Pearson Review

Which of the following strategies would be most appropriate to use to promote second grade students' ability to analyze key ideas and details in a literary text?

• Explicitly teaching students the key features and conventions of different literary genres

• Prompting students to evaluate the significance of a story's setting with respect to its theme

• Helping students create a story map of the main characters in a story and the events with which they are involved

• encouraging students to clarify their understanding of a story by reflecting on their personal experiences

After students in a sixth-grade class finish reading a historical novel about the U.S. Civil War, the teacher asks each student to bring in an object, or a picture or illustration of an object, that, to them, represents the book. The students must also identify a passage or passages from the book that they can use to support their choices when they present their objects to the class. the activity is most likely to promote students' reading development by helping them understand the importance of:

• determining an author's stated or implied main point of view

• using text structure to develop a general summary of a literary work

• identifying a novel's mood by analyzing the author's use of figurative language

• basing interpretations about a literary work on textual evidence

A fifth-grade teacher guides students in reading a complex literary text. First, the teacher reads aloud the beginning of the text as the students follow along silently in their copies. Next, the teacher rereads key phrases and sentences, asking students what the author meant by certain statements or by the choice of certain words. Finally, the teacher and students reread the section aloud together with expression. The teacher repeats these steps with each section of the text. This activity promotes reading proficiency primarily by:

• modeling for students how to engage in close reading of academic texts

• developing students' word consciousness and love of interesting new words

• helping students achieve grade-level fluency benchmarks for accuracy and rate

• encouraging students to apply metacognitive comprehension strategies as they read

Sixth-grade students have just finished reading a chapter in a novel and are getting ready to write an entry in their response journals. The teacher could most effectively develop students' literary response skills by assigning which of the following journal prompts?

• What new vocabulary words did you learn when reading this chapter? List and define the new words from the chapter.

• What happened in the chapter? Describe two or three events from the chapter.

• What do you think is the main idea or theme of the novel? Relate specific events in this chapter to the theme you suggest.

• Which characters are mentioned in this chapter? List each of the characters.

A fifth-grade class is about to read a play about the life of Harriet Tubman called "Travels on the Railroad." Which of the following prereading activities would best promote students' comprehension of the text?

• introducing the common elements of plays as a genre and looking at sections of a printed play as a class

• asking students to generate several questions about the play based on the play's title

• asking students to share what they already know about the time period during which the play takes place

• encouraging groups of students to create and perform their own short skits about the same subject

This passage would be most suited for helping students

• recognize a literary allusion

• analyze story elements

• predict future events

• analyze an author's point of view

A teacher can best help sixth graders draw inferences from informational text by asking them to complete which of the following statements?

• In my opinion...

• The passage suggests...

• In comparison...

• The author's first point is...

A sixth-grade teacher gives students several persuasive essays that present contrasting opinions on a current social issue. The teacher then asks students to consider the following questions as they read the texts:

1. What is the author's opinion on the issue?

2. How might the author's background influence his or her opinion?

3. What evidence does the author use to support his or her opinion?

These questions are likely to be most effective for helping students:

• monitor comprehension of informational texts

• identify the theme in expository texts

• draw inferences from informational texts

• analyze point of view in expository texts

Skimming is likely to be the most effective strategy for accomplishing which of the following reading tasks?

• evaluating the validity of information on an Internet Web site

• previewing a chapter in a content-area textbook

• synthesizing information from various sources for a research report

• studying specific facts for a content-area exam

A sixth-grade class is working on an Internet research project about various natural resources and their uses. The teacher could best support students' effective use of the Internet for their research by:

• providing students with a checklist of questions that prompt critical evaluation of information on Web sites

• giving students a list of Web sites that have been preapproved based on the sites' reading levels

• encouraging students to search for Web sites that are easy to navigate and that contain familiar vocabulary

• teaching students to employ a variety of search engines to locate relevant Web sites