jumps, jumper, jumping, jumped). This activity would be appropriate for a student in the transitional stage of spelling development.

A kindergarten teacher notices that many of her students have trouble verbally recalling the setting of the short story while reading. She wants to give these students a mini-lesson where they work with identifying the setting. In order to best achieve this goal, the teacher should incorporate which of the following into the mini-lesson?

After annotating a short text for elements of the setting, have students draw a picture of where the story or scene takes place. Teaching students how to find clues to the setting and then allowing them to draw the setting on paper will build student's future skills of creating a visual image of the setting while reading a text.

Before beginning to read each afternoon, she calls on a volunteer to briefly summarize the events from the previous day. While reading, the teacher will periodically stop to verbally question the text, ask students to make a prediction, or clarify understanding of events. She also follows their reading with a quick journal prompt related to the day's chapters. Which of the following would be the best way for the teacher to change the activities described to better support oral language development and participation of all students, including ELL students?

Allocate a few minutes for students to turn and talk with a neighbor, summarizing together before asking for a volunteer to share out to the class. This is the best answer because it will allow all students to spend time practicing oral language skills and provides a low-pressure and authentic opportunity for students of all skill levels to participate.

A third-grade teacher is preparing a reading activity for her class. She has selected a variety of nonfiction texts about various historical figures, and she has ensured that there are texts available at the different reading levels represented in her class. While all of the class will participate in this activity, it will be assigned through the students' reading groups and include small group discussion. The teacher plans to have all students complete a KWL chart. The teacher has already included a KWL chart to support comprehension but wants to make sure pre-reading, during reading, and after reading comprehension activities are all included. Which of the following activities does the teacher need to add to this lesson plan in order to make sure the students have a pre-reading, during reading, and after reading activity to complete?

Ask her students to stop while reading at two different points in the text to make predictions. A KWL is a graphic organizer used to record what students know, what they want to know, and what they learned about a topic, so within this chart, there is a pre-reading and after reading activity. Asking the class to make predictions while they read would be a during reading activity.

During independent reading time, a teacher walks around and holds mini book conferences with each student. She asks basic comprehension questions like, "What's happening now?" or "How did the character respond to X?" While conferencing with Jane, the teacher has trouble getting Jane to relate anything that has happened other than the characters' names. In order to help Jane succeed, what is the first step the teacher should take?

Assess Jane's current reading level and make sure the text is not above her independent reading level. Finding Jane's current reading level and ensuring that her novel selection is within an appropriate range is a good first step for helping Jane read texts that she can comprehend and discuss with less difficulty.

A kindergartener has started showing the ability to decode words by breaking them into simple forms. Which of the following best describes this student's current stage of literacy development?

Beginning Reader Beginning readers are beginning to make sense of the text on the page. They will begin to decode and recognize more words.

A kindergarten classroom is participating in a read aloud of the story How Much Does a Ladybug Weigh? by Alison Limentani. The book counts down from ten and compares the weights of various animals to each other. "10 ants weigh as much as one ladybug. 9 ladybugs weigh the same as 1 grasshopper." On each page, the teacher pauses to ask students what sounds are made by the animals in the illustration. She calls on students to identify the letter the animals' names begin with. They briefly discuss whether they've seen the animal in real life or not. The teacher would like to further her students' understanding of the key concepts of the text. Which activity below will best achieve this goal?

Break students into groups, provide them with a basic scale, and have them weigh and compare a variety of classroom objects, recording their results in a table. Because the book was about weight comparisons, this is the best extension activity to help students understand the concept of weight and size differences.

A kindergarten classroom has three ELL students who recently joined the class. The students are able to answer direct questions from the teacher with one or two-word answers but mostly remain silent. They are attentive during lessons but don't engage much with the English-speaking students. Which strategy should the teacher employ to help move these students from the early production stage of language acquisition to the productive language use stage?

Build in lots of classroom time to pretend play and low-stakes conversational opportunities. At this stage of language acquisition, students need exposure to naturally-occuring English speech. By allowing students opportunities for pretend play, ELL students can listen to native speakers and join in the conversation in a low-stakes environment.

A kindergarten teacher has spent time each day working with her students to explore many of the word families common in the English language. Before moving on to new skills, the teacher individually assesses each student by holding up a series of words and asking the student to read them aloud. While most of the students were proficient at decoding these CVC words, some of the students continued to struggle. The following depicts the teacher's notes on one student's assessment: Word List Student Response cat ✓ met /m/ /ĭ/ /t/ bat /b/ /ŏ/ /t/ pot /p/ /ŭ/ /t/ wet /w/ /ī/ /t/ fit No answer Which of the following is most likely to be the next phonics skill that the teacher will cover with the kindergarten class?

CCVC words It would be reasonable to expect that the teacher would now cover CCVC words because they will build on the word family knowledge already discussed by adding consonant blends to the beginning of the word.

A teacher is reviewing her student's current decoding skills. She recently called students to her desk to have them read from a list. While the students read, the teacher underlines any words that were not read correctly. The following is one student's graded assessment. ream pat made ship cup bath pear slot mist hair sand tote Based on these errors, this student is ready for instruction in

CVVC spelling patterns The student misread all of the CVVC words on the list, indicating he needs instruction in this spelling pattern.

A third-grade teacher's class is made of students from many different cultures and includes several English language learners. While choosing texts for the class, she is careful to choose materials that are culturally responsive and expose students to a diverse selection of texts. Which of the following represents a positive way to incorporate culturally responsive reading instruction into her classroom?

Choose texts with universal themes that are common to many cultures. This is an effective way to provide culturally responsive instruction.

At the beginning of the school year, a kindergarten teacher informally assesses students' awareness of print concepts, specifically text directionality. Children often naturally develop an understanding of this concept as they are read to by parents or other caretakers even before beginning traditional schooling, but she determines that some of her students have not yet grasped this concept. Which of the following demonstrates the best way for her to differentiate in order to support their development of this skill?

Combine direct instruction over text directionality with frequent modeling through read alouds. Combining direct instruction with modeling is the best way to differentiate for these students.

While analyzing the results of a recent reading assessment, the teacher notices a small group of students are having difficulty identifying the main character and critical plot points in the text. Which strategy below would best help these students develop this skill?

Conduct a mini-lesson about main characters and plot in which the students participate in a guided reading over a new text. Pulling these students aside for a guided reading will allow the teacher to model strategies to use while searching for the main character and key plot points. It also provides an opportunity for the teacher to have a conversation with students and further assess their understanding of the skill.

A third-grade class has broken into small groups to participate in differentiated learning opportunities. The teacher has created groups based on student interests and current skill levels. One group will read various fiction and nonfiction texts describing life during ancient times, as well as studying relevant root words and vocabulary terms, and continuing to work on spelling and decoding complex, unfamiliar words. Today the group is reading the short article "Life in Athens and Rome." Below is an excerpt from the article: The citizens of Athens and Rome lived similar lives. In both cities, men were responsible for working outside the home. Women were expected to stay home and take care of the house and children. The people were polytheistic, worshiping many gods and goddesses. You may have heard of Zeus, Poseidon, or Athena, for whom the city of Athens is named. For fun, the Romans attended gladiator battles at the Colosseum. Athenians enjoyed spending time at the theatre, watching tragedies and comedies played out on stage. At the end of the reading, the group answers some teacher-generated questions like, "What would it be like to live in Ancient Athens or Rome? Would you choose to go back to that time, or would you rather stay here in the present? Take a few seconds to think about your answer, and then share with your group." While the groups are reading and discussing, the teacher walks around listening to the groups' discussions and responding to individual students or groups as needed. While walking around, the teacher overhears this group reading the sentence, "The people were polytheistic, worshiping many gods and goddesses." The student currently reading struggles to read the word, so the teacher steps in to assist. She asks, "Does anyone know what it means to be 'polytheistic'?" No one volunteers an answer. What should the teacher do next to help students define the word contextually?

Conduct a think-aloud, pointing out how the comma and following words help give meaning. Modeling how to spot and use context clues via a think-aloud will encourage students to do the same in the future

A kindergarten classroom is participating in a read aloud of the story How Much Does a Ladybug Weigh? by Alison Limentani. The book counts down from ten and compares the weights of various animals to each other. "10 ants weigh as much as one ladybug. 9 ladybugs weigh the same as 1 grasshopper." On each page, the teacher pauses to ask students what sounds are made by the animals in the illustration. She calls on students to identify the letter the animals' names begin with. They briefly discuss whether they've seen the animal in real life or not. What is the primary purpose of allowing students to make animal sounds during the reading?

Creating the sound effects associated with a reading is one way to engage students in a deeper understanding of a text. Allowing students to make sound effects while reading is one strategy for engaging readers in a read aloud.

A first-grade teacher is adjusting her plans to be more deliberate with her instruction of morphemic analysis. Based on the TEKS benchmarks, which morphemic analysis skill should the teacher aim to help all of her first graders master by the end of the school year?

Decode and identify meaning of words with the inflectional endings -s, -es and -ed This is the least complex of the skills described, and it is included as a benchmark for first grade in the TEKS.

A third-grade teacher is preparing a reading activity for her class. She has selected a variety of nonfiction texts about various historical figures, and she has ensured that there are texts available at the different reading levels represented in her class. While all of the class will participate in this activity, it will be assigned through the students' reading groups and include small group discussion. The teacher plans to have all students complete a KWL chart. After completing their before, during, and after reading activities, the teacher plans to assess their comprehension of the text. Which of the following questions she should ask if she would like to assess their evaluative comprehension?

Do you think this person made a big impact on our world? Why or why not? This question assesses their evaluative comprehension because it requires the students to evaluate the historical figure and express their own opinion.

A teacher gives an informal assessment asking students to spell a variety of CVC words, most with three letters but some with four. Below is a sample of one student's assessment. Spoken CVC Word Student Spelling bat bt fir fr dog dg slip sp hum hm After the assessment, the teacher breaks students into groups based on their performance in order to provide direct intervention or enrichment. Students in this group would benefit most from which intervention activity?

Give the group Elkonin boxes and tokens. Have students listen to CVC words and move tokens into the box to represent the phonemes in the words. As a group, compare answers before checking against an answer key. Because this group is struggling to identify medial sounds in a word, working with Elkonin boxes will enable students to practice identifying each sound in the word. They can discuss their answers before checking for accuracy and work together to hear medial sounds.

Working with a small group of kindergarteners, a teacher reads aloud a short book that is written using repetitive language and mostly decodable CVC words. Next, the teacher writes down the following examples of rhyming words that were in the book. cat hat sat Using this set as an example, the teacher explains that the reader can use the pattern established by the rhymes from the book to decode the words "pat" and "mat." She then writes the word, "rat" and asks for a volunteer to read the word aloud. Which of the following elements could the teacher add to the lesson in order to support student understanding of print concepts?

Holding the book up so that it is visible to the students, the teacher points to the words as she reads them aloud. This is a good way to support print concepts because it will draw their attention to text directionality.

A third-grade teacher is planning a lesson on themes using a book about a little girl that wants to be an engineer. She will anchor the lesson with a read aloud and facilitate various activities that relate back to the story. In the story, the young girl faces a mixture of obstacles that involve inventions that fail, perceived lack of support from those around her, and not feeling confident in herself, before ultimately realizing that failures are all a part of learning. After reading the book aloud, the teacher will use the story to introduce the concept of theme. Together, the class will discuss what message the author was trying to help the students learn. In addition to the theme, the teacher would like to incorporate another literary analysis skill into their discussion of the book. Based on TEKS for English Language Arts and Reading, which of the following represents a characteristic or structure of literature that is a benchmark for students in the third grade?

