RICA Practice-Subtest 2

Front

What should a teacher do when a third grader, reading at grade level, consistently chooses formulaic books that do not enhance his conceptual or language development? Options: avoid interfering with the student's selection of books as long as he finds his choices enjoyable, provide the student with books with similar themes or on similar topics that are more challenging for him, point out to the student some of the major limitations of the books he is choosing to read and ask him not to read those books at school, advise the student that he should choose books that will prepare him for the more difficult reading he will encounter in fourth grade.

Back

provide the student with books with similar themes or on similar topics that are more challenging for him

Front

A second-grade student has limited vocabulary knowledge, which hinders the student's word recognition and reading comprehension. The student's oral reading is slow and labored, and the student typically spends the majority of independent reading time browsing through books, making little effort to read the actual words on the page. Research has shown that which of the following is most likely to happen if this student receives no instructional intervention?

Back

The student will begin to fall behind peers in reading development and will continue to fall further behind in later grades as texts include increasingly difficult vocabulary.

Front

Which of the following statements best explains an important limitation of teaching students to rely on context as their primary strategy for determining the meaning of unfamiliar words in texts? Context clues have limited usefulness for students who already have well-developed background knowledge related to a text's subject or content, Using context to determine the meaning of an unfamiliar word disrupts students' reading fluency more significantly than simply consulting a dictionary, Explicit context clues about a word's meaning are not very common in most texts, while implicit contextual clues often require students to apply background knowledge they lack, Over reliance on context as a word-learning strategy hinders students' vocabulary growth, since they should be learning most new words in direct vocabulary instruction

Back

Explicit context clues about a word's meaning are not very common in most texts, while implicit contextual clues often require students to apply background knowledge they lack

Front

A middle school teacher writes the morpheme dict on the board, pronounces it, and explains that dict derives from the Latin word for "speak." The teacher then asks students if they can think of English words that start with or include dict. This activity is likely to promote students' vocabulary development primarily by helping the students:

Back

apply knowledge of word roots as a word-learning strategy

Front

A teacher substitutes blank spaces for several nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in an appropriate level of text and asks students to determine reasonable and logical words to complete each blank. This technique is useful as an informal assessment of students' understanding of English language structures primarily because it requires them to:

Back

select appropriate words based on their grammatical function as well as on their meaning

Front

How are the phrases that come just after neither and just after nor similar in the sentence: Neither walking on the beach nor running around the track cheered Ahmed up?

Back

recognize parallel grammatical structures

Front

Structural analysis would be the most appropriate strategy for a student to use to determine the meaning of which of the following words? Impassable, Elephant, Interim, Examine

Back

Impassable

Front

To promote students' comprehension of a passage about comets and meteoroids, a middle school teacher shows the students how to use facts from the text to complete the following Venn diagram. This comprehension strategy is most effective in facilitating students' ability to: organize textual information according to similarities and differences

Back

organize textual information according to similarities and differences

Front

An eighth-grade class will be reading a drama that is a challenging grade-level text. The teacher is concerned that a student in the class who has a reading disability will have difficulty keeping up with and understanding the reading assignments. Which strategy would be most effective for the teacher to use to promote the student's access to the text and his ability to participate fully in class discussions related to it? Options: assigning the student the play several weeks before his classmates are scheduled to begin reading it, providing the student with a narrative version of the play to read rather than the original, dramatic version, assigning the student only selected portions of the play, such as a few key speeches and dialogues, providing the student with an audio recording of the play to listen to in conjunction with his reading.

Back

providing the student with an audio recording of the play to listen to in conjunction with his reading

Front

A first-grade teacher plans to assess a student's comprehension of a short story through oral retelling. After the student silently reads the story, the teacher will prompt the student's retelling by asking open-ended questions. To prepare for this assessment, the teacher reads the story carefully and composes the questions. Which of the following additional steps would be most helpful for the teacher to take before the retelling activity begins? Options: Prompt the student to recall similar tasks the student has previously performed, Prepare a checklist of the key elements that an effective retelling of this story should include, Review grades earned by the student on recent tests and quizzes in language arts, Remind the student to concentrate on recalling as many details as possible during the retelling.

Back

Prepare a checklist of the key elements that an effective retelling of this story should include.