Chapter 1-Literacy Learning

Students who have progressed to the intermediate stage of reading development typically are beginning to demonstrate an ability to:

• sound out and blend individual letters.
• engage in reading in order to learn new grade-level content.
• decode grade-level words that follow phonics patterns.
• synthesize and reconstruct abstract ideas.

A middle school teacher provides many opportunities for students to discuss texts they have read together and individually. These practices best demonstrate the teacher's awareness of the:

• importance of exposing students to a variety of genres.
• importance of providing students with explicit modeling of reading strategies.
• influence of students' cognitive development on their reading ability to read critically. 
• influence of students' social development on their reading development.

Which of the following practices best exemplifies a reading teacher's application of schema  theory to reading development? 

• providing students with ample opportunities to practice reading a variety of texts written at their independent reading level.
• introducing students to unfamiliar content and academic language found in a text prior to having them read it. 
• encouraging students to look for familiar morphemes in new multisyllable words encountered in a text to try to deduce the words' meanings.
• exposing students to new vocabulary that is slightly above their current level of reading ability through the use of read-alouds.

Which of the following instructional practices would be most effective in supporting the reading comprehension of ELs?

• including prereading activities designed to activate relevant background knowledge and new content vocabulary.
• ensuring all student groups are given access to technology-based options.
• ensuring all reading-related activities use homogeneous groups that share homogeneous groupings of the same language and cultural backgrounds.
• including opportunities in each lesson for students to provide and receive peer mentoring. 

Which of the following approaches to differentiation would be most appropriate to use to address the needs of struggling readers and advanced readers?

• replace the curriculum standards with standards from other grade levels.
• provide substantially seperate curricula and instruction outside the general education classroom.
• use the results from standardized summative assessments to modify the students' long-term goals.
• modify the pacing and complexity of instruction based on students' ongoing assessment evidence. 

Individualized instruction would likely to be the most appropriate grouping option to use in which of the following instructional situations?

• delivering an intensive reading intervention.
• reinforcing a literacy skill previously taught.
• demonstrating a complex reading task.
• introducing a specific critical-literacy skill.

A reading teacher selects a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts for reading that reflect the diversity of cultures and perspectives in the school community. Which of the following statements best describes an important way this practice contributes to a literate classroom environment? 

• Making available a range of texts representing different genres and areas of interest helps students learn to adapt reading strategies to different texts and purposes for reading.
• Seeing their own background and experiences represented in the curriculum enhances students' self-concept as readers and as members of an academic community.
• Refreshing the selection of texts available in each classroom to represent current trends in children's literature motivates students to increase their independent reading.
• Offering students a variety of texts that address similar topics at different reading levels ensures that all students have equal access to the core reading curriculum. 

A first grade teacher asks a reading coach for help planning professional development to increase his effectiveness in reading instruction. When working with the teacher, which of the following steps would be most appropriate for the coach to take first?

• reviewing with the teacher state learning standards in reading for students in the primary grades. 
• offering to observe the teacher during a reading lesson and then suggest specific goals for improvement. 
• determining if the teacher is familar with research-based components of effective beginning reading instruction.
• helping the teacher identify specific areas of concern and personal goals for improvement in reading instruction.

Several students in a kindergarten class have not developed the concept of the directionality of print. Which of the following teacher strategies is likely to be most effective in addressing the students' needs?

• explicitly pointing to each word in a "big book" while reading the text aloud to the students.
• explicitly explaining to the students that sentences must begin with a capital letter. 
• teaching the students how to distinguish between a letter, word, and a sentence in print.
• teaching the students to use invented spelling to write down their own ideas in print. 

Research has shown that a significant predictor of a student's reading comprehension in the middle and secondary grades is the student's:

• visual learning in the preschool years.
• social-affective development as a toddler.
• vocabulary knowledge in kindergarten and first grade. 
• auditory memory in the middle elementary grades.