ECH Exam
A teacher is considering whether a five-year-old child is ready to begin learning to sound out simple, regular printed words. Which of the following questions would be most important for the teacher to ask when making this determination?
A. Can the child invent a nonsense word that rhymes with a simple spoken word?
B. Can the child form a new word by adding a phoneme to a simple spoken word?
C. Can the child blend phonemes to form a simple spoken word?
D. Can the child substitute one phoneme for another in a simple spoken word
C. Can the child blend phonemes to form a simple spoken word?
A teacher wants to promote young children's ability to identify the letters of the alphabet, starting with the capital letters. According to research, which of the following instructional approaches is likely to be most helpful for this purpose?
A. showing the children a large alphabet strip at the front of the room and asking each child to point to the letters in his or her name
B. helping the children visually attend to the shapes and features of each letter by describing the letters and demonstrating how they are formed
C. having children frequently use letter shapes in art projects, such as pasting cut-out letters to a piece of paper to make designs
D. providing children with a set of cardboard strips and arcs and asking them to combine them to make letters named by the teacher
B. helping the children visually attend to the shapes and features of each letter by describing the letters and demonstrating how they are formed
During a parent-teacher conference, the parents of eight-year-old Dante ask his teacher for advice about helping him develop his literacy skills at home. They tell the teacher that they have been reading aloud to Dante every night since he was a baby. Which of the following teacher responses would be most appropriate?
A. suggesting that they have Dante read aloud to them on a nightly basis rather than reading aloud to him
B. asking them to consider purchasing a commercial phonics or reading comprehension workbook
C. demonstrating for them how to model the use of context clues and how to ask inferential questions during reading sessions
D. making them a copy of a sight-word list that they can use to drill Dante at home
C. demonstrating for them how to model the use of context clues and how to ask inferential questions during reading sessions
While reading sections of a social studies textbook, a third-grade student is having difficulty identifying the main ideas and supporting details. Which of the following strategies would most effectively address this student's needs?
A. having the student read through a list of comprehension questions before reading the text
B. providing the student with a simplified version of the text to read
C. pre-teaching the student important vocabulary words from the text
D. teaching the student how to use a graphic organizer to show how concepts in the text are related
D. teaching the student how to use a graphic organizer to show how concepts in the text are related
A third-grade teacher is working with a small group of students who are reading a chapter book together. Periodically, the teacher has the students stop and fill out the following chart individually. They then discuss their predictions together.
- My Prediction About the Story - Why I Made This Prediction
- Changes in My Prediction
This strategy is likely to promote students' comprehension of narrative text primarily by:
A. guiding them to determine the main idea and supporting details.
B. fostering their ability to adjust their reading rate as needed.
C. encouraging them to form images in their minds of important events.
D. activating their prior knowledge and providing a purpose for reading.
D. activating their prior knowledge and providing a purpose for reading.
A kindergarten teacher sets up a lending library of books in English that parents/guardians can check out to read to their children at home. The teacher is aware that the parents/guardians of some English language learners in the class would like to read to their children but have limited English skills. The teacher could best support the students' literacy development by taking which of the following steps?
A. suggesting that the parents/guardians ask family friends or relatives with more advanced English skills to read to their children
B. adding to the lending library children's books written in the parents'/guardians' home language(s)
C. assuring the parents/guardians that their children will receive extra one-on-one reading time in school with a bilingual aide
D. recommending that the parents/guardians take their children to read-alouds for children at the local public library
B. adding to the lending library children's books written in the parents'/guardians' home language(s)
The children in a preschool class have learned to recite the alphabet, and the teacher now wants to focus on building the children's letter recognition. Which of the following approaches would likely be most effective for this purpose?
A. teaching visually similar letters (e.g., b and d) together and pointing out the differences between them
B. teaching both the uppercase and lowercase forms of each letter at the same time
C. teaching letters in groups that can be used immediately to begin writing words (e.g., c, a, t)
D. teaching individual uppercase letters and including tactile and kinesthetic letter formation activities
D. teaching individual uppercase letters and including tactile and kinesthetic letter formation activities
A first-grade teacher is preparing a small-group phonics lesson focused on decoding CVCC words. Which of the following sets of words would be most appropriate to include in the initial lesson?
A. ball, doll, full
B. with, path, math
C. stop, spot, shop
D. lamp, ramp, damp
D. lamp, ramp, damp
According to reading research, which of the following four-year-olds is demonstrating skills that are likely to have the greatest benefit for the child's reading development?
A. Fouad, who is able to focus on learning tasks for relatively long periods of time
B. Stefan, who uses sophisticated vocabulary when speaking
C. Angela, who shows an advanced level of emotional maturity in interactions with peers
D. Ruby, who displays strengths in the areas of art and music
B. Stefan, who uses sophisticated vocabulary when speaking
After listening in as the students in a literacy circle discuss a novel they have been reading, a third-grade teacher decides it would be helpful to assign the students to compare and contrast two key characters in the novel. The teacher could best support the students as they begin this assignment by teaching them how to use which of the following graphic organizers?
A. Venn diagram
B. story map
C. KWL chart
D. word web
A. Venn diagram
After a first-grade class has sung "This Land is Your Land," the teacher overhears one child explain to another that "the nooyorkiland" (the New York island) is "a place in California." Upon hearing this, the teacher decides to write the words of the chorus on the board and talk to the children about its meaning. Seeing the words written down would be especially useful in helping the children:
A. detect word boundaries.
B. understand syllabication.
C. analyze word structures.
D. identify homophones.
A. detect word boundaries.
A kindergarten teacher wants to obtain general information about a child's development in several areas of emergent literacy. Which of the following informal assessments would be most effective in providing information across several areas of emergent literacy?
