Teaching Reading 1 Praxis Practice

A teacher reviews the following student scores on a standardized reading test with the goal of determining the areas in which the student will require additional instruction.

· 75th percentile in vocabulary knowledge

· 85th percentile in decoding

· 40th percentile in comprehension

· 70th percentile in fluency

Based on the data, which of the following activities best addresses the student’s needs?

• a) Reviewing high-frequency words

• b) Identifying context clues in sentences

• c) Listening to an audio version of the text

• d) Using a plot chart to track the events in a story

A kindergarten teacher plans a lesson designed to give students guided practice in learning a phonological awareness skill. Having students participate in which of the following activities best meets the teacher’s goal?

• a) Asking students to follow along as the teacher moves a finger from left to right while orally reading a line of text in a picture book

• b) Having students say the word “airplane” and then asking them to say it again without pronouncing “air”

• c) Distributing a set of plastic letters to students and having them use the manipulatives to form decodable words

• d) Cutting a student’s name card into individual letters and modeling how to put the letters together to form the name

A first-grade teacher selects a picture book that retells the well-known fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears to read aloud to the class. Following the first oral reading of the text, the teacher distributes a graphic organizer with a set of questions for students to answer as the text is read again. During the second reading, the teacher pauses at different parts of the story and asks students to independently answer one of the questions related to that part of the story on the work sheet. A portion of the graphic organizer the teacher uses is shown below.

Question

The Story Says

I Say

And So I Believe…

The teacher’s instructional method best engages students in which of the following thinking processes related to successful reading comprehension?

• a) Making decisions about what is going to happen next in a story by connecting existing knowledge to new information an author gives as a text is read

• b) Determining what is important in a story and recording it in the student’s own words

• c) Searching a story to reach a conclusion based on clues an author gives and prior knowledge to construct meaning that goes beyond what is literally stated

• d) Creating mental images of the events happening in a story that support recall of main ideas

A first-grade teacher works with small groups of students to teach them how to develop their writing skills. Which of the following methods best fosters the students’ ability to use correct mechanics, such as punctuation and capitalization, in their own writing?

• a) Assigning work sheets from a workbook to complete

• b) Having students copy rules in their copybooks for reference

• c) Emphasizing pauses indicated by punctuation during read-alouds

• d) Using mentor texts to encourage imitation of effective writing

Which of the following phonemic manipulations is the most complex and is generally developed last by most students?

• a) Change the /m/ in “mouse” to /h/.

• b) Say “frame.” Say it again without the /r/.

• c) What word is made when “bl” and “oom” are combined?

• d) Say “doughnut.” Now say it again, but don’t say “dough.”

A third-grade teacher’s reading instruction includes sources from multiple content areas. During a science lesson, students are reading a trade book about plants; the book contains many new and difficult vocabulary words, such as “chlorophyll,” “germinate,” and “photosynthesis.” Which of the following teaching activities will best help the students develop an understanding of the new words?

• a) Making lists of words from the science book to post on a word wall in the classroom

• b) Planning direct instruction using multimedia methods to introduce words in rich contexts

• c) Having students assume definitions for the new words and relate them to words they already know

• d) Giving the students Venn diagrams to sort the new vocabulary into well-defined categories

A kindergarten teacher assesses students’ understanding of concepts of print at the beginning of the year. The results of one student’s assessment are shown.

Concepts of Print Assessment

Can you point to

the front cover of the book? September (yes) May

Can you point to

the picture at the top of the book? September (yes) May

Can you show me one

letter? September (yes) May

Can you show me

where to read after this word? September (yes) May

Based on the data, which of the following instructional methods will best promote the student’s understanding of print conventions?

• a) Teaching letter-sound relationships explicitly and in isolation

• b) Activating the student’s background knowledge of concepts that are important to the content of the text

• c) Using a finger to draw attention to letters and words in the text during a shared reading

• d) Previewing the text to make predictions about its content before a shared reading

Place the following oral language milestones in the order in which they are developed, earliest to latest.

a) Responding to simple questions with a “yes” or “no”

b) Using content-related vocabulary correctly during conversations

c) Making an oral presentation that is appropriate for the given audience

d) Answering questions using complete sentences and a variety of sentence structures

• ABCD

• ADBC

• DABC

• CABD

Ms. Jones introduces visualizing as a comprehension skill to her first-grade students using a short passage of text. Which of the following strategies illustrates how to best introduce the skill?

• a) Allowing the students to read the passage independently and draw an illustration to match it

• b) Assigning partners to illustrate the passage that is read aloud by the teacher

• c) Demonstrating how to summarize the passage using a story map with pictures

• d) Explaining the process in detail and modeling it by thinking aloud while reading the passage

A kindergarten teacher sets a benchmark goal for students to quickly recognize a set of ten new sight words within a three-week instructional time period. The teacher introduces the words by using flash cards and engages students in a series of activities that reinforce learning within authentic contexts. During this time, the teacher also creates a small-group workshop activity in which students view each word printed in large letters on a card, say the word, and then use pipe cleaners to form the word. Which of the following is the primary benefit to students of participating in the workshop activity?

• a) Improving long-term memory of a nondecodable word by engaging multiple student senses in learning

• b) Building a student’s reading fluency by improving the ability to flexibly apply phonological awareness skills

• c) Increasing a student’s ability to use several sensory modalities to phonetically decode and recognize an unknown word

• d) Reinforcing recognition of a word through a student’s ability to connect visual language symbols with sounds that the symbols represent