How does the setting influence the plot of the story? Identifying how the setting influences the plot is a third-grade TEKS skill.

A teacher wants to work with students on identifying organizational patterns. Which excerpt below would the teacher use in a lesson on spatial order?

In the center of the room sat a peculiar writing table. It sat atop a circular woven rug, positioned just so that the afternoon sun shone directly on the writing space. Inside the desk, placed side by side, were a quill, ink bottle, and cream stationery bearing the letter L in ornate purple script. Spatial order arranges ideas based on their physical location. This is an example of spatial order, and the words "in the center," "atop," and "side by side" are indicative of this organizational style.

A third-grade class has broken into small groups to participate in differentiated learning opportunities. The teacher has created groups based on student interests and current skill levels. One group will read various fiction and nonfiction texts describing life during ancient times, as well as studying relevant root words and vocabulary terms, and continuing to work on spelling and decoding complex, unfamiliar words. Today the group is reading the short article "Life in Athens and Rome." Below is an excerpt from the article: The citizens of Athens and Rome lived similar lives. In both cities, men were responsible for working outside the home. Women were expected to stay home and take care of the house and children. The people were polytheistic, worshiping many gods and goddesses. You may have heard of Zeus, Poseidon, or Athena, for whom the city of Athens is named. For fun, the Romans attended gladiator battles at the Colosseum. Athenians enjoyed spending time at the theatre, watching tragedies and comedies played out on stage. At the end of the reading, the group answers some teacher-generated questions like, "What would it be like to live in Ancient Athens or Rome? Would you choose to go back to that time, or would you rather stay here in the present? Take a few seconds to think about your answer, and then share with your group." While the groups are reading and discussing, the teacher walks around listening to the groups' discussions and responding to individual students or groups as needed. What is the most likely primary purpose of the discussion at the end of the reading?

It encourages students to make text-to-self connections. By asking students to put themselves in ancient times and choose whether or not to live then, students are making a connection between themselves and the text, an important active reading technique.

In an attempt to build on the class' current vocabulary instruction, a third-grade teacher plans to incorporate activities that promote word consciousness. Time is allocated for students to share about words, to study word etymology, and to play word games. Which of the following explanations best describes how word consciousness differs from typical vocabulary instruction?

It focuses on encouraging student interest in unfamiliar words. Word consciousness approaches vocabulary instruction by encouraging student interest in unfamiliar words and new words that can be used to replace familiar ones. It focuses both on the meaning of new words and how they are used in sentences.

A second-grade teacher is planning vocabulary instruction. He chooses academic vocabulary words and words with high utility. Which of the following best describes a word with high utility?

It will be encountered frequently. Words with high utility are words that will be encountered frequently. These make good vocabulary words because they will support reading fluency and comprehension, and they will be used often which will help add the words to their working vocabulary.

A kindergarten classroom is composed of 30% ELL learners whose native language is Spanish. What is one way the teacher can support these students in learning print concepts?

Label parts of the classroom in both Spanish and English. Labeling the classroom environment reinforces the idea that words are made up of letters. By using both languages, the student is able to understand the print concept without having to also decode the English word.

During independent reading time in a pre-k classroom, the teacher notices Alec consistently holds his book upside down and seems to flip back and forth between the pages with no meaningful purpose. Which of these strategies would best help Alec learn the correct way to hold and read a book?

Model correct reading techniques through frequent small and whole group class readings. Modeling how to hold a book and turn the pages is an effective strategy for teaching the area of print concepts for which Alec needs help.

A third-grade class is reading the novel Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. Students have been assigned independent reading for some sections, and the teacher reads certain sections aloud with the whole group to practice reading comprehension and literary analysis. At the start of the novel, the teacher asks students if any of them own a dog. Students who do are asked to share a description of their pets, their names, and any funny stories they can remember about their dogs. As students read, they are asked to fill out a plot diagram and a character map for the main characters, as identified by the teacher. During whole class readings, the teacher presents mini-lessons on relevant topics, such as identifying setting, character development, and plot structure. During a whole-group reading session, the teacher wants to assess her students' evaluative level of reading comprehension. Which question below would accomplish this goal?

Opal refers to Winn-Dixie as a "Less Fortunate." Do you agree with her? Evaluative comprehension, a student's ability to analyze and evaluate the text through making connections or expressing opinions, can be assessed by asking this type of question.

A third-grade teacher groups students together to discuss the nonfiction article they just finished. The teacher provides a list of discussion questions for the students to answer. As she walks around, she overhears a lot of simple "yes" or "no" style answers and realizes that the students are not engaging critically in this discussion. She wants to encourage her students to participate in more academic conversations about their reading. Which of the following would best promote this goal?

Post a list of sentence starters on the wall for students to reference. Providing sentence starters and encouraging students to use them while discussing academic texts is one way to achieve this goal.

A second-grade teacher has recently completed a unit on multisyllabic words. The teacher wants to assess how well students have mastered decoding open and closed syllables. The teacher presents the students with a nonsense word list. She reveals the words one at a time and has the student say the word aloud. The teacher notes whether the word is read correctly (✓) or not (X) on a separate copy of the assessment. Here is one student's assessment results. ranish X sinvet ✓ inzeck ✓ maver X lenpass ✓ nittop ✓ swidy X zoding X jabet X stelnex ✓ Which teacher-guided activity below would provide the best remediation for this student to help him meet the instructional goal?

Present the student with a list of words. Model how to segment a word into two syllables, and then review the difference between an open and closed syllable. Practice pronouncing long vowels in open syllables together. This student has struggled to decode open syllable words. Open syllables contain a vowel at the end of the syllable and will produce a long vowel sound. Closed syllables have a consonant at the end (len-pass). The student missed all the words with open syllables (ra-nish, ja-bet, etc). Reviewing how to identify and pronounce an open syllable will help this student in the future.

A third-grade teacher organized a morphology unit that focused on the following prefixes and suffixes: Prefixes Suffixes non- -ness dis- -y in- -full pre- After instruction and practice opportunities, the teacher plans a summative assessment to evaluate students' ability to apply these skills when reading words. With the goals of structural analysis in mind, how should the teacher assess this vocabulary skill?

Provide a list of words that use these affixes and ask the students to divide the words to determine their meanings. This is the best choice because it requires evidence of their knowledge of the meanings of the affixes and their ability to apply the knowledge to determine the meanings of words.

A second-grade class is reading a nonfiction text just slightly above most student's independent reading level. Most students in the class are reading at grade level, and the majority of the students are familiar with the subject matter. In order to ensure that students fully comprehend the article, the teacher previews difficult vocabulary terms and shows a short video related to the topic. What other step can the teacher take to be sure students can easily identify the main idea of the passage?

Provide an appropriate graphic organizer for students to complete while reading. Because this text is slightly above the average independent reading level, students may struggle to fully comprehend all parts of the text. Providing an appropriate graphic organizer can help students pull out important information and ensure comprehension.

A first-grade teacher has informally assessed her students' oral language skills and identified certain students in need of support while orally answering comprehension questions. Which of the following activities would best support these students' oral language development?

Provide sentence stems or sentence frames to scaffold their oral language skills. This is an effective way to encourage the use of oral language skills while also providing support that will help build speaking confidence.

During a staff meeting, a few science teachers mention that they are having problems with students reading and comprehending the science textbook on their own. The teachers have previewed the important vocabulary terms and attempted to front-load the lessons with visual depictions of the science in action when possible. After the meeting ends, a reading teacher says she has some ideas. In order to best help students comprehend while reading, the teacher might suggest which of the following?

Provide students with a text-appropriate graphic organizer to complete while reading. Giving a graphic organizer to use as a guide while reading can help students focus on the key information in the text and will also provide a way to review the material after reading.

A second-grade teacher is introducing a new multifaceted class project. The teacher uses the projector to introduce each component and allows students to ask questions. During the project roll-out, the teacher notices that Simon, an ELL student, appears confused. Simon has been identified as being in the intermediate stage of listening, according to the TELPAS Proficiency Level Descriptors. What should the teacher do to be sure Simon is clear about the project's expectations?

Repeat instructions in a simplified way and provide a written copy of the expectations with key words broken down. Intermediate level students may need instructions repeated, repeated more slowly, and or simplified instructions.

Mrs. Johnson's first-grade class has just started a unit of study on the solar system. While silently reading a short fiction text about two animals that travel to space, Mrs. Johnson walks about the room and looks over the graphic organizer students are expected to complete during the reading. She notices that quite a few of her ELL students have written almost nothing on the paper and appear to be struggling to process the text. What is the first step Mrs. Johnson should take in order to best help these students succeed with comprehending this text?

Review important space vocabulary terms using pictures and cognates when possible. Providing photos, cognates, and definitions for the content-specific vocabulary in the text is the first step a teacher should take in order to ensure the success of ELL readers.

A second-grade teacher is planning to use an informational text about the accomplishments of Amelia Earhart as an opportunity for her students to practice their summary skills. Prior to independently reading the text, the teacher will show the class a photograph of Earhart in the cockpit of a plane, and the class will watch a short video that overviews the history of aviation. The teacher's lesson plans demonstrate her understanding of the skills that support reading comprehension. Which of the following best describes her goal for the pre-reading activity?

Schema development supports comprehension. The teacher is supporting schema development prior to reading the text. Building background knowledge and activating prior knowledge will improve comprehension.

A third-grade class is reading a nonfiction article on bees. Throughout the reading, the teacher asks basic and higher-level comprehension questions. Students are expected to informally write their answers to the questions on a paper, then discuss their answers with a partner. Once this discussion has happened, the teacher calls on a student randomly to share her answer with the whole class. How does this discussion strategy benefit students' oral language development?

Students are given multiple opportunities to practice their thoughts before being expected to speak before the whole class. Some students struggle to voice their thoughts in front of a whole group. By providing two practice rounds (written and with a partner), the students who might clam up when asked to share with the group are not forced to come up with and share an answer immediately.

Mr. Clark devotes a whole month of his class time introducing students to root words, practicing using and defining words with roots, playing word games where students create new words with existing roots, and other morphology-based activities. These morphology lessons demonstrate Mr. Clark's awareness of which concept related to literacy development?

Students who learn roots, prefixes, and suffixes can more easily decode new vocabulary while reading. Morphology is the study of forms of words and meaningful word parts, including roots, prefixes, and suffixes.

A teacher gives an informal assessment asking students to spell a variety of CVC words, most with three letters but some with four. Below is a sample of one student's assessment. Spoken CVC Word Student Spelling bat bt fir fr dog dg slip sp hum hm Based on these answers, this student is at what level of phonemic segmentation?

The student is able to hear both the initial and final consonant sounds in words. This student is able to hear the initial and final consonant sounds as indicated by writing two consonants during the assessment.

A kindergarten teacher has spent time each day working with her students to explore many of the word families common in the English language. Before moving on to new skills, the teacher individually assesses each student by holding up a series of words and asking the student to read them aloud. While most of the students were proficient at decoding these CVC words, some of the students continued to struggle. The following depicts the teacher's notes on one student's assessment: Word List Student Response cat ✓ met /m/ /ĭ/ /t/ bat /b/ /ŏ/ /t/ pot /p/ /ŭ/ /t/ wet /w/ /ī/ /t/ fit No answer Which of the following is the best example of a lesson that may have led up to the individual assessments described in the above scenario?

