Reading Instruction Competence Assessment

A sixth grader who is advanced in most areas of reading has difficulty completing assigned reading selections. He appears motivated when he begins reading, but he has difficulty keeping his attention on the task at hand. Which of the following would be his teacher's best initial strategy for addressing this difficulty?

• Adapting the student's reading assignments to reduce their complexity and level of cognitive challenge

• Telling the student that his grades will be based in part on his ability to improve his concentration when he works on reading assignments

• Breaking down the student's reading assignments into small steps and helping him learn to monitor his own attention and progress

• Managing the student's reading assignments so that he generally has only one to work on at any given time

When creating lesson plans to promote specific reading skills, a teacher should make sure that:

• Each planned activity for students is designed to strengthen two or more specific reading skills.

• The targeted reading skills relate to an appropriate instructional progression and reflect students' needs.

• Each planned activity connects students' reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills.

• The targeted reading skills are grade-appropriate and taught to all students using the same instructional methods.

An early elementary teacher could most effectively support at-home reading by:

• Sending parents/guardians a regular newsletter describing classroom reading activities.

• Sharing with parents/guardians important articles from professional reading journals.

• Recommending books that parents/guardians would likely enjoy reading with their children.

• Providing parents/guardians with periodic reports on their children's progress in reading.

A sixth-grade teacher wants to ensure that the classroom reading environment supports content-area learning for the English Learners in the class. Which of the following strategies is likely to be most effective in addressing this objective?

• Replacing classroom content-area books with simpler texts on the same subjects that the English Learners can understand more readily

• Providing English Learners with grade-level, English-only content-area books to promote academic language

• Making available in the classroom content-area texts at various levels that supplement and reinforce the information presented in students' textbooks

• Setting up an area in the classroom where students can go to reread the content-area textbook quietly and independently

Of the following questions, which would be most important for a teacher to consider when interpreting the results of a reading assessment for a particular student?

• How did the student's performance on this assessment compare with that of the student's classmates?

• Are these findings sufficient to assign a grade to the student's performance?

• How do these findings relate to the student's performance on other recently administered reading assessments?

• Do these findings provide information about the student's ranking in regard to national norms of reading achievement?

A fourth-grade class includes two students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). When planning classroom entry-level and progress-monitoring assessments for these students, the teacher should:

• Make arrangements for the students to be tested in an environment that is quiet and free from distractions.

• Consult the Reading/Language Arts Framework for California Public Schools to determine appropriate assessments for students with IEPs.

• Recognize that these students may require additional time to complete their work on these assessments.

• Consult each student's IEP to determine any specific testing accommodations required for that student.

A middle school teacher is preparing for the class to take the sixth-grade California Standards Test (CST) in English-language arts. The teacher believes that a student in the class with a Section 504 Plan would perform significantly better on the assessment if she were allowed to have frequent supervised breaks within sections of the test. Which of the following guidelines would be most important for the teacher to follow to ensure that arrangements for this student during the test are appropriate?

• Providing the student with this testing accommodation only if it is specified in her Section 504 Plan

• Using good teacher judgment to determine if such an accommodation is warranted

• Following whatever accommodations are generally recommended for students with Section 504 Plans

• Requesting testing accommodations for the student in writing at least eight weeks before the test is given

Midway through the year, a second-grade teacher convenes a student success team to plan additional support for a student who is performing somewhat below grade-level standards in reading. Other members of the team include the student and her parents, another teacher who works closely with the student, and a school administrator. In the context of developing an improvement plan for the student, which of the following pieces of information would be most important for the teacher to communicate to the success team?

• A comparison of the student's reading skills with those of her peers who are performing at grade level

• A list of each of the formal and informal reading assessments that the student has taken so far during this school year

• A list of appropriate formal reading assessments that could be used for the student's summative evaluations

• A description of the student's assessed strengths and weaknesses that could serve as a foundation for addressing her needs

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?

• Asking the student to identify the sound at the beginning, middle, or end of a spoken word (e.g., 'What sound do you hear at the end of step?')

• Having the student listen to a tape-recorded story while looking at the book and then answer several simple questions about the story

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

• Having the student listen to the teacher read aloud a set of words with the same beginning sound (e.g., train, trap, trouble) and then repeat the words