Objective 3

Front

How do activities like reviewing spelling patterns, reading and writing connected text, and engaging in word sorts promote students' reading proficiency?

Back

reading fluency with respect to accuracy.

Answer explanation

 In this scenario, the teacher uses both reading and writing activities to reinforce previously taught spelling patterns.  Research has established that encoding and decoding are reciprocal processes and that spelling knowledge can contribute to word-reading accuracy.  Accuracy is a key component of reading fluency.  

A is incorrect because the focus of the activity is on word recognition, not vocabulary acquisition.

  

C is incorrect because the activities described do not relate to morphological awareness.  

Sight words are words that do not follow regular spelling patterns or that contain phonics elements that have not yet been taught, which makes D incorrect.

Front

Relationship between word decoding and reading comprehension in a beginning reader's development.

Back

Rapid automatic decoding skills help facilitate development of reading fluency and comprehension.

Answer explanation

Reading research has shown that accurate decoding skills are a prerequisite to effective development of word-reading automaticity, which, in turn, is foundational to the development of reading fluency—that is, reading text accurately, at a rate that supports comprehension, and with speech-like phrasing and expressiveness.  Furthermore, convergent research suggests that a lack of automatic decoding skills is a frequent cause of comprehension difficulties among students in the primary grades.  

A is incorrect because research indicates that poor decoding skills hamper comprehension and the development of reading comprehension skills.  

B and C are incorrect because being able to decode a text is foundational to understanding the text's meaning.

Front

How can a teacher most effectively support first graders' development of rapid automatic word recognition?

Back

Apply consistent phonics generalizations in common words.

Answer explanation

Automaticity is the rapid recognition of a word without conscious attention to the decoding process.  Research indicates that accurate decoding skills are a prerequisite to the development of, and readiness to benefit from instruction in, automatic word recognition.  Applying consistent phonics generalizations to decode common words is a foundational decoding skill appropriate for beginning readers at the first-grade level.  

B is incorrect because a reliance on context clues for word identification is a frequent cause of inaccurate reading, so this strategy would not facilitate automatic word recognition.  

C is incorrect because dividing multisyllable words into constituent parts is an advanced skill typically taught after developing readers have achieved automaticity reading many single-syllable words.  

D is incorrect because looking up words in a dictionary is related to decoding only as a corrective strategy and does not present phonics patterns explicitly or systematically.  It is therefore of limited effectiveness in developing accurate decoding skills and automaticity among beginning readers.

Front

A second-grade teacher pairs students who are reading at approximately the same independent reading level for a partner-reading activity. During the activity, the two partners sit side by side and take turns reading aloud from a shared text. Over a period of several days, the partners read a large number of independent-level texts together. This activity is best designed to promote students':
- development of reading rate and automaticity.
- awareness of key aspects of prosodic reading.
- development of comprehension skills and strategies.
- awareness of new phonics elements.

Back

development of reading rate and automaticity.

Answer explanation

Research has shown that rereading the same text several times builds comprehension and improves reading rate and automaticity with respect to the given text, but these gains do not necessarily transfer to other texts. 

The most effective way for students to improve reading rate and automaticity is to practice reading many texts written at their independent reading level (i.e., texts that they can read accurately).  

B is incorrect because, while improving one's reading rate may improve one aspect of prosody, it does not necessarily contribute to other aspects of prosody, such as appropriate phrasing and intonation.  Clearly, the activity is not "best designed" to promote prosody.  

C is incorrect because the activity does not focus on developing students' comprehension skills and strategies.

  

D is incorrect because the students are reading independent-level texts  (i.e., texts that they can read with very high degrees of  decoding accuracy and comprehension).  Thus, it is unlikely that the texts contain "new" phonics elements (i.e., elements that have not yet been introduced to these students).

Front

Which strategy is most effective in promoting second graders' decoding of multisyllable words? Options: giving students opportunities to read literature that offers repeated exposure to predictable text, prompting students to sound out the individual phonemes that compose multisyllable words, encouraging students to compare the parts of new multisyllable words with known single-syllable words, reinforcing students' recognition of high-frequency multisyllable words using drills and flashcards.

Back

encouraging students to compare the parts of new multisyllable words with known single-syllable words

Answer explanation

By the second grade, students have typically learned to read a wide variety of syllable patterns in single-syllable words.  Since most of the syllables in multisyllable words follow the same patterns as those in single-syllable words, the primary challenge for students just learning to decode multisyllable words is learning to recognize the words as a series of discrete syllables. This recognition allows students to apply their prior knowledge of syllable patterns to decoding longer words. 