A. asking the child to sing the alphabet song for the teacher
B. holding up a book and asking the child to point at the book's cover
C. asking the child to write a title on a picture he or she has just drawn
D. saying a word and asking the child to respond with a rhyming word
C. asking the child to write a title on a picture he or she has just drawn
According to research, participating in which of the following activities is most likely to improve students' fluency in the area of prosody?
A. choral reading
B. round robin reading
C. guided reading
D. sustained silent reading
A. choral reading
A kindergarten teacher regularly engages students in word-play games involving riddles, puns, and nonsense rhymes. This strategy is likely to benefit students' vocabulary development primarily by promoting their:
A. knowledge of words and their meanings.
B. use of word-learning strategies.
C. word consciousness and love of words.
D. independent vocabulary growth.
C. word consciousness and love of words.
A preschool teacher regularly gathers the children around her on the rug for reading time with storybooks in a "big book" format. The teacher makes sure that all the children are seated comfortably and can see the pictures and words. She often chooses books that start with familiar patterns (e.g., "Once upon a time...") and that contain recurring phrases that the children can anticipate and chime in with as the teacher reads them. Which of the following outcomes describes the primary benefit of this activity?
A. involving the children as active participants in the reading process before more formal reading instruction begins
B. prompting the children to begin associating individual letters of the alphabet with the specific sounds they represent
C. helping the children to recognize that there are many different types of books and to develop personal literary preferences
D. encouraging the children to notice the differences between pictures and letters and to understand the uses of each
A. involving the children as active participants in the reading process before more formal reading instruction begins
A kindergarten teacher conducts a literacy activity with a small group of students. The teacher gives each student a piece of paper with three connected boxes drawn on it. Each box represents a phoneme in a three-letter word. The teacher says a word slowly, pronouncing each phoneme distinctly. As the students hear each phoneme, they move a marker into the corresponding box. This activity provides the students with practice in:
A. sound substitution.
B. sound segmentation.
C. sound deletion.
D. sound blending.
B. sound segmentation.
A kindergarten teacher periodically takes small groups of children around the school to find examples of printed text (e.g., directional signs, labels on doors, information on bulletin boards). When the group finds an example, the teacher gathers the children together for a discussion of what it says and why it is there. This activity would be especially effective for promoting children's ability to:
A. distinguish print from pictures.
B. read print with expression.
C. use structural analysis to decode print.
D. understand functions of print.
D. understand functions of print.
Which of the following words contains a consonant digraph?
A. bitter
B. pencil
C. laugh
D. network
C. laugh
A third-grade class has been studying affixes and how they can change the meaning of words and sentences. When the teacher asks for a volunteer to demonstrate actions associated with the prefixes un- and re-, a student comes to the front of the room and unties and then reties her shoe. This student is demonstrating understanding in which of the following areas?
A. phonology
B. semantics
C. morphology
D. syntax
C. morphology
A kindergarten teacher reads Where the Wild Things Are to the class and then leads the children in a discussion of the book. During the discussion, the teacher asks various questions about the story. Which of the following questions would require the children to draw an inference about the story?
A. What type of clothes did Max wear in the story?
B. Was Max's mother still mad at him when he got home?
C. How long did it take Max to sail to the land of the Wild Things?
D. Which Wild Thing did you think looked the scariest?
B. Was Max's mother still mad at him when he got home?
Whenever a preschool class goes on an excursion, the teacher asks the children to take turns afterward dictating sentences about their experiences. As they dictate, the teacher writes their statements on a large pad of paper, repeating each word as she writes it. Then, after writing a child's statement, she reads it aloud, pointing at each word as she says it, and checks with the child to ensure that she has written what the child wants to say. This activity would be most effective for building children's understanding of the:
A. connection between written language and oral language.
B. relationship between individual letters and specific sounds.
C. difference between expressive language and receptive language.
D. relationship between nouns and verbs in a sentence.
A. connection between written language and oral language.
A preschool teacher is developing lessons to promote the children's understanding of letter-sound correspondence. The teacher plans to start by introducing letters whose sounds can be pronounced in isolation with a minimum of distortion. Which of the following consonants would best meet this criterion?
A. b
B. z
C. g
D. t
B. z
A teacher is planning to conduct an informal assessment of a first grader's reading fluency. In the assessment, the teacher will ask the child to read aloud a passage from a grade-level text for one minute. Which of the following criteria would be appropriate for the teacher to apply in the context of this assessment?
A. Does the child read with at least 50% accuracy?
B. Does the child maintain a consistent vocal loudness and intensity?
C. Does the child read at a rate of at least 100 words per minute?
D. Does the child use prosody appropriately to convey meaning?
D. Does the child use prosody appropriately to convey meaning?
A second-grade teacher is planning to set aside a block of time each day for students to engage in independent reading. The teacher plans to create comfortable areas for reading, provide varied reading materials, and create opportunities for students to share what they have read. To help ensure that all students will profit from this activity, it would be especially important for the teacher to plan to provide guidance in how to:
A. develop an adequately varied list of independent reading materials for the year.
B. self-select appropriate independent reading materials.
C. determine a realistic number of books to read independently over a given span of time.
D. maintain a constant reading rate when doing independent reading.
B. self-select appropriate independent reading materials.
Which of the following strategies would be best for a first-grade teacher to address the literacy needs of a gifted first-grade student who is a highly proficient reader?
A. developing cognitively challenging reading and literacy activities related to the student's interests
B. arranging for the student to receive reading and literacy instruction in a higher-grade-level classroom
C. preparing puzzles or brain-teasers for the student to work on after completing reading and literacy assignments
D. asking the student to provide tutoring to classmates who struggle with reading and literacy assignments
A. developing cognitively challenging reading and literacy activities related to the student's interests