Domain 1
1. Which of the following practices by a prekindergarten teacher best reflects an assets-based approach to reading instruction?
A. planning instruction in various areas of reading using continually adjusted flexible groupings according to each child's current assessed knowledge and skills
B. allowing individual children to develop an interest in literacy at their own pace before introducing them to foundational reading concepts and skills
C. ensuring that each child in an emergent-reading group has mastered the current reading concept or skill before moving the group on to the next lesson
D. building opportunities in each lesson for children to use multiple modalities to deepen their understanding of new reading concepts and skills
A. planning instruction in various areas of reading using continually adjusted flexible groupings according to each child's current assessed knowledge and skills
At the beginning of the school year, a first-grade teacher conducts a brief screening assessment in which the teacher asks small groups of students to spell four CVC words and one word with a consonant blend (e.g., bag, hen, sit, mop, slug). In addition to providing the teacher with information about students' knowledge of letter-sound correspondences, this type of assessment would also provide information about students' development in which of the following other areas related to emergent reading?
A. vocabulary knowledge
B. phonological awareness
C. phonemic awareness
D. listening comprehension
C. phonemic awareness
. A second-grade student scores well above the 50th percentile benchmark for fluency on the midyear benchmark assessment. However, the teacher notes that the student reads the text word-by-word in a choppy, disjointed manner and has difficulty answering comprehension questions afterward. Which of the following strategies would be most important for the teacher to include in an intervention designed to address the student's assessed needs?
A. engaging in a systematic review of phonics elements that should be mastered by the middle of second grade
B. engaging in silent wide-reading of books written at the student's independent reading level
C. engaging in oral reading following teacher modeling using texts that are phrase-cued to approximate speech
D. engaging in buddy reading and choral reading with another student who reads at the same level
C. engaging in oral reading following teacher modeling using texts that are phrase-cued to approximate speech
Which of the following sets of words would be most appropriate to categorize as Tier Two words?
A. fossil, air, soil
B. clock, book, floor
C. arrange, observe, predict
D. custom, shelter, community
C. arrange, observe, predict
The teacher wants to align prompts about the setting of the story with the English learners' oral proficiency levels. Which of the following prompts would best align with a student who is at the beginning level of oral language proficiency in English?
A. Describe the setting of the story.
B. Who is sleeping in the room?
C. What is happening outside the house?
D. Point to where everyone is sleeping.
D. Point to where everyone is sleeping.
A first-grade student has been identified as having dyslexia and has begun intervention. Which of the following approaches to instruction would be most effective to enhance the student's reading development?
a. allowing the student to use colored overlays on all classroom texts to ameliorate the visual difficulties caused by dyslexia
b. using reading materials with the student for instruction and guided practice that utilize specialized fonts designed for people with dyslexia
c. arranging for the student to spend time each day on the classroom computer using a working-memory training program
d. providing the student with systematic, explicit multimodal instruction in all the essential, evidence-based components of reading
d. providing the student with systematic, explicit multimodal instruction in all the essential, evidence-based components of reading
A prekindergarten teacher is preparing an introductory lesson focused on isolating/identifying the initial sound in spoken words for a small group of children whose informal assessments indicate that they are ready to learn this skill. The group includes an English learner. Which of the following instructional supports would best promote the English learner's success in achieving the instructional goal of this lesson?
A. selecting stimulus words for the lesson that have sounds common to both English and the English learner's home language
B. developing an alternative lesson for the English learner that focuses on skills that fall earlier along the phonological awareness continuum
C. conducting tasks with the English learner that require the child to segment and blend the sounds of simple spoken English words
D. encouraging the English learner's family to engage in wordplay activities with their child such as reciting home-language nursery rhymes
A. selecting stimulus words for the lesson that have sounds common to both English and the English learner's home language
Several students in a first-grade class have progressed from the partial-alphabetic phase of word-reading development to the full-alphabetic phase. Which of the following instructional activities would be most appropriate for promoting these students' word-reading accuracy and automaticity?
A. having the students practice reading simple closed-syllable words in isolation and in decodable texts
B. modeling the use of contextual strategies to read unfamiliar words
C. increasing the amount of time the students spend practicing reading irregular high-frequency words
D. supporting the students in reading predictable texts in a variety of genres
A. having the students practice reading simple closed-syllable words in isolation and in decodable texts
A third-grade English learner has grade-level decoding skills and scores around the grade-level benchmark for words correct per minute on oral reading fluency measures. However, the student's text comprehension is mixed. The student comprehends some literary and informational texts with ease, yet struggles with others. Given this evidence, when the student is having difficulty with a text, the teacher's best initial response should be to:
A. provide the student with a list of probing questions to answer after the student finishes reading the text.
B. talk with the student to informally assess the extent of the student's background knowledge about the text's topic or setting.
C. advise the student to read the text more slowly and to focus on comprehension rather than decoding accuracy.
D. encourage the student to develop a written summary of the text's key events or central ideas as the student is reading the text.
