Rica subtest 1

A first grade teacher plays the game, "Guess whose name it is?" The teacher says the first sound of a classmate's name (e.g., /m/ for Mike), and the children guess the name. This activity most promotes the reading development of students by:

• Helping them learn to blend different sounds in words.

• Helping them learn to recognize that spoken words are made up of sounds.

• Helping them learn to understand the fundamentals of phonics

• Helping the students learn to spell their friends' names.

Which assessment would be best to understand an individual student's phonemic awareness level?

• Eliciting the beginning, middle, or end of a spoken word

• Showing the student flash cards and asking them to identify the initial consonant sounds of the flash cards

• Reading to the student aloud and having the student repeat similar sounding words as the teacher reads them

Early childhood students use rhyming texts to enhance reading development by:

• giving opportunities to practice phonological awareness

• enhancing their spelling understanding

• learning the etymology of high frequency words

A student in early childhood can read simple words and sentences, but often looses his place after reading a couple of lines of print. Which strategy would best help this student effectively read a paragraph of text?

• getting the student to skim the text and circle unfamiliar words, and then helping the student pronounce those unknown words before reading the text passage

• teach the student to use a place marker, like the student's finger or a straight edge, while reading

• highlight each line of the text a different color, so the student stays on track

How can teachers best facilitate lessons around the alphabetic principle?

• whenever the teacher writes words on the board, the teacher should say the word aloud as the teacher writes it

• encouraging the students to write more, and motivating them by making a fun writing station in the classroom

• giving the students materials to label their school materials

Which of the following strategies would help a student improve their letter formation skills?

• provide the student with lists of words that use targeted vocabulary to spell

• provide the student with targeted vocabulary to trace with a finger while saying aloud the steps to form each letter

• encourage the student to say aloud the words being written

For young students who are afraid of writing because they might misspell words, teachers should:

• analyze the student's top 10 most commonly misspelled words and give her a spelling test

• facilitate a time where the student improves their spelling by copying stories out of their favorite book

• reassuring the student that misspelling is ok, and what's important now is to try to write so we can express ourselves

In order to help the students best develop their reading development skills, a teacher should design lessons around letter-sound correspondences by:

• First teaching sounds in isolation, and then providing time for students to practice reading sounds in context

• making sure that students have mastered vowel sounds before focusing on consonants

• mixing different kinds of phonics in one lesson to show the variety of the English language

Which of the following assessments below would best assess an early-childhood student's ability to read regular and irregular sight words?

• Each student reads a list of targeted words selected by the teacher, while the teacher listens and jots down notes

• Each student picks their favorite book and meets individually with the teacher to read the book aloud while the teacher takes notes

• Students are placed within small groups to read a story and answer comprehension questions. The teacher checks the student's answers

Which instructional strategy would most help students develop reading automaticity?

• The teacher uses echo reading with a book that uses the same set of target vocabulary

• Giving students many short bursts of silent, independent reading sessions throughout the day

• Show the students teacher modeling and then give them individual practice to sound out each of the words

• Showing students the difference between environmental print found on everyday objects and the print found in children's books