The students work with a partner to use letter tiles to explore building different words within the day's word family, sharing out any words they find with the class. This activity helps support student understanding of word families. The skills practiced in this activity will support their ability to decode and encode words.

At the beginning of a new term, a teacher asks students to fill out a questionnaire about their lives, interests, experiences in school, strengths, and basic reading habits. Which of the following is not an example of how this questionnaire should be used to help in the classroom?

This information can be used to group students into pods based on their similarities. This questionnaire is an example of information relevant to an asset-based approach to education. Asset-based education seeks to break students of biases by celebrating diversity of background and strengths. Grouping students based on similarities would negate this approach.

A kindergarten teacher has spent time each day working with her students to explore many of the word families common in the English language. Before moving on to new skills, the teacher individually assesses each student by holding up a series of words and asking the student to read them aloud. While most of the students were proficient at decoding these CVC words, some of the students continued to struggle. The following depicts the teacher's notes on one student's assessment: Word List Student Response cat ✓ met /m/ /ĭ/ /t/ bat /b/ /ŏ/ /t/ pot /p/ /ŭ/ /t/ wet /w/ /ī/ /t/ fit No answer Which of the following would be the best way to support the student whose assessment is shown above and other students in the class that are similarly still struggling with the CVC words?

Use small group instruction to continue direct instruction over sound-to-letter correspondence and blending sounds. Weak sound to letter correspondence and blending skills are the most likely cause of the errors in the example assessment. This type of small group instruction would be important to help these students master decoding CVC words.

A third-grade teacher is planning a lesson on themes using a book about a little girl that wants to be an engineer. She will anchor the lesson with a read aloud and facilitate various activities that relate back to the story. In the story, the young girl faces a mixture of obstacles that involve inventions that fail, perceived lack of support from those around her, and not feeling confident in herself, before ultimately realizing that failures are all a part of learning. After reading the book aloud, the teacher will use the story to introduce the concept of theme. Together, the class will discuss what message the author was trying to help the students learn. In order to support their comprehension of the text, the teacher plans to pre-teach some words from the text that may be unfamiliar to some students. She includes the following words: perplexed engineer dismayed eaves Which of the following activities would best support their understanding of these words and their comprehension of the text?

Working with a partner, the students will look up the definition of each word, discuss the meaning, use it in a sentence, and represent it with a picture. This represents an effective way to study vocabulary. It involves collaboration and conversation as well as working with the word in various ways.

Which of the following would be the most effective way to assess reading in a first-grade classroom? -call on students to read aloud to the class on a rotating basis -frequent informal assessment of reading comprehension along with periodic formal assessment of fluency -a combination of frequent informal assessments and occasional formal assessments at predetermined points during the school year -a formal pre-assessment followed by frequent informal assessments

a combination of frequent informal assessments and occasional formal assessments at predetermined points during the school year Teachers should use a balance of formal and informal assessment to guide instruction and track student progress.

A teacher arranges a parent meeting to discuss some observed vocabulary challenges. The teacher tells the parents that the student does not recognize common instructional language used by the teacher in the classroom. Based on the teacher's observations, the student is significantly below the 3,000 to 4,000 words that children her age are generally expected to understand by the end of the school year. The teacher feels strongly that they should make a deliberate effort to improve the students' vocabulary to prevent the Matthew Effect and to support reading development. The teacher then describes her plans to support the student's vocabulary development within the classroom and the process to determine whether further intervention is necessary. Finally, the group discusses ways for the parents to support their child from home. The teacher expresses concerns about how the student's limited vocabulary will impact reading development. Which of the following two reading skills is the teacher likely concerned about in relation to the student's vocabulary? Select all answers that apply.

ability to comprehend texts ability to read fluently

A teacher calls a student to her desk and asks the student to read from a passage out loud. As the student reads, the teacher records any errors in pronunciation made by the student. This teacher is assessing the student's:

accuracy. Noting any errors in pronunciation while reading is a way to assess a reader's accuracy.

A second-grade student is reading from a text and comes across the following sentence. "I'd go outside, but it's raining cats and dogs!" He raises his hand to call the teacher over. He asks how it can rain cats and dogs. The teacher replies, "'Raining cats and dogs' is something called an idiom," and suggests he looks at the illustration to take a guess what that might mean. The student reviews the illustration showing a heavy rain and asks, "It means there is a lot of rain?" Based on this example, this student is likely in which stage of reading proficiency, according to the TELPAS Proficiency Level Descriptors? -begining -intermediate -advanced -advanced-high

advanced Beginning to understand and explore literal and figurative meanings of words is an example of what can be expected of an advanced reader.

While preparing literacy development lessons for her kindergarten students, the teacher is considering how she will need to differentiate her instruction in order to support ELL students in class. Which of the following represents a way in which an ELL's home language could cause language interference for these learners? -letter and sound correspondence -punctuation -print directionality -all of the above

all of the above

A prekindergarten teacher gives each student a tray of sand and asks them to trace the letter "s" into the sand while making the /s/ sound out loud. This lesson is best designed to support the development of what concept?

alphabetic principle Since they are repeating the letter's sound, they are reinforcing the connection between the letter and the sound it makes.

Working with a small group of kindergarteners, a teacher reads aloud a short book that is written using repetitive language and mostly decodable CVC words. Next, the teacher writes down the following examples of rhyming words that were in the book. cat hat sat Using this set as an example, the teacher explains that the reader can use the pattern established by the rhymes from the book to decode the words "pat" and "mat." She then writes the word, "rat" and asks for a volunteer to read the word aloud. Which of the following best describes this type of phonics lesson?

analogy-based phonics approach The teacher directs the students to recognize familiar rimes and connect them to a new onset. This is an example of analogy-based phonics.

A science teacher is selecting a vocabulary list of tier two words to cover in their first unit of the school year. Which set of words is most likely to be included on that list?

analyze, describe, identify Tier two words are high-frequency academic words. Analyze, describe, and identify are all words that are common to the academic world but not specific to only one subject.

A veteran teacher has been asked by the principal to adjust his curriculum to include more multicultural literature and diverse authors. When choosing multicultural literature for the classroom, the teacher should look for texts that:

are reflective of the cultural makeup of his students while also offering new experiences of different, underrepresented cultures. Students come to texts with background knowledge when the multicultural literature matches their lives, but finding an appropriate balance between familiar and new is important for helping students grow as readers and citizens of the world.

Ms. Holden uses circle time every afternoon to read a new story aloud to her kindergarten class. She uses big books so that every student can easily see the text. While she reads, she scans her finger along the text. They discuss who the author and illustrator are, how to hold a book, turn the pages, and identify the front and back cover. Ms. Holden frequently asks students to help her read by pointing to parts of the book for her. Ms. Holden calls students to her desk individually. On the table is a set of alphabet tiles, some with uppercase and some lowercase. In order to assess the student's mastery of the alphabetic principle, Ms. Holden would:

ask the student to make the sound of each letter as she points to it. The alphabetic principle is a student's understanding of letter sounds, so asking them to say the letter sound would assess this mastery.

Part of the first-grade curriculum includes vocabulary development. When a teacher recognizes that one of her students is in need of interventions specifically to support vocabulary development, which of the following would be the least effective way to support this student?

assign lists of vocabulary words for the student to study at home Learning new vocabulary requires students to work with words in a variety of ways and contexts. This would not be a productive way to develop the student's vocabulary.

A few weeks into the school year, Mr. Kim notices that a couple of his students are unwilling to participate in classroom discussions and seem to be checked out most of the day. In order to help these students succeed, Mr. Kim should:

attempt various motivational techniques to discover if the students are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated. By discovering if the students are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, Mr. Kim can tailor his teaching style and reactions in a way that will help the students engage and desire to participate.

A second-grade class has started a new cross-curricular unit studying forces and motion. The class is reading various nonfiction articles describing force and motion and performing experiments to see these forces in action. Before reading or performing experiments, the class reviews any relevant, new vocabulary terms, and Katie does a good job of looking up words she struggles to understand on her own. Despite all this, Katie is struggling to comprehend the articles the class is reading. Her most recent oral fluency assessment scored as follows: Book level: Mid-second grade Accuracy rate: 85% Error rate: 1:10 (average of 1 error for every 10 words read) Self-correction rate: 1:4 (average of 1 self-correction for every 4 errors) Comprehension: Able to correctly answer 8/10 questions during and after reading Based on this information, what is the most likely component of reading comprehension causing Katie to struggle? -vocabulary knowledge -background knowledge -comprehension knowledge -reading fluency

background knowledge Based on Katie's scores on her assessment and the in-class support for vocabulary knowledge, it is likely that Katie is struggling with these articles due to a lack of prior knowledge about the topic.

A kindergarten class is writing about their favorite outdoor activity. The following is a student's response. go ot rid suter blu pla wit amigos Based on this writing sample, this student is likely in which stage of writing proficiency, according to the TELPAS Proficiency Level Descriptors? -beginning -intermediate -advanced -advanced-high

beginning Beginning writers can use high-frequency words, but struggle with spelling and grammar. They may also revert to their native language occasionally.

A teacher hands out a stack of picture cards with familiar images (a ball, the sun, a chair) to each student. The class is asked to lay the cards on their desks face up. Next, the teacher says she will say a word slowly ("sss..uuu..nnn"). The students are to pick up the picture that matches the word she said and hold it in their hands. After everyone has grabbed a picture, the class holds the photos up for the teacher to scan. Then the class says the word together, and the process repeats. This activity helps students decode words by practicing how to:

blend phonemes into words. In order to choose the correct picture, the students have to be able to blend the phonemes spoken by the teacher into the correct word. This activity helps practice blending.

A kindergarten teacher is working individually with students to assess their word recognition levels. The teacher presents students with a flashcard and asks them to read the word on the card. Some cards include illustrations with text and others are only text. Some words are common sight words while others require more skilled decoding. A student in the partial-alphabetic stage of word recognition would be most successful reading:

cards with both text and illustrations. Students in the partial-alphabetic stage have a beginning knowledge of letter sounds and would likely use the illustration as an aide to logically guess the word.

A new student, Raven, has arrived in Mrs. Allan's first-grade class. Mrs. Allan administers various diagnostic tests to establish Raven's current skill level, including a timed reading. She determines that Raven is a non-automatic reader. During this assessment, she only read at a rate of 25 words per minute. Raven is able to converse with ease, but she lacks the same confidence while reading. Mrs. Allan starts Raven on some independent activities to build letter-sound correspondence. Raven is given a set of sight word flashcards to take home and practice. Raven practices identifying and isolating phonemes both independently and with a small group. After a week, Mrs. Allan administers another timed reading to see whether or not Raven is making progress. This time Raven reads at 29 words per minute and Mrs. Allan notices that Raven self-corrected sight word errors two or three times, something she did not do before. While she has improved in speed and accuracy, her reading is still choppy and lacks expression. In addition to these classroom activities, Mrs. Allan should also include what activity to improve Raven's accuracy and speed?

choral or repeated readings using a grade-level text Repeated reading of the same text helps build fluency in non-automatic readers. Mrs. Allan can introduce repeated readings in a variety of ways to benefit her non-automatic readers.

During a team meeting, the teachers brainstorm reading comprehension activities that could be applicable to an upcoming unit in social studies. When considering the characteristics of the curriculum, which of the following strategies is the least likely to be applicable to Social Studies?

completing a graphic organizer of a plot diagram following a reading passage Plot diagrams are applicable to narratives, not informational texts.

