Early Reading

A kindergarten student has demonstrated the ability to write words phonetically, but she is reluctant to write because she is worried about misspelling words. The teacher could best promote the student's reading and writing development by:

• reassuring her that it is okay for now to express herself in writing by spelling words as they sound.

• giving her a spelling list of high-frequency sight words to copy and learn each day.

• helping her make a list of words that she already knows how to spell correctly.

• suggesting that she spend time copying some of the words found in her favorite stories.

During which of the following stages of spelling development do students typically begin to show an understanding of the correspondence between letters and sounds?

• precommunicative

• semiphonetic

• phonetic

• transitional

Function words such as to, the, and of are most appropriately taught in the context of which of the following areas of reading instruction?

• phonics skills practice

• structural analysis skills

• academic-language development

• sight-word vocabulary

A first-grade teacher provides students with explicit, systematic phonics instruction to promote their reading development. When designing activities to teach letter-sound correspondences, the teacher should:

• provide reading opportunities for students to practice sounds in context after studying the sounds in isolation.

• make certain that students have mastered vowel sounds before focusing on consonants.

• ensure that students master the spelling of practice words using the target sound before teaching a new sound.

• include instruction in related consonant blends when introducing individual consonants.

When reading aloud texts, a second-grade English Learner often makes errors in pronunciation that are unrelated to her ability to accurately decode the words. The teacher's best response would be to:

• write down words the student mispronounces and include them on a list for her to practice reading aloud.

• analyze the student's pronunciation patterns and plan an intervention to address difficulties that may affect her reading comprehension.

• encourage other students in the class to help the student work on improving her accuracy in pronunciation.

• help the student avoid having pronunciation errors count as reading miscues by stopping her and having her correct her own errors.

Which of the following approaches would be most effective in helping first-grade students who have the prerequisite decoding skills learn to decode words that end in the inflectional morpheme -ing?

• explicitly teaching the students to read the nit -ing in isolation before teaching them to decode familiar words that end in the inflection

• using think-aloud during a guided reading to model how to use contextual analysis as a strategy for recognizing words ending in -ing

• having students practice reading word lists that include words ending in both the more familiar rime-ing as well as the inflection -ing

• teaching the inflectional ending -ing in the context of an instructional unit on identifying open and closed syllables in multisyllabic words

An eighth-grade teacher wants to help students improve their spelling of scientific vocabulary, including the terms listed below.

barometer

centimeter

dehydrate

hydrogen

microscope

telescope

thermal

thermometer

Which of the following instructional strategies is likely to be most effective for this purpose?

• showing students how to divide scientific terms into syllables to facilitate accurate spelling

• conducting practice drills to help students memorize the irregular spelling patterns of the words

• familiarizing students with the spelling and meaning of Greek morphemes in scientific terms

• helping students determine correct spellings by dividing the words into onsets and rimes

A third-grade student who is an advanced learner has already demonstrated mastery of the derivational suffixes -ness and -ment, which will be the focus of an upcoming whole-class decoding and spelling lesson. Which of the following strategies for differentiating instruction for this lesson would be most appropriate for this student?

• having the student work on inflectional suffixes

• teaching the student the content planned for the following lesson

• encouraging the student to engage in independent silent reading

• introducing the student to higher-level derivational suffixes

Which of the following strategies would be most effective in promoting second graders' decoding of multisyllable words?

• giving students opportunities to read literature that offers repeated exposure to predictable text

• prompting students to sound out the individual phonemes that compose multisyllable words

• encouraging students to compare the parts of new multisyllable words with known single-syllable words

• reinforcing students' recognition of high-frequency multisyllable words using drills and flashcards

According to basic principles of research-based, systematic phonics instruction, which of the following common English letter combinations would be most appropriate for a first-grade teacher to introduce first?

• ir

• kn

• th

• oi