The strategy described in C is effective because it focuses students' attention on recognizing the component syllables in these words.  

A is incorrect because reading predictable text is typically used with beginning readers and is not appropriate for teaching decoding of multisyllable words.  

B is incorrect because sounding out words letter by letter is a strategy beginning readers can use to decode very simple words with one-to-one letter-sound correspondences, but it is not an efficient strategy for decoding the complex multiletter phonics patterns typically encountered by second-grade readers.  

D is incorrect because practicing with flashcards—focusing on rapid recognition of words—would not be appropriate until students have learned to process all of the letters in target words systematically and can decode the words with a high degree of accuracy.

Front

According to basic principles of research-based, systematic phonics instruction, which of the following common English letter combinations would be most appropriate for a first-grade teacher to introduce first? Options: ir, kn, th, oi

Back

th

Answer explanation

In research-based, systematic phonics instruction, phonics elements are introduced according to their utility for beginning readers, and therefore according to their frequency of use in words appearing in primary-grades texts.  Among the letter combinations given, th occurs most frequently in such texts and therefore is among the very first letter combinations taught.  

A, B, and D are incorrect because these letter combinations appear significantly less frequently in primary-grades texts than th does.

Front

A second-grade teacher administers spelling inventories periodically to help assess students' phonics knowledge. The following shows one student's performance on a spelling inventory at the beginning of the school year and again several months later. The student's performance on the second administration of the spelling inventory indicates that the student made the most improvement in which of the following areas? Options: initial and final consonants, short vowels and diphthongs, digraphs and blends, long and r-controlled vowels

Back

long and r-controlled vowels

Answer explanation

Patterns of improvement across the assessments suggest the student has learned two conventional spelling patterns.  First, by correctly spelling star and turn in the second assessment, the student demonstrates progress in spelling words with r-controlled vowels.  Second, by learning to use the VCe long-vowel pattern to spell the words drive and peach, the student demonstrates knowledge of a conventional spelling pattern for long vowels.  

Although the student's spelling of peach in the second assessment is incorrect, it nevertheless demonstrates progress in learning conventional spelling patterns used in English.  

A, B, and C are incorrect because the student shows no change over time in the indicated spelling skills. 

Front

Which miscue represents an error in decoding consonant blends? Options: Omitting circus, Pronouncing clowns as clones, Saying bet for best, Shortening funny to fun

Back

Saying bet for best

Answer explanation

A consonant blend is a sequence of two or more consonants in a word, each of which represents a separate phoneme.  For example, the sequence of consonants at the end of the word best represents the sequence of phonemes /s/ and /t/.  A student who says bet for best is omitting the letter s, an error in decoding the consonant blend at the end of the word.  

The other responses are incorrect because these miscues are unrelated to decoding consonant blends.  

A is a whole-word omission.  

B represents an error decoding a diphthong.  

D is an omission of an entire syllable.

Front

Best rationale for incorporating spelling instruction into a first-grade reading program?

Back

Spelling supports word recognition by helping students learn and retain common phonics patterns.

Answer explanation

Research has shown that the development of spelling and phonics skills is reciprocal; when instruction in these two skills is aligned, development of each skill area is reinforced and enhanced.  Thus, learning the spelling patterns of words reinforces learning of their phonics patterns and supports word recognition. 

A is incorrect because phonemic awareness and the phonological awareness skill of onset-rime segmentation precedes and contributes to students' spelling development, not the reverse as stated in A.  

B is incorrect because most words targeted in spelling instruction are not new to students but already part of their oral vocabulary.  

C is incorrect because spelling knowledge continually expands the range of students' decoding skills and does not limit or simplify the decoding process.

Front

Which sentence contains a pair of italicized words that differ by one phoneme? Options: He took off his cap so that he could take a nap., She works at a bank that is located near the bank of a river., She told him not to buy a ticket because she had already bought one., His face looked pale after he carried the pail of water for a mile.

Back

He took off his cap so that he could take a nap.

Answer explanation

A phoneme is a phonological unit of language, a discrete speech sound in a particular language that native speakers of the language recognize as sufficient to distinguish between two phonologically similar but separate words.  For example, the speech sounds /k/ and /n/ are phonemes in English because native English speakers who hear the pair of spoken forms /kăp/ and /năp/ regard them as distinct words.  

B is incorrect because the two identically spelled words bank (financial institution) and bank (land form abutting a river) are pronounced the same way; i.e., they contain the identical sequence of phonemes.  

C is incorrect because the two words differ by more than one phoneme.  

D is incorrect because although the pair of words, pale and pail, differ in their spelling, they are identical in their pronunciation; i.e., they contain the same phonemes.