Science of Teaching reading

Which of the following practices by a prekindergarten teacher best reflects an assets-based approach to reading

instruction?

• A. planning instruction in various areas of reading using continually adjusted flexible groupings according to

  each child's current assessed knowledge and skills

• B. allowing individual children to develop an interest in literacy at their own pace before introducing them to

  foundational reading concepts and skills

• C. ensuring that each child in an emergent-reading group has mastered the current reading concept or skill before moving the group on to the next lesson

• D. building opportunities in each lesson for children to use multiple modalities to deepen their understanding

  of new reading concepts and skills

Answer explanation

Option A is correct because an assets-based approach to reading instruction focuses on what children know rather than on what they do not know. By continually adjusting flexible groupings according to current assessment data, the teacher acknowledges each child's growth in various areas of reading. The use of ongoing assessment also supports the teacher in identifying each child's assets in order to create student-centered instruction

A first-grade student has been identified as having dyslexia and has begun intervention. Which of the following

approaches to instruction would be most effective to enhance the student's reading development?

• A. allowing the student to use colored overlays on all classroom texts to ameliorate the visual difficulties

  caused by dyslexia

• B. using reading materials with the student for instruction and guided practice that utilize specialized fonts

  designed for people with dyslexia

• C. arranging for the student to spend time each day on the classroom computer using a working-memory

  training program

• D. providing the student with systematic, explicit multimodal instruction in all the essential, evidence-based components of reading

Answer explanation

Option D is correct because convergent research on dyslexia supports a language-based, multimodal approach

to instruction that is systematic and explicit; addresses all five components of reading (phonemic awareness,

phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension); and integrates spelling and writing instruction with reading

instruction.

A third-grade teacher frequently uses an online application at the end of a lesson that allows the teacher to post a small task or question for students on the classroom computer. For example, after a lesson on prefixes, the teacher posts three base words and asks students to change the meaning of each word by adding an appropriate prefix from the lesson. Throughout the day, students post their individual responses for the teacher to review. In this scenario, the teacher is using technology for which of the following assessment purposes?

• A. formative assessment

• B. diagnostic assessment

• C. summative assessment

• D. screening assessment

Answer explanation

Option A is correct because the purpose of a formative assessment is to obtain information about what students

have learned and are able to do following instruction

At the beginning of the school year, a first-grade teacher conducts a brief screening assessment in which the

teacher asks small groups of students to spell four CVC words and one word with a consonant blend (e.g., bag, hen,

sit, mop, slug). In addition to providing the teacher with information about students' knowledge of letter-sound

correspondences, this type of assessment would also provide information about students' development in which of

the following other areas related to emergent reading?

• A. vocabulary knowledge

• B. phonological awareness

• C. phonemic awareness

• D. listening comprehension

Answer explanation

Option C is correct because in this assessment students are representing phonemes (sounds) with graphemes

(letters). The number of graphemes a student writes and the sequence of the graphemes provides insight into the

students' phonemic awareness, specifically their phonemic segmentation skills

A prekindergarten teacher is preparing an introductory lesson focused on isolating/identifying the initial sound in spoken words for a small group of children whose informal assessments indicate that they are ready to learn this skill. The group includes an English learner. Which of the following instructional supports would best promote the English learner's success in achieving the instructional goal of this lesson?

• A. selecting stimulus words for the lesson that have sounds common to both English and the English

  learner's home language

• B. developing an alternative lesson for the English learner that focuses on skills that fall earlier along the phonological awareness continuum

• C. conducting tasks with the English learner that require the child to segment and blend the sounds of

  simple spoken English words

• D. encouraging the English learner's family to engage in wordplay activities with their child such as reciting

  home-language nursery rhymes

Answer explanation

Option A is correct because when focusing on the skill of isolating/identifying phonemes (sounds) in spoken words, English learners benefit from stimulus words that contain familiar sounds. Research has shown that babies as young as ten months stop attending to and producing speech sounds that do not occur in their home language(s).

As part of an informal assessment of students' phonemic awareness skills, a kindergarten teacher meets with

individual students and says, "We're going to play a word game. I'm going to say a word that you know. When you

hear it, I want you to say each sound in the word in the right order. For example, if I say fan, you should say f/ă/n."

The teacher then helps the student practice the procedure using the practice words in, sat, and top. After meeting

with each student, the teacher reviews students' performance and notices that several students performed similarly

on the assessment. A representative sample of their assessment results is shown below.

Target Word Student Response

at ă/t

men m/ĕn

line l/īn

44

hot h/ŏt

gum g/ŭm

Given the information provided, which of the following student activities would be most appropriate for the teacher to

include when planning differentiated instruction to promote the students' growth in phonemic awareness?