During independent work time, a teacher walks around and has a short conversation with each student. The teacher asks about the student's day, what the student is working on, and other casual and relevant conversation points. While talking, the teacher makes quick notes about how well the student responds to questions, stays on topic, and uses complete sentences while speaking. By having these conversations, the teacher is most likely trying to:

conduct an informal assessment of students' current oral language skills. Being able to carry on a conversation, use complete sentences, and respond to questions are all components of successful oral language development. The teacher is informally assessing students in these areas during these conversations.

Mrs. Allan starts Raven on some independent activities to build letter-sound correspondence. Raven is given a set of sight word flashcards to take home and practice. Raven practices identifying and isolating phonemes both independently and with a small group. After a week, Mrs. Allan administers another timed reading to see whether or not Raven is making progress. This time Raven reads at 29 words per minute and Mrs. Allan notices that Raven self-corrected sight word errors two or three times, something she did not do before. While she has improved in speed and accuracy, her reading is still choppy and lacks expression. In order to meet first-grade fluency benchmarks, Raven should be reading:

connected texts with improving accuracy and speed. A first-grade student should be able to read connected texts and continually improve her speed and fluency as reading skills progress.

A first-grade teacher has recently given an informal assessment. The teacher projected 5 words on the board, and students were asked to copy the words and put a slash between the onset and rime. Below is a copy of one student's assessment. s/hine c/hew w/hale p/hone k/nee Which phonics concept does this student need more instruction?

consonant digraphs The student is struggling to recognize consonant digraphs as the onsets of these words. An onset is any sound or sounds that come before the vowel sound of a syllable. This student indicated the first letter of each word to be the onset, when both letters of the digraph should have been selected since these two letters make one sound. For example, /sh/ is the onset of "shine." The s and h should not be separated since they make one sound together.

Students in a first-grade class are silently reading a nonfiction magazine of their choice. While reading, a student comes across a word he doesn't know. He raises his hand, and the following is the dialogue that occurs. "What word is this?" "Try sounding out each letter. I bet you can figure it out!" "P...ee....c...h." "When "c" and "h" are next to each other, they make a unique sound. Do you remember what that sound is?" "Oh, right. So...peach!" "Great job! I knew you could figure it out." As the student attempts to sound out the word, he makes a mistake with which type of phoneme? -vowel digraphs -diphthongs -consonant blends -consonant digraphs

consonant digraphs The student separates the "c" and "h" into two separate sounds, indicating that he did not recognize the consonant digraph.

A first-grade student is reading aloud from a picture book. He gets to the following sentence and pauses at the underlined word. The boy has a soccer ball. He plays with his friends. The student looks ahead to the rest of the sentence and scans the photo on the page. He thinks to himself, "What does the boy have? It's black and white. A soccer ball!" Then he says "soccer" aloud and continues reading. The student is using what word identification strategy to decode the unfamiliar word? -miscue analysis -morpheme analysis -phonemic analysis -contextual analysis

contextual analysis The student uses the context of the sentence and the provided illustration to make an educated guess at decoding the unfamiliar word.

Students in a first-grade class are silently reading a nonfiction magazine of their choice. While reading, a student comes across a word he doesn't know. He raises his hand, and the following is the dialogue that occurs. "What word is this?" "Try sounding out each letter. I bet you can figure it out!" "P...ee....c...h." "When "c" and "h" are next to each other, they make a unique sound. Do you remember what that sound is?" "Oh, right. So...peach!" "Great job! I knew you could figure it out." In this example, the word "peach" would be categorized as a(n): -irregular word -sight word -high-frequency word -decodable word

decodable word. Decodable words are words that follow common letter/sound correspondence rules, so students can decode them. "Peach" is an example of a decodable word because it follows standard phonics rules.

By the end of pre-k, students should have all of the following phonological awareness skills except which? -Decode simple CVC words -deleting a word from a compound word -combining words to create a compound word -blending the onset and rime of familiar words

decode simple CVC words

When a new student joins a second-grade class, the teacher administers a reading assessment. The teacher determines the student's reading skills are currently below grade level. Despite the assessment results, the student participates well in class discussions, specifically when a text is read aloud. Based on the teacher's current information, the teacher should differentiate a reading assignment in which way to best support this student?

decrease the complexity of the student's independent reading texts from grade-level to the student's current reading level Independent reading should be at a student's reading level. Assigning texts for this student on her current level would be an effective way to differentiate reading instruction.

After finishing a recent unit, a first-grade teacher would like to test her student's knowledge of the vocabulary terms highlighted. She decides to ask the class to write a short story using as many of the terms as they can. In order to ensure that this assignment truly assesses the student's vocabulary knowledge, the teacher should:

ignore any grammatical, spelling, or writing convention errors while grading the stories. Grading the short story on grammar, spelling, or writing conventions could skew the focus of the assignment away from its intended purpose - to see if students truly understand the vocabulary terms.

A third-grade teacher prepares a lesson in which she provides students with the following lists of words: List 1 List 2 List 3 List 4 undo untrue unwell unfinished revise redo revisit replay happily friendly mysteriously angrily helpless needless spotless harmless She begins by asking the students to study each list and work with a partner to discuss what they notice about the lists, create new names for each, and share their ideas out with the class. After sharing out their ideas and discussing, the class agrees to rename the lists, "'un- Words," "'re- Words," "-ly Words," and "-less Words." List three is the best option to teach students about which of the following topics?

derivational affixes Each of the words in the third list changes to a new part of speech, with the addition of the suffix, making them good examples of derivational affixes. When "happy" becomes "happily," it changes from an adjective to an adverb.

A first-grade teacher implements vocabulary instruction through exposure to new words, instruction related to the word's definitions, and exposure to the words in context often in the class's reading. How could the teacher build on these practices to deepen student understanding of the words?

develop writing assignments that require the students to use vocabulary words Incorporating new vocabulary into their writing will deepen their level of understanding of the words. Students must truly understand the meanings of the words to use them effectively in their writing in ways that make sense and enhance the written piece.

A first-grade teacher finds an animated video depicting a familiar fairy tale story. The video has subtitles on-screen during the animation. The teacher plays the video once for the class. Next, she gives each student a copy of the transcript and asks them to follow along on paper with a finger while the video plays. Listening to audio-recordings of a text while reading along primarily benefits students in which area?

developing reading fluency skills Hearing a story read aloud while following along is one way to help students develop reading fluency skills. By listening to a fluent reader, students can hear and then mimic reading with appropriate speed and prosody. Students are also able to make the connection between punctuation and written text as they follow along with the audio recording.

Approximately halfway through the school year, a first-grade teacher administered a spelling test designed to assess a variety of spelling rules and phonics skills. The teacher will use the results from this assessment to evaluate student progress and plan for upcoming spelling instruction. The following table shows one student's answers to the assessment. Called Word Student Spelling cord cord shed shed lane lane coin coyn bird burd torn torn crawl crol found fond shirt shirt After analyzing this student's responses, which of the following skills is the teacher most likely going to address in upcoming spelling instruction for this student?

diphthongs The student made repeated errors using diphthongs. This is most likely the skill that the teacher would plan further instruction on for this student.

A third-grade student reads with accuracy and prosody but still struggles to comprehend much of what is read. While the teacher supports this student within the classroom, which of the following would be the most beneficial way that the parents could support reading comprehension at home?

discuss the genre and purpose for reading with their child before reading together This is a prereading strategy that can improve reading comprehension by preparing the student for the type of information she will encounter in the text.

Ms. Holden uses circle time every afternoon to read a new story aloud to her kindergarten class. She uses big books so that every student can easily see the text. While she reads, she scans her finger along the text. They discuss who the author and illustrator are, how to hold a book, turn the pages, and identify the front and back cover. Ms. Holden frequently asks students to help her read by pointing to parts of the book for her. During circle time today, Ms. Holden reads Louis Ehlert's Eating the Alphabet, Fruits and Vegetables from A to Z. On each page, Ms. Holden pauses at the letter and asks for a student volunteer to name the letter on the page. Before naming the fruits or vegetables that start with the letter, Ms. Holden could reinforce the class's alphabetic knowledge by asking them to:

draw the letter in the air with their fingers. Alphabetic knowledge consists of the ability to name, form, and recognize letters. Asking students to trace the letter in midair with their finger would reinforce their alphabetic knowledge.

Accommodations for English language learners should be based on their language skills and not dependent on their age. Various stages of acquisition can occur for children at all ages, so determining their stage will guide how to support their learning. What stage of language acquisition would best describe an ELL student who speaks mostly in one and two-word phrases with many errors?

early production In early production, the learner is listening and absorbing new information and collecting new words. They are communicating mainly in one and two-word phrases and making many errors in this stage.

A first-grade teacher is planning upcoming phonics instruction to support the students' understanding of the relationships between letters and sounds. Which of the following strategies would best support ELL students in her class while working on this skill?

emphasizing letters that may have different pronunciations in English than in the students' native language This kind of direct, explicit instruction on similarities and differences between the languages is a good way to support ELL students.

A third-grade class is reading the novel Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. Students have been assigned independent reading for some sections, and the teacher reads certain sections aloud with the whole group to practice reading comprehension and literary analysis. At the start of the novel, the teacher asks students if any of them own a dog. Students who do are asked to share a description of their pets, their names, and any funny stories they can remember about their dogs. As students read, they are asked to fill out a plot diagram and a character map for the main characters, as identified by the teacher. During whole class readings, the teacher presents mini-lessons on relevant topics, such as identifying setting, character development, and plot structure. The pre-reading activity will benefit student comprehension because it:

engages students in the story by building schema for students who don't own a dog and establishing personal connections to the text for students who do have dogs. Creating personal connections to the text can engage students with the reading, and sharing these personal connections builds schema for all readers, especially those who do not own a dog.

A first-grade teacher regularly assesses students' oral language skills. Based on the TEKS oral language guidelines, which of the following is not a skill that her first graders should be expected to become proficient in this year?

express an opinion supported by accurate information

A second-grade teacher is planning a genre study. She includes the following texts in her plans: The Tortoise and the Hare The Lion and the Mouse The Ants and the Grasshopper After reading each text, the students will determine the moral of the story. This lesson plan uses texts that teach moral lessons and have animals as the main characters. The genre focus of this lesson would most accurately be described as...

fables Fables use animal characters to teach a moral lesson.

Which of the following practices by a first-grade teacher is the most important to developing independent readers with strong comprehension skills?

facilitating a variety of literary experiences that balance independent reading, guided reading, and read-alouds, while using texts that vary in genre and topic Exposing students to texts they enjoy and providing time to experience all different forms of reading is key to developing independent readers.

While students begin developing skills related to fluency very early on, a certain level of reading ability is necessary to begin formally assessing and tracking fluency. According to the grade-level TEKS, when are students expected to be improving speed and fluency, reading connected text, and using context clues to sound out unfamiliar words?

first grade Based on the TEKS, the reading expectation for first graders reaches the level that allows for traditional fluency data and tracking.

A third-grade class just finished reading a short fiction text about a bass guitar player and the teacher is reviewing their comprehension question responses. One question asks students to draw a picture of the main character's bass. A handful of students draw a picture of a fish instead of a guitar. The teacher decides to present a lesson about homographs. She gives a definition of homographs, provides some examples, and reviews how to use context to determine the meaning of the words. In order to have students practice this concept, the teacher should next:

have students practice defining homograph pairs by circling the context clues that helped them reach the definition. Practicing defining homographs through context clue identification will immediately benefit students who need a review of syntactic cues.