B. talk with the student to informally assess the extent of the student's background knowledge about the text's topic or setting.
As the story progresses, more characters enter the bedroom and pile on the snoring granny to take a nap. The teacher asks students to describe what is occurring on each page. In response to the text and illustrations, one English learner says, "Mouse sleep on cat. Cat sleep on dog." The student's grammar is most typical of an English learner at which of the following levels of English language proficiency?
A. beginning
B. intermediate
C. advanced
D. advanced high
B. intermediate
A third-grade teacher frequently uses an online application at the end of a lesson that allows the teacher to post a small task or question for students on the classroom computer. For example, after a lesson on prefixes, the teacher posts three base words and asks students to change the meaning of each word by adding an appropriate prefix from the lesson. Throughout the day, students post their individual responses for the teacher to review. In this scenario, the teacher is using technology for which of the following assessment purposes?
A. formative assessment
B. diagnostic assessment
C. summative assessment
D. screening assessment
A. formative assessment
A kindergarten teacher is planning instruction for a small group of students who have mastered the letter-sound relationships for the consonants m, s, t, and p and for the short-vowel sound of the letter a. The students also consistently spell words using both initial and final consonant sounds in their daily writing. Given this information, which of the following instructional activities would be most appropriate for the teacher to use with these students to promote their transition to the next step along the continuum of development of knowledge and skills related to the alphabetic principle?
A. exploring the letter-sounds for letter names that do not contain the sound that the letter represents (e.g., h, w)
B. introducing the students to early decodable texts featuring known letter-sound relationships and modeling how to sound out the words
C. consolidating the students' knowledge of letters that contain the letter's sound at the beginning of the letter's name (e.g., b, d, j, k, q)
D. practicing writing each letter of the alphabet in response to a spoken prompt of the letter's sound to build motor memory for letter-sound relationships
B. introducing the students to early decodable texts featuring known letter-sound relationships and modeling how to sound out the words
Before assigning students a new science or social studies text, a third-grade teacher introduces important Tier Three terms from the text. As part of the introduction, the teacher leads students in applying morphemic analysis skills to the words and also discusses new concepts related to the words. The teacher's actions best reflect an understanding of which of the following factors that can disrupt reading fluency and affect comprehension?
A. lack of automaticity in decoding grade-level words
B. unfamiliarity with a text's content
C. unfamiliarity with complex grammatical structures
D. limited phonics knowledge or skills
B. unfamiliarity with a text's content
Students in a second-grade class will be reading a complex informational text about ants as part of a science unit focused on comparing the ways living organisms depend on one another. Prior to the reading, the teacher plans to show students a video depicting activities in ant colonies and to share a picture book about ants. The teacher's actions best demonstrate understanding of which of the following factors affecting reading comprehension?
A. ability to read fluently with prosody
B. ability to monitor for understanding
C. the role of vocabulary knowledge
D. the role of background knowledge
D. the role of background knowledge
Given the student's performance on the assessment, which of the following actions would be most appropriate for the teacher to take next?
A. implementing reinforcement activities with the student focused on common consonant digraphs
B. engaging the student in phonemic awareness activities focused on final consonant blends
C. sending home the words the student missed to practice for reading homework
D. transitioning the student to reading long-vowel-pattern words
B. engaging the student in phonemic awareness activities focused on final consonant blends
A first-grade teacher provides reading instruction that is systematic and explicit and emphasizes both foundational reading skills and various dimensions of comprehension. According to research in preventing reading difficulties, which of the following additional actions would be most important for the teacher to take to ensure that reading instruction addresses all students' reading needs?
A. engaging students in frequent oral reading activities to develop reading fluency
B. exposing students to a variety of genres to enhance reading comprehension
C. providing students with daily opportunities to work independently on written exercises that emphasize key grade-level reading and spelling skills
D. assessing students' reading development regularly to implement timely and effective instructional responses when a delay is apparent
D. assessing students' reading development regularly to implement timely and effective instructional responses when a delay is apparent
A prekindergarten teacher is planning instruction in letter-sound relationships for a group of beginning-level English learners who have begun identifying and naming the letters of the alphabet. Which of the following strategies would likely be most effective to apply with this group of children?
A. using oral translations of tongue twisters from the children's home languages to draw their attention to letter-sounds that are common between the two languages
B. ensuring that the children can distinguish between illustrations and print and identify the parts of a printed sentence as prerequisites to learning letter-sounds
C. employing articulatory feedback to help the children discover English letter-sounds that are not in their home language and learn how to pronounce them
D. showing the children how to use a variety of simple mnemonic devices to help them memorize unfamiliar English letter-sounds
C. employing articulatory feedback to help the children discover English letter-sounds that are not in their home language and learn how to pronounce them
A third-grade teacher reviews data on the literacy skills of several beginning-level English learners who did not attend school prior to moving to the United States. The teacher wants to plan appropriate small-group reading instruction for the students. Which of the following types of text would best meet the reading development needs of English learners who are at an emergent stage of English language development and at the pre-alphabetic phase of word reading?