• A. identifying and matching the initial, medial, and final sounds of words represented by pictures

• B. practicing reading simple words that belong to common word families

• C. identifying and matching pictures that represent words with the same onset or rime

• D. practicing reading a variety of simple decodable texts

Answer explanation

Option A is correct because the task described in this scenario–asking students to say each sound in a word in the correct order—is an example of a phoneme-segmentation task. An analysis of the students' responses to the target words suggest that the students can segment words into onset and rime (e.g., g/um) but not into individual phonemes

A kindergarten teacher is planning instruction for a small group of students who have mastered the letter-sound

relationships for the consonants m, s, t, and p and for the short-vowel sound of the letter a. The students also

consistently spell words using both initial and final consonant sounds in their daily writing. Given this information,

which of the following instructional activities would be most appropriate for the teacher to use with these students to

promote their transition to the next step along the continuum of development of knowledge and skills related to the

alphabetic principle?

• A. exploring the letter-sounds for letter names that do not contain the sound that the letter represents (e.g., h, w)

• B. introducing the students to early decodable texts featuring known letter-sound relationships and

  modeling how to sound out the words

• C. consolidating the students' knowledge of letters that contain the letter's sound at the beginning of the

  letter's name (e.g., b, d, j, k, q)

• D. practicing writing each letter of the alphabet in response to a spoken prompt of the letter's sound to build motor memory for letter-sound relationships

Answer explanation

Option B is correct because the kindergarten students described in the scenario are able to spell words with the letter-sound relationships they know. This suggests that they understand the alphabetic principle and can perceive at least two phonemes in words. Because of the reciprocity between encoding and decoding,

A prekindergarten teacher is planning instruction in letter-sound relationships for a group of beginning-level English learners who have begun identifying and naming the letters of the alphabet. Which of the following strategies would likely be most effective to apply with this group of children?

• A. using oral translations of tongue twisters from the children's home languages to draw their attention to

  letter-sounds that are common between the two languages

• B. ensuring that the children can distinguish between illustrations and print and identify the parts of a printed sentence as prerequisites to learning letter-sounds

• C. employing articulatory feedback to help the children discover English letter-sounds that are not in their

  home language and learn how to pronounce them

• D. showing the children how to use a variety of simple mnemonic devices to help them memorize unfamiliar

  English letter-sounds

Answer explanation

Option C is correct because English learners learning letter-sound relationships that are not in their home language benefit from articulatory feedback to discover how to pronounce the sounds. Articulatory feedback includes feeling the position of the tongue and/or lips when making the sound and feeling for the airstream or puff of air.

A second-grade teacher frequently uses the strategy of phoneme-grapheme mapping as part of phonics

instruction. The teacher selects target words from a phonics lesson and creates sound boxes corresponding to the

words. The teacher then helps students write the target words in the sound boxes, making sure that students map

each sound of a word to a single box. Examples of sound boxes from two different phonics lessons are shown

below.

Sample sound boxes for one group of students:

ch | ai | n

ch | ea | p

Sample sound boxes for a second group of students:

b | e | n | t

f | i | s | t

Using this activity in the context of phonics lessons best demonstrates the teacher's understanding of which of the

following key concepts related to beginning reading instruction?

• A. the importance of sequencing phonics instruction according to the increasing complexity of linguistic

  units

• B. the relationship between accurate, automatic decoding and the development of reading fluency and

  comprehension

• C. the importance of utilizing the reciprocity between decoding and encoding to reinforce phonics instruction

• D. the relationship between providing students with frequent practice with decodable text and the

  development of automaticity

Answer explanation

Option C is correct because phoneme-grapheme mapping is a visual activity that allows students to map graphemes onto the individual phonemes or sounds they represent in a word. A grapheme is a written symbol that represents a sound. A grapheme can be a single letter or a sequence of letters (e.g., ea, -tch). In a phonemegrapheme map, each box is a sound box and only one sound can go into each box. So, phoneme-grapheme mapping provides students with a visual aid to reinforce phonics elements, such as consonant digraphs

A kindergarten teacher reads a decodable text about cats with a small group of students and then incorporates the content of the text into an interactive writing lesson. First, the teacher has students orally generate several sentences that relate to the actions of the cat in the story. The teacher then says, "Those are great sentences. Help me write them on the chart paper." For each decodable word in a sentence, the teacher pauses to prompt the students to listen to the sounds of the word and use their knowledge of the letter-sound correspondences that they practiced in the decodable text to identify which letter the teacher should write next. This scenario best demonstrates the teacher's awareness of which of the following concepts related to students' development of beginning reading skills?

• A. the role of basic print concepts in writing development

• B. the importance of fostering students' motivation to read and write

• C. the role of accurate, automatic decoding in fluent writing

• D. the importance of applying newly taught phonics elements to writing

Answer explanation

Option D is correct because the scenario describes an interactive writing lesson designed to prompt students to apply what they know about phonics to writing words in a meaningful context. The teacher models the thinking process of going from an idea to print on the page