Ms. Holden uses circle time every afternoon to read a new story aloud to her kindergarten class. She uses big books so that every student can easily see the text. While she reads, she scans her finger along the text. They discuss who the author and illustrator are, how to hold a book, turn the pages, and identify the front and back cover. Ms. Holden frequently asks students to help her read by pointing to parts of the book for her. In order to meet kindergarten benchmarks, in addition to knowing print directionality and how to hold a book, students should also be able to:

identify the front and back cover and title page of a book. By the end of kindergarten, students should know how to hold a book, which direction the pages go, and be able to identify the covers and title page.

A kindergarten student has mastered identifying and naming letters. In order to move this student along and meet kindergarten TEKS benchmarks for fluency, the teacher should begin incorporating activities that focus on:

identifying sight words and matching spoken words to their text. Once students have mastered identifying letters, they can begin to memorize sight words and match spoken words to text on a page.

Based on research into early reading development, focus on which of the following has the greatest impact on reading development in children grades K-4?

improving fluency Research shows that specifically targeting fluency in early grades (K-4) results in the greatest gains in reading because fluent readers have better comprehension skills and will generally read more than students who struggle with fluency. Through the increased exposure to a variety of texts, most students will naturally build their vocabulary, schema, and other reading skills.

The teacher assesses each student's fluency every nine weeks, totaling four times a year, in order to track student growth and adjust instruction as necessary. Why is it so important for teachers to frequently evaluate reading fluency?

improving fluency improves reading comprehension Improving student fluency improves their ability to comprehend what they read. Frequent assessment to check for gaps in understanding is necessary to be sure students are improving their fluency skills.

A third-grade teacher is preparing a lesson in which students will read a short nonfiction passage and identify the main idea. When considering the diverse learners in her class, how could the teacher best differentiate this lesson to support the reading fluency of her ELL students?

include visual supports, like a related illustration of the text Images are particularly helpful to ELL students to build context for what they will read.

A new student, Raven, has arrived in Mrs. Allan's first-grade class. Mrs. Allan administers various diagnostic tests to establish Raven's current skill level, including a timed reading. She determines that Raven is a non-automatic reader. During this assessment, she only read at a rate of 25 words per minute. Raven is able to converse with ease, but she lacks the same confidence while reading. Mrs. Allan starts Raven on some independent activities to build letter-sound correspondence. Raven is given a set of sight word flashcards to take home and practice. Raven practices identifying and isolating phonemes both independently and with a small group. After a week, Mrs. Allan administers another timed reading to see whether or not Raven is making progress. This time Raven reads at 29 words per minute and Mrs. Allan notices that Raven self-corrected sight word errors two or three times, something she did not do before. While she has improved in speed and accuracy, her reading is still choppy and lacks expression. Based on the progress Raven has made, Mrs. Allan should:

incorporate Reader's Theatre and books on tape to Raven's weekly activities. Since Mrs. Allan notes that Raven's prosody is lacking, she will benefit from activities that emphasize reading with emotion. Audiobooks will serve as a model and reader's theatre will allow her to practice this skill.

Following the second reading fluency assessment of the school year, a third-grade teacher noticed that a few of her students have shown no or very little fluency growth from the first assessment nine weeks before. Which of the following would be the least effective way to support their fluency development?

increase the difficulty of their independent reading Independent reading should primarily be at the students' current reading level. Increasing the difficulty to a frustration level will not improve fluency.

A second-grade teacher is going to have a 1:1 ratio of students to tablets in her classroom for the first time. Which of the following is not an example of an appropriate way to use this new technology access in support of literacy skills?

increase the variety of reading materials by replacing classroom libraries with digital libraries Digital libraries are a good supplement to classroom libraries but should not replace them

A kindergarten class is reading a version of the story of the Three Little Pigs. The teacher asks, "The big bad wolf has approached the straw house. What do you think will happen when he tries to blow it down?" This question tests what level of comprehension?

inferential Making predictions is a component of inferential comprehension.

After reading a short article on bees, students are asked to answer a variety of comprehension questions. The teacher collects these answers and reviews them for a grade. While assessing the results, the teacher notices that several students had trouble with the question, "If we cannot find out what is killing the bees, what could happen to our planet?" Many students answered something similar to "Bees would go extinct." These students are having trouble with which comprehension skill?

inferring This question is testing how well students can make an inference about a possible consequence of the loss of bees.

A kindergarten teacher plans to read aloud a short story to the class. She will use an oversized book so the students can follow along and see the words and the pictures. After reading the story, the teacher will ask her students to draw a picture of the big problem that occurred in the story. While they work, she walks around the room, observing their progress and making a point to discuss their drawing with them if it is unclear how the picture relates to the story. Which of the following best describes the purpose of the after-reading activity described in this activity?

informally assess the students' literal comprehension of the text By seeing the students' drawings and listening to them explain what they represent, the teacher can get an idea of their literal understanding of the text.

A teacher arranges a parent meeting to discuss some observed vocabulary challenges. The teacher tells the parents that the student does not recognize common instructional language used by the teacher in the classroom. Based on the teacher's observations, the student is significantly below the 3,000 to 4,000 words that children her age are generally expected to understand by the end of the school year. The teacher feels strongly that they should make a deliberate effort to improve the students' vocabulary to prevent the Matthew Effect and to support reading development. The teacher then describes her plans to support the student's vocabulary development within the classroom and the process to determine whether further intervention is necessary. Finally, the group discusses ways for the parents to support their child from home. The teacher explains to the parents that part of the motivation to intervene early on is related to the Matthew Effect. Which of the following best describes the Matthew Effect?

initial reading success tends to make later success more likely, while initial deficit may make continued progress increasingly more difficult

A first-grade teacher is planning homogeneous small group instruction using guided reading texts. Which reading level should she consider when selecting the fiction and nonfiction texts?

instructional reading level During guided reading, students should be reading texts that are on their instructional reading level. Teachers support student comprehension during guided reading, allowing them to more easily comprehend texts that are above their independent reading level.

A third-grade teacher plans a lesson that begins with each student independently reading the same text, followed by a writing activity completed in partner sets, and ends with a class discussion about the text and their writing. The teacher checks in with students throughout all parts of the lesson then collects their writing to score with a rubric. This lesson would be best described as an example of:

integration of language skills. This lesson requires students to read, listen, speak, and write, making it an example of the integration of language skills.

The following is a conversation heard between two first-grade students during recess. Student A: Hey! Want to play tag? Student B: Sí. Run now? Student A: Do you want to be it first, or should I? Student B: I not sure... Student A: I'll be the tagger first. You go that way! Quick, run fast! Student B: Okay, I go! Based on student B's speech, she is most likely in which stage of speaking proficiency, according to the TELPAS Proficiency Level Descriptors?

intermediate This student is able to be understood by student A, but makes mistakes with verb tense and still speaks in short sentences, indicating she is likely in the intermediate stage of speaking.

Which set of words below would fall into the category of tier three words? -convince, argue, deny -isotope, reaction, element -peer, resident, volunteer -ask, tell, say

isotope, reaction, element These terms represent tier three words; they have specific definitions in their scientific context that students would need explicit instruction to understand.

A third-grade teacher is working to improve student motivation in her classroom. Overall, her students tend to work hard when she provides extrinsic motivations, but she would like them to be more intrinsically motivated. Which of the following would be the least effective strategy to increase intrinsic motivation among her students?

keeping a log of all assessment scores in their notebook Grades are generally related to extrinsic motivation because a student would be working hard for the external reward or receiving a good grade rather than the value of the knowledge itself.

A teacher invites students to sit at her desk where she has a set of letter tiles. The teacher spells a CVC word with the tiles and asks the student to read the word aloud. The teacher notes whether the word is read correctly or not. Then the teacher swaps out a tile to create a new word and the process repeats. Students are assessed on how well they can read the new CVC words with a goal of 25 words correct. Based on the skill being assessed, this teacher most likely teaches which grade level?

kindergarten The ability to recognize that new words are created when letters are changed, added, or deleted is a benchmark associated with kindergarten-level students.

To better help the parents of her students understand their classroom focus in prekindergarten, the teacher is preparing a list of skills that their children are expected to have learned by the end of the school year. Based on Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines, which of the following skills will likely not be on this list of prekindergarten goals?

know all letter names and their sounds Complete mastery of sound-to-letter correspondence is not a kindergarten expectation.

A second-grade teacher is determining how to best support the growth of a student who is demonstrating below grade level fluency while reading historical texts but has demonstrated automatic reading skills on other assessments and texts. Which of the following is most likely to be related to this automatic reader's fluency challenges?

lacking schema or background knowledge If the teacher has determined that the student is an automatic reader, then one possible reason for a fluency issue could involve the student lacking schema or background knowledge. If the student is missing context for a text, it is more difficult to apply the skills that make them an automatic reader.

A prekindergarten teacher reads a big book aloud to her class. The book emphasizes alliteration, with many words starting with the letter B. As she reads, she uses a pointer to follow along in the text. Read the following excerpt from the book: The big brown bear began each day with a big, hearty breakfast. After reading the book, the teacher points to the better "b" and asks her class what letter it is. Next, she asks her class what sound the letter makes. Which of the following skills is this teacher assessing in this activity?

letter recognition and alphabetic principle When the teacher points to the letter "b" and asks the name, she is assessing letter recognition, and when the teacher asks what sound that letter makes, she is assessing alphabetic principle.

Despite having already developed some phonological awareness, many prekindergarten students still mispronounce words and are learning to distinguish between some sounds. As a prekindergarten teacher helps them refine these early phonological skills, which of the following is a skill that students are not expected to achieve by the end of prekindergarten.

manipulating syllables This skill is not expected to be achieved until after prekindergarten.

In a first-grade classroom, students have been asked to come to the teacher's desk to individually read a short passage. The selected passage is at grade level and describes a day in the life of a grocery store clerk. While reading, Jenny pauses at the word "salmon" in the sentence "Next, the clerk looks at the fresh fish display, which has crab, tuna, and salmon on ice." Jenny looks back at the previous words in the sentence before confidently saying "salmon" and finishing the sentence. Which decoding strategy did Jenny use to decode "salmon"?

meaning-based Jenny uses the context of the sentence to decode the challenging word. This is an example of meaning-based decoding.

A third-grade class is beginning a unit on short stories. The teacher begins the unit by asking students to brainstorm things they know about story structure. They read aloud and discuss a common fairy tale. Students are given a list of relevant vocabulary terms, such as setting, plot, theme, conflict, and the class works together to fill out a plot diagram and answer basic comprehension questions. The next day, the teacher reads aloud a new story, and students are placed into groups to repeat the previous day's activities. In order to ensure maximum success on the assignment, the teacher should form groups by:

mixing student ability level. Creating groups of mixed abilities ensures that students of any ability level can access and participate in the activity.

A third-grade student is reading aloud from a text. She gets to the following sentence and pauses at the underlined word. The turtle's helplessness, now that he was on his back,... The student looks at the unknown word. She scans the word again and sees the smaller word "help." She covers those letters with her finger. "I see the word less too!" she thinks to herself. "Help...less....ness" she says aloud. She restarts the sentence, correctly and quickly decodes "helplessness" this time and continues reading. The student is using what word identification strategy to decode the unfamiliar word?

morpheme analysis The student breaks the unknown word down by identifying the root "help" and the suffixes "-less" and "-ness." This is an example of using morpheme analysis to decode an unfamiliar term.

