RICA Practice-Subtest 1

A kindergarten teacher plays the following game with students. The teacher says, "Guess whose name I'm going to say now?" The teacher then says the initial sound of a student's name (e.g., /m/ for Mariko), and the children try to guess the name. This activity is likely to promote the reading development of students primarily by helping them: 

• blend separate sounds in words

•  recognize that a spoken word is made up of sounds

•  understand the principles of phonics

•  learn how to spell their own names

Which of the following informal assessments would be most appropriate to use to assess an individual student's phonemic awareness?

• identify the sound at the beginning, middle, or end of a spoken word

• look at the book, listen to a audio & answer several simple questions about the story

•  identify the letters in the alphabet that correspond to the initial consonant sounds of several familiar spoken words

• listen to the teacher read aloud a set of words with the same beginning sound & then repeat the words

Teacher: What is this a picture of? [The teacher displays a picture of a boat.] Student: A boat? 

Teacher: A boat, that's right. Now, let's say the word boat together very slowly: /b/.../ō/.../t/. [The student pronounces the word with the teacher.] 

Teacher: How many sounds do you hear? /b/.../ō/.../t/ . . . [The teacher slowly repeats the word.] 

Student: Three? 

Teacher: That's right, three. Now, I'd like you to do this for some more words. 

This assessment would be an appropriate way to test the student's ability to perform which of the following phonemic awareness tasks?

• counting and blending the phonemes in a word

•  identifying onsets and rimes

• recognizing how many phonemes are contained in a word

• relating phonemes to letters

The use of rhyming texts for kindergarten read-alouds is likely to promote the reading development of kindergarten students primarily by:

• fostering their phonological awareness

• increasing their vocabulary knowledge

• enhancing their understanding of story elements

•  improving their letter recognition skills

 Which of the following strategies would best help a kindergarten student who is having difficulty visually distinguishing between the letters b and d?

•  helping the student focus on the directionality of each letter as the student traces it

•  having the student look for the letters within the text of a favorite picture book

•  repeating the name of each letter several times as the student points to the letter

•  encouraging the student to observe closely as the teacher writes the letters

A first grader can identify the letters of the alphabet and decode a number of simple words. He becomes confused, however, when tracking print in consecutive lines of print. Which of the following strategies is likely to be most effective in helping the student read a short paragraph of simple text?

• Help him sound out unfamiliar words included in the text before he attempts to read the entire paragraph

• Have him use his finger or a marker as he reads the text

•  Help him increase his reading rate to improve his understanding of the continuity between words and sentences in the paragraph

• Modify the paragraph by using a yellow highlighter to identify natural groupings of words and phrases within the paragraph

Which of the following instructional practices would be most effective in promoting kindergarten students' understanding of the alphabetic principle?

•  creating a writing center in the classroom, stocked with paper and writing implements

• labeling key objects in the classroom such as the clock and tables

•  stopping frequently during read-aloud to carefully pronounce and define important words

•  routinely saying the sounds in words when writing the words on the board

An emergent reader frequently reverses some letters and numbers during writing tasks. Which of the following strategies would be most effective in helping this student develop more accurate letter formation skills?

•  providing the student with supplemental practice writing lists of words that are spelled with the target letters

• having the student practice tracing the target letter shapes with a finger while saying aloud the sequence of steps to form each letter

• providing the student with a supplemental handwriting workbook that describes the formation of the target letters in a series of steps

•  encouraging the student to vocalize words when writing, especially when the words contain the target letters

In the word chimpanzee, which of the following pairs of letters is a digraph?

• ch

• mp

• an

• ee

 A kindergarten student has demonstrated the ability to write words phonetically, but she is reluctant to write because she is worried about misspelling words. The teacher could best promote the student's reading and writing development by:

•  giving her a spelling list of high-frequency sight words to copy and learn each day

•  helping her make a list of words that she already knows how to spell correctly

•  reassuring her that it is okay for now to express herself in writing by spelling words as they sound

•  suggesting that she spend time copying some of the words found in her favorite stories