Praxis 5205-5

The instructional strategy list-group-label is most effective for teaching which of the following?

• Vocabulary

• Phonics skills

• Concepts

• Phonological awareness

While reading a short passage from a realistic fiction story aloud to the class, a student reads the following sentence.

“I didn’t think what I had done was so bad, but my mother sure knows how to make a mountain out of a molehill.”

The teacher focuses the students’ attention on the author’s use of the phrase “to make a mountain out of a molehill” as an example of figurative language. Which of the following teacher actions is the most appropriate next step in helping students understand the phrase?

• Having students recall other texts in which an author has used other unique linguistic structures

• Asking students to decide whether the literal meaning of the phrase is the author’s intended message

• Adding the phrase to a student-created poster of author’s tools used to convey meaning by using language in interesting ways

• • Requiring that students write explanations of their personal reactions to the author’s purpose for selecting the phrase to convey meaning

The two best predictors of a beginning reader’s future reading success are alphabetic knowledge and the development of

• • phonics skills

• • reading fluency

• sight word recognition

• • phonemic awareness

The following sentence appears in a nonfiction book that fourth-grade students are reading in class. Unfamiliar words selected by students are underlined in the excerpt.

The duck-billed platypus is a peculiar animal in that its snout, which does not look like a nose, helps it recognize sources of food.

Which of the following instructional methods will best help students understand and retain the meaning of the new words?

• Asking students to look up the definitions of the words and write them in their reading journals

• Helping students find easily understood synonyms for each word and write them in place of the new vocabulary

• Advising students to examine the use of each word in context and narrow connotations for the words to a singular context

• • Discussing each new word by asking students probing questions that require the students to support their answers with reasoning

A group of students have an accuracy rate of 94%94 percent and above on a recent reading assessment. Which of the following activities will best help improve the development of the students’ reading skills?

• • Continuing to read books at the current level because students are succeeding

• Reading familiar books with a partner of a lower reading level

• • Participating in lessons focused on specific problematic phonics patterns

• • Listening independently to audiobooks from the next level

Which of the following is most beneficial in developing students’ writing abilities?

• • Improving students’ skill in applying standard English conventions in their own writing by focusing on an author’s accuracy in written expression

• • Providing explicit writing instruction on how an author communicates ideas through elements such as word choice, text structure, and point of view

• • Allowing students to self-assess their writing pieces by using writing models to create rubrics that clearly describe elements of effective writing

• Encouraging students to progress through the steps in the writing process fluently and quickly by allowing them to use models that demonstrate the relationship between writing and oral language

As part of a social studies unit on the American Revolution, a sixth-grade teacher plans to prepare students to read a short historical nonfiction novel about the Boston Tea Party. Which of the following prereading strategies will best assist the teacher in building students’ background knowledge and improving their general understanding of the topic?

• • Providing time for students to skim the text and create a list of new vocabulary words and ideas that the author discusses

• Encouraging students to look at the illustrations in the text and discuss with a partner what they see in the images

• Presenting a list of statements about the topic and having students indicate whether they agree or disagree with each one

• • Having students visit approved Web sites before reading the text to view video clips and primary documents related to the topic

Before introducing a nonfiction text on volcanoes, a teacher asks students to record one fact that they already know about volcanoes on an adhesive tab. The teacher and students create a poster with the tabs, and the class then discusses the facts on the tabs. Which of the following best describes the primary purpose of the activity?

• • Building schema

• • Checking for understanding

• Assessing student readiness

• Modeling comprehension strategies

A team of fifth-grade teachers collaboratively provide explicit instruction to support the development of students’ listening skills. The teachers select a series of videos and recorded books to build students’ background knowledge, vocabulary, understanding of text structures, and inferencing abilities.

The teachers’ actions best indicate an understanding of which of the following research-based findings related to the connection between listening and reading comprehension?

• The influence of listening comprehension on reading comprehension increases over time, since both require the application of similar language processes.

• Content presented orally is of greater interest to and easier for students to process than reading a text that requires proficient word-recognition skills

• • As students develop more advanced literacy skills over the elementary years, the influence of listening comprehension on reading comprehension lessens.

• • Students who lack basic decoding skills will need effective instruction in listening to learn content and limit the gap between reading and listening comprehension.

A teacher notices that a student reads fluently but struggles to understand the text afterward. Which of the following strategies is best for the teacher to implement to help increase the student’s understanding?

• Lowering the readability level of text the student is reading

• Limiting comprehension questions about the text to literal questions

• Encouraging the student to think about connections with the text

• Requiring the student to do increased time trials of short passages of text