A second-grade teacher is planning a decoding lesson that focuses on recognizing common parts of words to support decoding. She includes the following examples of words in her lesson: *redo, revisit, reboot, regard *sats, news, visits, robots *undo, unwind, untie *learned, opened, cleaned, heated *revisited, regarded, unopened Which of the following word identification skills is the focus of this decoding lesson? -sight words -phonics -morphemic analysis -contextual analysis

morphemic analysis The teacher is using common word parts to support decoding. She has a set of words with the prefix "re-," the suffix "-s," the prefix "un-," the suffix "-ed," and a set with words containing both a prefix and a suffix. This lesson contains examples of morphemic analysis.

A third-grade teacher prepares a lesson in which she provides students with the following lists of words: List 1 List 2 List 3 List 4 undo untrue unwell unfinished revise redo revisit replay happily friendly mysteriously angrily helpless needless spotless harmless She begins by asking the students to study each list and work with a partner to discuss what they notice about the lists, create new names for each, and share their ideas out with the class. After sharing out their ideas and discussing, the class agrees to rename the lists, "'un- Words," "'re- Words," "-ly Words," and "-less Words." Next, the teacher begins direct instruction. Which of the following best describes the topic that this lesson is most likely covering?

morphology This lesson is covering morphology, the understanding of meaningful word parts, such as roots and affixes.

A kindergarten teacher is using a reading app provided by the district to assess her students' reading skills each grading period. She collects the data and uses it to track her students' progress over time. Which of the following best describes the type of assessment that the teacher is administering through the use of this technology?

ongoing assessment

He, remote, and begun all contain examples of what type of syllable?

open syllables A. An open syllable is spelled with a single vowel letter that ends with its long vowel sound. The open syllable is the underlined portion in He, remote, and begun.

During small group instruction, a kindergarten teacher provides verbal instructions to guide a group of students through a quick craft involving the assembly of pre-cut pieces of construction paper. After completing the craft, the small group students provide the instructions to the students at their tables, who then complete the same craft. The teacher repeats the process over the coming days to give all students a chance to provide instructions to their group. These instructional choices suggest that the teacher is using this activity as an opportunity to evaluate which of the following skills?

oral language skills Oral language skills at the kindergarten level include the expectation that students follow and restate oral instructions. This activity provides an opportunity to assess the student's ability to correctly follow and restate step-by-step instructions given orally.

A third-grade teacher reads aloud one to two chapters from a novel most days of the week. This activity serves as a community-building experience within the classroom, promotes a love of reading, and serves as an opportunity to incorporate practice with various ELA skills. Before beginning to read each afternoon, she calls on a volunteer to briefly summarize the events from the previous day. While reading, the teacher will periodically stop to verbally question the text, ask students to make a prediction, or clarify understanding of events. She also follows their reading with a quick journal prompt related to the day's chapters. Which of the following best explains why the teacher should prioritize improving the oral language aspect of the described activity?

oral language skills support the development of reading and writing skills Oral language and good reading skills go hand in hand, and oral language skills translate into written skills.

After reflecting on the first month of school, a first-grade teacher realizes that the students' reading skills have frequently been assessed using code-based assessment strategies, but not often with meaning-based assessments. To increase the amount of meaning-based assessments, which of the following should this teacher incorporate going forward?

oral retellings An assessment using a student's oral retelling will determine understanding of the meaning of the text. It does not evaluate any decoding skills.

A third-grade class is working on a cross-curricular project focused on protecting natural environments. The students are reading about various local and national ecosystems, the challenges facing the survival of these areas, and ways humans can work together to protect these natural habitats. As students work, they are encouraged to write unfamiliar vocabulary words on a specific section of the whiteboard. Currently, the word lists include the terms: habitat marsh tundra extinction pollute conservation Any student who writes an unfamiliar term on the board is given the following handout to complete: word: --> Orginal sentence : (circle any contex clues in the sentence above) --> Does the word have any roots, prefixes, or suffixes? --> What do you think the word means? Once the word list hits five or more new terms, the teacher calls everyone's attention to the board for a whole-class review of the words. Students are asked to write the words on a new page in the vocabulary section of their class journal. In order to facilitate the student's ability to use print resources while researching, the students should be required to:

organize the word list in alphabetical order. Students should be able to alphabetize words to the third letter in order to help them when using printed reference materials. Practicing alphabetizing vocabulary lists is one way to teach this skill.

A teacher sits down with students individually and asks them to complete a series of tasks related to phonemic awareness. First, she asks the student to say the first sound in the word "tin." If the student answers incorrectly, she asks again with a new word. If correct, she says the sounds for "/b/ /oo/ /k/" and asks the student to speak the whole word. If incorrect, she repeats the steps with a new word. If correct, she asks the student to say each separate sound in the word "stop." A student who can successfully complete all three tasks in this series would be ready to move on to which phonemic awareness skill?

phoneme addition Students who successfully complete the three tasks in this assessment are ready to begin working with phoneme addition.

Mr. Byrd's pre-k class begins the day by singing a good morning song. During the song, students say each other's names and clap out the syllables in the names. After the song, the class reviews the calendar, discussing the letters that the day and month begin with (for example, "March begins with what letter?"), the number of the date, whether it is odd or even, and what the weather is like that day. Next, Mr. Byrd introduces the word of the day. Students say the word, discuss the meaning, and try to come up with rhyming words. After this opening discussion, students break up to work on individual reading activities while Mr. Byrd circulates through the room. During individual work time, Mr. Byrd notices that Sarah has mastered the ability to isolate phonemes in three-letter words, no matter where the phoneme is located. Which skill should Mr. Byrd introduce to Sarah next?

phoneme blending After students have mastered phoneme isolation, they can begin blending phonemes to create a word.

A second-grade teacher assessed students' phonemic awareness and has identified a group of students who are all proficient at phoneme segmentation. With the understanding that phoneme awareness develops in a simple to complex progression, which of the following will most likely be the instructional focus for this group's next small group instruction?

phoneme manipulation Phoneme manipulation is composed of addition, deletion, and substitution. These are the final, most complex steps in phonemic awareness.

A second-grade student is reading aloud from a text. He gets to the following sentence and pauses at the underlined word. The first colonies are all found on the east coast. The student first says each letter, then makes the sound associated with that letter. "/k/ /o/ /l/ /o/ /n/ /i/ /ee/ /s/." After sounding out each letter, the student blend them together into "/ko/ /lo/ /nies/." He is satisfied with his pronunciation and continues reading the rest of the sentence. The student is using what word identification strategy to decode the unfamiliar word?

phonemic analysis In this example the student breaks the word down into its individual phonemes before correctly blending them together to form the word.

A teacher asks a kindergarten student to identify the sounds in the word "sat," and the student responds with the sounds /s/ /ă/ /t/. Which of the following skills is the teacher assessing?

phonemic awareness The teacher has said the word "sat" aloud, and the child is breaking the word into its smallest units of sound. This assesses their phonemic awareness.

Mr. Byrd's pre-k class begins the day by singing a good morning song. During the song, students say each other's names and clap out the syllables in the names. After the song, the class reviews the calendar, discussing the letters that the day and month begin with (for example, "March begins with what letter?"), the number of the date, whether it is odd or even, and what the weather is like that day. Next, Mr. Byrd introduces the word of the day. Students say the word, discuss the meaning, and try to come up with rhyming words. After this opening discussion, students break up to work on individual reading activities while Mr. Byrd circulates through the room. Mr. Byrd's opening class activities will help students develop phonological awareness skills because they focus on all the major components of phonological awareness except:

phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness that involves working with specific phonemes and letter sounds. In this scenario, students may be identifying graphemes, but there isn't an emphasis on letter sounds.

An important building block of literacy skills involves awareness of the sounds of human language. To build this awareness, prekindergarten teachers will sing songs, play word games, and read books that contain rhymes and alliteration. Which of the following terms is used to describe the sounds of human speech?

phonetics Phonetics describes the sounds of human speech.

A third-grade student is struggling with reading comprehension. In an attempt to determine the root cause, the teacher assesses their reading fluency, noticing that the student reads choppily, lacking prosody and automaticity. Based on the student's fluency assessment, what other skills should the teacher assess to better inform future intervention?

phonics and word analysis skills The teacher's planning would benefit from further information regarding the specific phonics instruction that would be most beneficial to the student.

A teacher introduces a game to a small group of kindergarten students. In the game, one member of the group will begin by saying a word and the rest of the group will take turns sharing words that rhyme. Which of the following best describes the focus of this lesson?

phonological awareness Rhyming games help develop student awareness of sounds, or phonological awareness.

A third-grade class is working on a cross-curricular project focused on protecting natural environments. The students are reading about various local and national ecosystems, the challenges facing the survival of these areas, and ways humans can work together to protect these natural habitats. As students work, they are encouraged to write unfamiliar vocabulary words on a specific section of the whiteboard. Currently, the word lists include the terms: habitat marsh tundra extinction pollute conservation Any student who writes an unfamiliar term on the board is given the following handout to complete: word: --> Orginal sentence : (circle any contex clues in the sentence above) --> Does the word have any roots, prefixes, or suffixes? --> What do you think the word means? By asking students to complete the provided handout, the teacher is demonstrating her understanding that in order internalize new vocabulary words, a student needs:

practice defining a word using background knowledge, context, and word morphology, not solely through finding the definition in a dictionary. Using prior knowledge and word analysis skills to define a word is more useful in the long run than exclusively looking up and memorizing dictionary definitions. The teacher is allowing students to practice these skills through this handout.

A teacher is designing literacy stations and would like to group students based on their current skill levels in order to provide targeted instruction and intervention. Which of the activities below would be appropriate for a student in the early reader stage of literacy development?

practicing isolating and segmenting known phonemes from words Students in the early stage are still learning some phonemes, but practicing skills like isolating, segmenting, and blending would be an appropriate activity for this level.

A kindergarten teacher plans to read aloud a short story to the class. She will use an oversized book so the students can follow along and see the words and the pictures. After reading the story, the teacher will ask her students to draw a picture of the big problem that occurred in the story. While they work, she walks around the room, observing their progress and making a point to discuss their drawing with them if it is unclear how the picture relates to the story. How could the teacher change this lesson plan to differentiate for English learners?

pre-teaching words from the text that are likely to be unfamiliar An effective way to support ELL students is to anticipate vocabulary challenges and pre-teach those words.

A third-grade student is an automatic reader that reads words accurately but struggles to read with prosody when the teacher has assessed her reading fluency. Which of the following activities would best support the student's development of prosody?

regularly incorporate reader's theater into whole class and small group lessons Reader's theater provides the opportunity for this student to hear appropriate inflection and phrasing modeled.

A teacher arranges a parent meeting to discuss some observed vocabulary challenges. The teacher tells the parents that the student does not recognize common instructional language used by the teacher in the classroom. Based on the teacher's observations, the student is significantly below the 3,000 to 4,000 words that children her age are generally expected to understand by the end of the school year. The teacher feels strongly that they should make a deliberate effort to improve the students' vocabulary to prevent the Matthew Effect and to support reading development. The teacher then describes her plans to support the student's vocabulary development within the classroom and the process to determine whether further intervention is necessary. Finally, the group discusses ways for the parents to support their child from home. The teacher notes that the student is likely to understand 3,000 to 4,000 words by the end of the school year. Based on the guidelines for the state of Texas, what grade level is this student currently in?

prekindergarten Prekindergarten students are likely to understand 3,000 - 4,000 words by the end of the year. Prekindergarten children should be able to use a wide variety of words to label and describe people, places, things, and actions. They should also understand the terms used in the instructional language of the classroom.

