A Few 190 Practice Questions about Accuracy

Which of the following statements best describes the relationship between word decoding and reading comprehension in a beginning reader's development?

• Decoding skills and reading comprehension tend to develop independently of one another.

• Development of decoding skills has little effect on the development of reading fluency or reading comprehension.

• Reading comprehension contributes to and directly facilitates the development of decoding skills.

• Decoding skills are essential for the development of reading fluency to support reading comprehension.

A group of third-grade students reads a poem aloud accurately but without much expression. Before asking the students text-dependent questions about the poem's content, the teacher spends time focusing on phrase-cueing. For example, the teacher asks the students to "Read the phrase that tells us ________" or "Identify the phrase that describes ________". After focusing on key phrases, the teacher conducts an expressive oral reading of the poem, focusing on proper pausing and expression, especially with respect to the phrases they discussed. Finally, the teacher leads the students in an expressive choral reading of the poem. Engaging the students in these activities prior to discussing the meaning of the poem demonstrates the teacher's understanding of:

• the concept that poetry must be read aloud in order for readers to fully appreciate it.

• the importance of accuracy as the foundation of reading fluency and comprehension.

• the role of fluency as a bridge between simply decoding a text and comprehending it.

• the interrelationships between the three key indicators of oral reading fluency.

A second-grade teacher is working with a small group of students to improve their oral reading fluency. As part of lesson planning, the teacher analyzes the students' oral reading errors and plans instruction to address phonics knowledge and skills not yet mastered. The teacher's actions are likely to benefit the students' reading fluency most directly by: 

• encouraging the students to slow down and decode words letter by letter, a prerequisite of fluent oral reading.

• improving the students' reading accuracy, a key component of fluency.

• promoting the students' recall of a large number of grade-level words by sight, a prerequisite of fluent oral reading.

• focusing the students on increasing their reading rate, a key component of fluency. 

A second-grade teacher pairs students with appropriate, accessible texts for a paired-reading activity. During the activity, two students sit side by side and take turns reading an entire short text aloud. Over a period of several days, the pairs of students read and reread a large number of accessible texts together. This activity best promotes students' development of: 

• reading rate and automaticity. 

• prosodic reading skills. 

• comprehension skills and strategies. 

• new phonics skills.