A. decodable stories
B. informational text
C. predictable text
D. age-appropriate stories
C. predictable text
A third-grade class includes several English learners who represent a variety of home languages and English language proficiency levels. Some of the students are beginning readers in English. The teacher collects folktales from several countries to use for whole-class read-alouds and during small-group reading instruction. Which of the following statements accurately describes a feature of folktales and why that feature makes the genre especially well-suited for students in a multilingual, multicultural classroom?
A. Folktales usually provide a resource for integrating a variety of hands-on arts and crafts projects into a reading lesson.
B. Folktale plots tend to be compelling because they explore the human condition in depth.
C. Folktale themes tend to be universal, so students are likely to have the necessary schema to comprehend them.
D. Folktales usually include archaic vocabulary, which students are likely to find amusing.
C. Folktale themes tend to be universal, so students are likely to have the necessary schema to comprehend them.
A prekindergarten teacher frequently reads aloud high-quality literature to develop children's familiarity with literary texts. Which of the following accompanying activities would best promote the children's understanding of basic story structure?
A. having the children use props to act out a scene from the story
B. pre-teaching unfamiliar vocabulary from the story to support comprehension
C. stopping at appropriate places in the story to make predictions
D. giving the children picture cards of events in the story to retell in sequence
D. giving the children picture cards of events in the story to retell in sequence
A second-grade teacher periodically conducts reading interest surveys with individual students. The teacher could best use the results of these assessments for which of the following instructional purposes?
A. determining the level of parent/guardian involvement in students' literacy development
B. assisting students in selecting books for independent reading time
C. selecting texts at students' instructional reading level for small-group reading lessons
D. identifying appropriate reading activities for students to complete at home
B. assisting students in selecting books for independent reading time
A first-grade teacher would like to incorporate instruction in morphemes for students who have mastered reading and spelling closed- and open-syllable words. Which of the following skills is best aligned with both the teacher's goal and the continuum of word-reading skills described in the first-grade Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for English Language Arts and Reading (ELAR)?
A. decoding and identifying the meaning of words with the inflectional endings -s, -es, and -ed
B. decoding and spelling words with vowel teams and r-controlled syllables
C. decoding and identifying the meaning of words with the affixes un-, re-, -er, and -est
D. decoding and spelling words with initial and final consonant blends and digraphs
A. decoding and identifying the meaning of words with the inflectional endings -s, -es, and -ed
A second-grade teacher is working with students to develop their automaticity in recognizing high-frequency words. Several English learners often misread or omit high-frequency prepositions (e.g., in, on, of, by) when reading connected text. Which of the following strategies for differentiating instruction for the English learners would best scaffold their learning in order to promote their accuracy and automaticity in reading high-frequency, grade-level function words?
A. constructing word grids of the target words so that the students can practice reading the words in isolation before reading a text that includes them
B. having the students practice reading the target words in meaningful phrases that are illustrated to reinforce understanding
C. pointing out the parts of each target word that are and are not decodable and providing additional practice with the non-decodable elements
D. engaging the students in a timed collaborative match game with a partner in which they try to improve their collective rate matching pairs of the target words
B. having the students practice reading the target words in meaningful phrases that are illustrated to reinforce understanding
A third-grade teacher would like to model how to apply metacognitive strategies while reading in order to improve students' reading comprehension. Which of the following strategies would be most appropriate to model?
A. making predictions and self-questioning while reading
B. inferring the meaning of new vocabulary words while reading
C. identifying the main idea and key details while reading
D. decoding with automaticity to maintain fluency while reading
A. making predictions and self-questioning while reading
The teacher differentiates the written-summary portion of the lesson for the English learners by having them practice orally retelling the story before they develop their written summaries. The teacher listens to their retelling and provides them with feedback, coaching, and/or additional instruction, as needed. The transcript of one intermediate English learner's oral retelling of the story is shown below.
Student: Mom say, "Take a bath Carlos." Carlos don't take a bath. The next day a calabacita is coming out his ear. He feel scared his mom be mad. He put a hat over the calabacita. Then calabacita plant get more big, and he try to take it out. Next, he got a more bigger hat. Then, the wind blow away his hat! Finally, he take a bath, and he washing his ears, and he scrubbing hard. Then the calabacita go away!
Given this retelling, the teacher could best improve the student's ability to summarize the story in a way that conveys story relationships by providing explicit instruction in which of the following skills?
A. applying comparative suffixes to convey size differences and differences in the intensity of actions
B. changing verbs from the story into past tense to convey that the events already took place
C. incorporating sequence words and phrases to support retelling the story in the correct sequence
D. using causal conjunctions to connect the various events in the story in a logical manner
D. using causal conjunctions to connect the various events in the story in a logical manner