A prekindergarten teacher observes her student pick up a book and begin flipping through the pages from the back of the book toward the front of the book. This is evidence that the student has not yet mastered which of the following skills?

print concepts Text directionality, understanding the direction that text is read, is a print concept skill. This child would benefit from a combination of explicit instruction on text directionality and continued modeling.

At the beginning of the school year, the parents of a pre-k student ask for the teacher's perspective on the use of learning apps to support their child's reading development. They are considering the purchase of a tablet to use for educational purposes. Which advice will best help the parents support their child's reading development from home?

prioritizing in-person literary experiences over digital In-person literary experiences are more influential on a child's reading development than learning from apps. While apps can be fun, and high-quality options may provide some educational value, screen time for such young children inherently limits the amount of time a child spends being read to and interacting with books.

Approximately halfway through the school year, a first-grade teacher administered a spelling test designed to assess a variety of spelling rules and phonics skills. The teacher will use the results from this assessment to evaluate student progress and plan for upcoming spelling instruction. The following table shows one student's answers to the assessment. Called Word Student Spelling cord cord shed shed lane lane coin coyn bird burd torn torn crawl crol found fond shirt shirt Based on the description of this assessment, this is best described as what type of spelling assessment?

progress monitoring assessment This assessment is a progress monitoring assessment because it is described as a periodic assessment meant to monitor student growth and affect future instruction.

A first-grade teacher works with students in small groups, playing a matching game that pairs two different words together to form a compound word, then matches the word to a picture that represents its meaning. Which of the following best describes the teacher's goal for this activity?

promote their understanding of the meanings of compound words The focus on first forming the compound word, then matching it to a relevant picture demonstrates the teacher's desire for the students to understand how the words come together to form a new meaning.

While conducting a running record or miscue analysis, a teacher listens to a student read aloud and assesses the reading on the student's prosody, self-corrections, repetitions, and omissions. Which component listed is subjective and less easily marked using written symbols?

prosody Because prosody is an evaluation of how well a student uses expression in a reading, it is a subjective component of reading fluency assessment. Prosody is a component of reading fluency but is not always assessed during a running record or miscue analysis.

A third-grade teacher is assessing her students' reading fluency. She assesses each student's fluency levels once every nine weeks, keeping a running record of their progress. For each student's assessment, the teacher provides the student with a clean copy of a reading passage to read aloud, uses a second copy to mark any errors, and calculates the student's words per minute. Which of the following does the teacher also need to assess in order to determine a student's level of reading fluency?

prosody Fluency is assessed by evaluating a student's accuracy, speed, and prosody.

A second-grade teacher is preparing to begin administering the first reading fluency assessment of the school year. While listening to her students read aloud, she will evaluate each student's oral reading to determine their level of fluency. Of the relevant fluency factors, which is measured subjectively?

prosody Prosody is subjective because it measures the student's intonation and expression. It cannot be done objectively because the teacher is using his or her judgment to evaluate how the reading sounds, not identifying concrete errors.

A second-grade teacher has planned a reading comprehension assessment over a text about the 4th of July. However, the teacher is concerned with the accessibility of this topic for the English language learners in her class. How should the teacher differentiate this activity to make it a more reliable assessment of her ELL students' skills?

provide ELL students with an alternative text on the same reading level for the assessment Providing ELL students with an alternative text would be the best option in this case. There is a reasonable chance that some ELL students will not have much background knowledge related to the 4th of July, making this an unreliable assessment of their comprehension.

Jessica, a second-grade student, is an automatic reader. She is able to quickly decode all words with regular spelling patterns and struggles infrequently with irregular words. She has an average reading speed, but she struggles with her prosody. In order to help Jessica develop stronger prosody, her teacher should:

provide Jessica with phrase-cued readings to practice with a partner. Phrase-cued readings will help Jessica to visualize where natural pauses occur. She can use these cues to practice adding the correct inflection and expression to her reading.

A third-grade class has broken into small groups to participate in differentiated learning opportunities. The teacher has created groups based on student interests and current skill levels. One group will read various fiction and nonfiction texts describing life during ancient times, as well as studying relevant root words and vocabulary terms, and continuing to work on spelling and decoding complex, unfamiliar words. Today the group is reading the short article "Life in Athens and Rome." Below is an excerpt from the article: The citizens of Athens and Rome lived similar lives. In both cities, men were responsible for working outside the home. Women were expected to stay home and take care of the house and children. The people were polytheistic, worshiping many gods and goddesses. You may have heard of Zeus, Poseidon, or Athena, for whom the city of Athens is named. For fun, the Romans attended gladiator battles at the Colosseum. Athenians enjoyed spending time at the theatre, watching tragedies and comedies played out on stage. At the end of the reading, the group answers some teacher-generated questions like, "What would it be like to live in Ancient Athens or Rome? Would you choose to go back to that time, or would you rather stay here in the present? Take a few seconds to think about your answer, and then share with your group." While the groups are reading and discussing, the teacher walks around listening to the groups' discussions and responding to individual students or groups as needed. The teacher wants to ensure that this group is engaging with the text structure and using its features to clearly comprehend the main ideas. In order to reach this goal, the teacher should:

provide a Venn diagram to complete while reading. This article is comparing the lives of the people in these ancient cities. Using a Venn diagram will help students dissect the text structure and focus their reading on the similarities and differences of the people. Finding these details will ensure students comprehend the main idea of the article.

After recognizing a reading comprehension issue, a third-grade teacher evaluated the student and determined that they do not read fluently. In addition to working on developing improved reading fluency, how should the teacher provide support to the student who is also working to develop reading comprehension skills?

provide opportunities to use audiobooks for reading comprehension activities If the student is using an audiobook, they can focus on comprehension instead of focusing on decoding the words. This will help the student build comprehension skills without interference from fluency challenges.

A second-grade teacher has been working to foster an increased value for reading in hopes of helping to create lifelong readers. One of the activities that she is planning will have students recommend books to each other by taking turns to share out the title, author, and a brief description of a book that they enjoy. How should she differentiate this activity to support the participation of an ELL student who is currently at the intermediate speaking level?

provide the student with sentence frames This is a useful way to support an intermediate student who is developing their English speaking skills.

A third-grade teacher is preparing a reading lesson for her class. Which of the following best demonstrates the teacher's use of asset-based instruction?

providing text options that represent the diversity of the class This is an example of asset-based instruction because it provides the opportunity for students to choose a text that they are more likely to relate to which can improve engagement and learning.

A third-grade teacher is working to determine the complexity of a text that she would like to use for a class assessment. To do this, she will consider the three aspects of text complexity. Which of the three aspects of text complexity include the text's meaning or purpose, structure, language conventionality and clarity, and knowledge demands?

qualitative measures Qualitative measures include meaning or purpose, structure, language conventionality and clarity, and knowledge demands.

After being identified as having dyslexia, a second-grade student began structured, systematic, and explicit reading instruction. The instruction is designed to support the student's specific needs. Which of the following is the best example of a way for the classroom teacher to accommodate this student in the classroom?

read written directions aloud to the student The student will likely benefit from having directions read aloud.

At the beginning of the school year, the pre-k teachers have a brief, informal discussion with each student. The teacher asks questions to develop an understanding of the student's home life and reading habits. Below is the conversation between Julia and the teacher. Teacher: Hey, Julia, how are you today? I was hoping to have a little chat and get to know you a little bit. Julia: Alright. Teacher: So, what's your favorite book you read at home? Julia: I don't read a lot at home. Teacher: Do you ever read any books at home with your mom and dad? Julia: Not much. Mom works at night and dad is tired after working during the day. Teacher: So what do you do when you get home from school? Julia: My sisters and I play together, listen to the radio, or watch television until dinner time. Then we take a bath and go to bed. Teacher: What are your sisters' names? What games do you play together?... Based on this conversation, the teacher is concerned that Julia may have a likely deficiency in which category of vocabulary development?

reading Because Julia is not reading at home or being read to, she will only have exposure to written words during class time. Research shows reading a variety of books is one of the best ways to improve vocabulary.

A kindergarten teacher wants students to apply new alphabetic knowledge to decode words in books as promptly as possible. Therefore, as they learn new consonants and vowels, the teacher will begin activities that allow students to use the new knowledge even before completing the entire alphabet. Which of the following activities would be the most logical initial application of new alphabetic knowledge?

reading short books that contain single-syllable words made up of the newly learned letters This is an effective way for students to apply the new letters and sounds promptly and see how learning the sounds will help them read. It's also a good way to increase motivation to learn the rest of the sounds as students are often excited to begin reading.

Which of the following is a reason that teachers should continue to plan sufficient practice with print resources despite the benefits of digital options? -students are unlikely to have access to digital options outside of the classroom -student remember definitions better if they look them up in the print form -reinforce skills applicable to the use of a glossary or index that will not have a digital version -digital options often contain elements that distract from the definition and part of speech

reinforce skills applicable to the use of a glossary or index that will not have a digital version Even though the use of a print dictionary or thesaurus might lack some benefits of a digital option, some of the related skills, like alphabetizing are applicable in other areas. For example, alphabetizing is needed to use an index and/or a glossary.

Identifying the point-of-view of a text is an important step for conducting more detailed literary analysis. According to the TEKS benchmarks for reading comprehension, by which grade level should students be able to correctly identify the use of first- or third-person narration?

second grade By second grade, students should be able to correctly identify the use of first- or third-person point of view.

During her morning opening, Mrs. Martin sings a welcome song with the class. Mrs. Martin says, "Good Morning, Good Morning, Jill, how are you?" While she sings, she claps along with each word. The student she calls on is expected to reply, "Good morning, I'm (insert feeling), How are you (insert another student's name)," and clap for each word she speaks. Then the student Jill calls will repeat the reply, clapping along with his response. Clapping along with their speech helps students to practice:

segmenting sentences into words. Clapping for each word in a sentence helps to develop a student's concept of word awareness. Students need to understand word awareness before they can master syllable and phonemic awareness.

A second-grade reading teacher plans to regularly incorporate all of the skills that support reading comprehension. For an upcoming reading activity, the teacher has marked several locations in the text. When the students reach each of the pre-marked locations, they will stop and turn to their partner to make a comment, ask a question, make a connection, or make a prediction. Which reading comprehension skill is the teacher supporting with this activity?

self-monitoring or metacognition This activity requires students to check in periodically and think about what they are reading. This will help them self-monitor their comprehension.

As part of instruction over the types of text organization, the teacher provides students with examples of each type and asks them to match the paragraph to its organizational type. Which organizational type best describes the excerpt below? The first thing you should do when your alarm clock begins to buzz in the morning is, of course, turn it off! Next, you should go to the bathroom and get dressed for the day. By then you may realize you are feeling hungry; that is because it is time for breakfast. After you eat breakfast, brush your teeth, grab your bag, and finally head out the door.

sequential

At the end of every week, students are given a spelling assessment that uses words and spelling patterns reviewed that week. The following is a copy of a student's spelling test. Given Word Student Spelling star star care car pair pair most most time tim brown brown whale whal Based on these results, the student needs direct instruction in which area?

silent e The student misspelled every word that ends with a silent e. This student needs direct instruction with this spelling pattern.

A kindergarten teacher has planned a multi-week process where her class will learn a new word family each day. They will read books and sing songs that contain words from the family, collaborate to think of and make a list of the words and write in their journals using the words. Besides the role of word families to support reading development, what other skill is the teacher directly supporting with this activity?

spelling Using word families allows students to apply spelling patterns for one word to other words with the same spelled rime. For example, students can apply the it word part to the words spit, pit, mit, and fit.

A new second-grade teacher, Mrs. Jensen, is spending a few days before school setting up her classroom environment. The previous teacher had all classroom reading material arranged by reading level and organized on bookshelves at the back of the class. Mrs. Jensen browses these shelves and selects 5-10 texts related to topics she thinks students will enjoy, such as animals, cars, or space. Once she has curated small selections, she designs mini display areas throughout the classroom to feature the texts and other relevant, topical information. Students can borrow from these displays to read during silent reading time or check out the text to take home. By designing her classroom in this way, Mrs. Jensen is displaying an understanding that:

students develop a life-long love of reading when they can easily find reading materials that interest them. Students who are allowed to choose their own reading material based on their interests are more likely to develop a love of reading. By organizing the classroom texts by topic, Mrs. Jensen is furthering this objective.

A teacher calls a student to her desk. She says, "Hey Jake, I noticed you and Matt are done with your math activity. I'd like you to take two pieces of paper from the art bin, some markers, and two scissors. Tell Matt I'd like him to practice writing the letters D, B, and P while you practice E, F, and H. Can you repeat that to me first?" According to The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, the ability to restate directions is something that can be expected of:

students kindergarten and above. The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards expect kindergarten students to be able to restate oral directions.

A new teacher has decided to divide her reading instruction into themed units. During each unit, students are introduced to 5 -10 tier three vocabulary terms. These terms are repeated in the readings, are used in writing assignments, and the teacher encourages students to use the words while speaking about classroom activities. The teacher displays the words on a feature wall during the unit and again on a separate display after the unit has ended. By arranging her units of study in this way, the teacher is demonstrating her understanding that:

students need multiple, authentic exposures to challenging vocabulary to truly learn and retain meanings. Exposing students to new vocabulary in multiple contexts and activities is the best way to encourage retention and use of the term. The teacher displays this knowledge by building in a variety of interactions with the words into her unit.

The following is an excerpt from a formative assessment that will be given to a third-grade class. Students have just completed a short story unit where they worked on identifying and understanding various literary elements. 12. Which of the following lines from the text helps the reader imagine the main character's fear? A. "The wind rustled the branches of the trees..." B. "The snow sat softly on the leaves like marshmallow puffs..." C. "To her left, Sarah spied a family of rabbits munching peacefully..." D. "...she walked with trepidation through the woods..." While analyzing the results, the teacher discovers that only 5% of the class successfully picked the correct answer, D. This test question should be considered invalid because:

students need to know the definition of "trepidation" in order to correctly answer the question. Valid assessment questions should focus on the skill being tested and not require students to use other skills or means to answer. If students do not know the meaning of "trepidation," they are unlikely to make the correct connection to the character's fear.

A third-grade class is learning about nonfiction organizational structures. They have read various nonfiction articles that use chronological, compare and contrast, and sequential order, discussed relevant transition words, and analyzed how the organizational structure contributes to reader comprehension. After the students have practiced in various ways and received feedback, the teacher believes the class has a strong grasp of these structures and their importance The teacher then asks students to write a two-paragraph essay that uses one organizational style they have studied. This is an example of a:

summative assessment.

When using morphemic analysis to determine the meaning of words, students use all of the following word parts, if present, except: -suffix -root -prefix -syllables

syllables. The number of syllables is not related to the word's meaning and does not factor into morphemic analysis.

With the goal of improving her student's vocabulary and reading comprehension, a second-grade teacher is planning a lesson to teach her students about the relationships between words. She writes the words enormous, huge, and large on the board. What type of word relationship is she going to cover first?

synonyms Synonyms are words with the same or similar meaning. Since the examples she writes are all synonyms for "big," it's most likely that she will be starting the lesson by discussing synonyms.

Students are given a paper with five sentences, like the one below, as well as a word bank with 10 choices. Maria and her __________ like to ride bikes. In order to successfully fill in the blank, students must make use of which types of cues?

syntactic By using syntactic cues, the student can guess the part of speech that fits the blank and then match which words from the word bank best fit this blank.

A first-grade student read the following sentence: "I was scared of the dog, but it retreated into the house when its owner called." The student was unfamiliar with the word "retreated" but used its placement with the sentence to help understand the sentence as a whole. What type of cue did the student use?

syntactic Syntactic cues are when the reader uses their understanding of grammar or order of text to create meaning.

Students in a first-grade class are silently reading a nonfiction magazine of their choice. While reading, a student comes across a word he doesn't know. He raises his hand, and the following is the dialogue that occurs. "What word is this?" "Try sounding out each letter. I bet you can figure it out!" "P...ee....c...h." "When "c" and "h" are next to each other, they make a unique sound. Do you remember what that sound is?" "Oh, right. So...peach!" "Great job! I knew you could figure it out." In this scenario, the teacher is encouraging the student to use which approach to phonics? - embedded phonics approach -analytic phonics approach -synthetic phonics approach -analogy-based phonics approach

synthetic phonics approach Synthetic phonics instruction teaches all the sounds in a word and blending of phonemes to decode words. This is the method the student is using in this example.

Working with a small group of kindergarteners, a teacher reads aloud a short book that is written using repetitive language and mostly decodable CVC words. Next, the teacher writes down the following examples of rhyming words that were in the book. cat hat sat Using this set as an example, the teacher explains that the reader can use the pattern established by the rhymes from the book to decode the words "pat" and "mat." She then writes the word, "rat" and asks for a volunteer to read the word aloud. The students in the scenario most likely have already demonstrated proficiency in:

the alphabetic principle. The alphabetic principle is the understanding of the relationship between letters and their sounds. A student who is beginning to read and working to blend sounds to form new words would be expected to have already been generally proficient in their understanding of the alphabetic principle.

A prekindergarten teacher is finalizing his daily language arts routine. The teacher plans to start with circle time, where the class will read a big book together. After reading and answering some basic comprehension questions, the class will discuss the title of the book, pointing out what letters the words in the title start with, what those sounds are, and other words that start with that same sound. The teacher picks one word from the title, suggests one rhyme and asks the class to volunteer any more rhymes they can come up with. Next, the class will move on to either a whole group lesson or individual or small groups to work on a previously taught skill. By structuring lessons this way, the teacher shows that he understands:

the importance of dedicated, intentional instruction in phonological awareness. By taking time every day to discuss letter sounds, the teacher is emphasizing the importance of early, frequent, and explicit instruction in phonological awareness.

A teacher is planning a phonics lesson for her class of third graders. Based on the TEKS for English Language Arts and Reading, which of the following skills is most likely to be the focus of this phonics lesson?

the sound-spelling pattern that occurs in words like, thought, tough, through, cough, and bought

Teachers of early readers provide direct instruction over sight words and high-frequency words in addition to their systematic approach to phonics instruction. Which of the following is not an accurate description of high-frequency words?

they are words that are not decodable Many high-frequency words are decodable. They may not be decodable yet for younger students who have not yet learned all of the phonics rules. Even though the phonics rules will come later, they are memorized by sight in early grades because of their frequency in texts for early readers.

A first-grade classroom has a small number of ELL students. All of the students are able to identify all English phonemes and have begun to recognize high-frequency words and sight words in connected text, but, as expected, they still struggle with reading speed and accuracy, especially with words that must be decoded. The teacher pulls the students into a small group and presents them with sentence trees like the one below. We We ran We ran to We ran to the We ran to the red We ran to the red slide. Reading from sentence trees like this will benefit these ELL students because:

they can read one new word at a time per line, and rereading the same words in each line will help them read the whole sentence faster. Sentence trees benefit students who need practice with accuracy and speed because students can focus on one new word per line. Once they have read "we" in the first line, they can decode quicker in line two, thus improving speed and accuracy.

For Earth Day, a teacher finds an article discussing modern farming practices and their impacts on the environment. The students are given a cause & effect graphic organizer to complete independently while reading. After reading, the class discusses the main idea of the article and possible changes people could make to reduce the farming impacts. This type of informational text would be best suited for students in which minimum grade level, according to the TEKS benchmarks for reading comprehension?

third grade In third grade, students should be able to identify cause and effect and problem and solution text structures, and use that information to identify the main idea and supporting details.

A first-grade teacher puts two bowls on the table at the front of the classroom. She tells the students that one bowl is full of note cards with random short sentences written on them. Students will be asked to come up to the table and pull one card out to read aloud. The teacher demonstrates by selecting and reading a card that says, "The fish swam fast." Next, students will select a card from the second bowl. These cards have an emotion and a picture of the emotion on the card. Once students have drawn an emotion, they are asked to read the original sentence again, this time reading with the specified emotion.

to practice reading prosody Reading a familiar sentence with a random emotion is an engaging, effective way to practice reading prosody.

Every Monday students in a first-grade class are asked to write about a topic of their choice. The teacher informally reviews these journals as a way to assess her student's progress with certain orthographic or grammatical concepts. A student writes the following sentence. We got ice creem and spended time at the bech. Based on this writing sample, this student is most likely in which stage of spelling development? -transitional -semiphonetic -conventional -precommunicative

transitional Transitional students can spell many words correctly, but still struggle with irregular spellings. Based on this student's errors, he is likely in the transitional stage.

According to the TEKS benchmarks for syllabication and morphemic analysis, by the end of second grade, a student should be able to:

use prefixes and suffixes to decode the meaning of words. By second grade a student should be able to use a majority of inflectional endings and begin identifying and using prefixes to decode.

A third-grade teacher is planning a lesson on themes using a book about a little girl that wants to be an engineer. She will anchor the lesson with a read aloud and facilitate various activities that relate back to the story. In the story, the young girl faces a mixture of obstacles that involve inventions that fail, perceived lack of support from those around her, and not feeling confident in herself, before ultimately realizing that failures are all a part of learning. After reading the book aloud, the teacher will use the story to introduce the concept of theme. Together, the class will discuss what message the author was trying to help the students learn. The teacher is concerned that the students will struggle to jump directly from the read aloud to theme analysis. Which of the following activities would best help scaffold this process?

using a graphic organizer to facilitate the identification of conflicts in the story and descriptions of how the conflicts turned out Themes are very often related to the main conflict and its resolution. In this case, the question prompt suggests that a main theme relates to learning from failure, so recognizing the failed inventions as a conflict will support their conversation about the theme.

After students developed a strong sense of morphological awareness, a teacher plays a word game where students use prefixes and suffixes they know to create new words. The teacher provides students with manipulatives, some of which have prefixes or suffixes while others have words/roots. Students are allowed to create as many new words as they'd like and are asked to provide a definition of the term. This activity helps promote a student's word consciousness by:

using a low-stakes word game to allow students to see connections between real words as they create fake words. As students manipulate the word cards to create new words and their definitions, they can reinforce their understanding of the affixes used and the meanings of the root words.

The following is a copy of a student's answers during a spelling assessment. Given Word Student Answer cart cat paper papur torn ten pilot pilot mouse mouse snowman snowman bird berd bathroom bathroom The student in this example is struggling with spelling: -words with r-controlled vowels -words with vowel teams -words with two or more syllables -words with open syllables.

words with r-controlled vowels. The student struggles to spell the words that are r-controlled and should receive further instruction in this spelling pattern.

The state of Texas requires schools to identify the proficiency levels of ELL students in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Reading an ELL student's writing aloud can help determine whether a student's writing level is beginner, intermediate, advanced, or advanced high. Which of the following would best describe the writing of an ELL student at the intermediate level?

writing feels choppy An intermediate student's writing will be choppy, with short sentences and frequent errors.