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Study Guide

Field 106: Early Childhood Education (General and Special Education)
Sample Multiple-Choice Questions

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Subarea 1—CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING

Objective 001
Understand the development of children from birth through age eight, and factors that influence development and learning.

1. In the typical sequence of social-emotional development in infants, which of the following behaviors generally appears first?

  1. initiation of play
  2. stranger anxiety
  3. reciprocal smile
  4. separation anxiety
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

2. Which of the following would most likely be an indicator of atypical motor development in a three-and-a-half year old child?

  1. The child is unable to skip across the room.
  2. The child cannot throw a rubber ball overhand.
  3. The child is unable to build a tower of eight blocks.
  4. The child cannot walk downstairs using alternating feet.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 002
Understand how to create learning environments that promote the development and learning of all children from birth through age eight.

3. A third-grade teacher learns that her class for the upcoming school year will include a student with spina bifida who uses a wheelchair for mobility. When organizing the classroom environment to accommodate this student's needs, the teacher should keep in mind which of the following principles?

  1. Frequently used materials and supplies should be stored where the student can access them independently.
  2. The student's desk should be located near the teacher's desk so that the student can request assistance as often as needed.
  3. Textbooks and other reading materials should be provided in an audio format to allow the student access through multiple modalities.
  4. The daily schedule should be modified to allow extra time for the student to transition between activities.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.

4. A preschool teacher works in an early childhood center located in a culturally and linguistically diverse community. The teacher plans to set up a kitchen center in the classroom and wants to ensure that each child's cultural background is affirmed in this center. Which of the following teacher strategies would best address this goal?

  1. encouraging children who share the same cultural background to play together in the center
  2. including play foods and cooking supplies that reflect what children have in their homes
  3. providing children with a snack each day in the center that comes from a different cultural tradition
  4. teaching children how to say the name for a common type of food, such as bread, in several different languages
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 003
Understand the types, goals, benefits, and uses of assessment to promote the development and learning of children from birth through age eight.

5. The family and teachers of nine-month-old Luisa, who attends an infant and toddler center, have become concerned that Luisa may have developmental delays. As a result, Luisa will soon undergo a series of developmental screening assessments. The primary purpose of these assessments should be to:

  1. determine whether Luisa's teachers at the infant and toddler center should receive more in-service training.
  2. identify the special education services for which Luisa is eligible.
  3. identify how the infant and toddler center should adjust its curriculum and practices to meet Luisa's needs.
  4. determine whether Luisa should receive more in-depth evaluation.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Objective 004
Understand how to create learning environments that promote the well-being and social competence of children from birth through age eight.

6. Several prekindergarten children have decided to play a board game together. The teacher is aware that some of the children have difficulty taking turns when playing games. Which of the following strategies would likely be most effective for the teacher to use in this situation?

  1. reading aloud the rules of the game before the children begin and asking if they have any questions
  2. monitoring the game from a distance and intervening if the children start playing out of turn
  3. joining the children to provide prompting and modeling of turn taking as needed during the game
  4. suggesting that the children watch others play the game until they are ready to take turns with their classmates
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

Subarea 2—COMMUNICATION, LANGUAGE, AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT

Objective 005
Understand communication and language development in children from birth through age eight, and ways to promote communication development, including preverbal and nonverbal communication.

7. An English language learner who has very limited English proficiency joins a preschool class. The teacher could best ensure that this student understands and is able to follow the teacher's directions by:

  1. using simple words, gestures, and visual cues.
  2. maintaining physical proximity to and eye contact with the student.
  3. asking the student to repeat what the teacher has said.
  4. speaking slightly louder than normal with exaggerated intonation.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Objective 006
Understand the foundations of literacy development in children from birth through age eight, how to create a literacy-rich environment that motivates young children's interest in reading, and ways to foster early literacy development.

8. A kindergarten teacher is working with a student on phonemic awareness skills. The teacher prepares a set of picture cards that represents common words such as rug, map, and rock. Each card contains a picture and a sequence of three boxes that correspond to the number of sounds in the depicted word. The teacher shows the student a card and guides the student in pronouncing the corresponding word slowly while placing a token in the correct box on the card for each sound. This activity would be most effective in helping the student develop which of the following phonemic awareness skills?

  1. phoneme segmentation
  2. phoneme deletion
  3. phoneme categorization
  4. phoneme substitution
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.

9. A preschool teacher places several dolls and stuffed toys in the reading corner and encourages children to pretend-read to the toys while looking at books. The teacher often observes children instructing stuffed animals to look at a picture or moving a doll's hand along a line of text. Such activities are likely to support the children's early reading development primarily by:

  1. increasing awareness of the structure of words.
  2. fostering concepts of print.
  3. building knowledge of letter-sound relationships.
  4. expanding oral vocabulary.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 007
Understand writing processes and strategies for developing young children's writing competence from birth through age eight.

10. Children in a prekindergarten class are busy working in various learning centers. The teacher has provided writing materials throughout the centers to encourage the children to write. Which of the following examples of children's writing most likely indicates that the child has begun to develop an understanding of letter-sound relationships?

  1. Lianna is playing with alphabet blocks in the block center. She decides to write down some of the block letters on an index card: Q, Z, T, A.
  2. Denny is writing a letter in the post office center. He writes BWY on the envelope and tells the teacher it says "Grandma."
  3. Kate finishes making a collage in the art center. She uses a pencil to write KATE at the bottom of the collage.
  4. Raoul is playing in the grocery store center. He makes a list of items that he wants to buy at the store: SUP, MLK, BRD (soup, milk, bread).
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

Subarea 3—LEARNING IN THE CONTENT AREAS

Objective 008
Understand mathematics concepts, processes, and skills and how to promote mathematical learning in children from birth through age eight.

11. Donna is a six-year-old student with Down syndrome and associated delays in cognitive and fine-motor development who attends an inclusive kindergarten class. The class is exploring measurement attributes related to length (e.g., longer, shorter, taller). Which of the following teacher strategies would likely be most effective in helping Donna learn these concepts?

  1. making a set of vocabulary cards for Donna that includes the written word or words along with an illustration of the concept
  2. teaching Donna a song that mentions each of the concepts along with associated hand motions
  3. providing Donna with concrete, familiar examples and frequent opportunities to practice using these concepts
  4. creating an activity for Donna in which she works with a paraprofessional to measure various classroom objects with a ruler
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
Objective 009
Understand science concepts and skills and how to promote scientific learning in children from birth through age eight.

12. Twelve-month-old Juwan is sitting in a high chair at an infant and toddler center, eating with a spoon. When Juwan accidentally drops the spoon on the floor, he peers down to look at it, then looks at the teacher. The teacher says, "Juwan, did you drop your spoon? I'll pick it up for you," and returns the spoon to him. Juwan then begins repeatedly dropping his spoon and looking down at it while the teacher continues to retrieve it for him. In this situation, the teacher is reinforcing Juwan's early scientific learning primarily by:

  1. encouraging Juwan to follow a prescribed sequence of actions.
  2. introducing information that conflicts with an established schema.
  3. modeling the steps to take to learn about a specific phenomenon.
  4. supporting Juwan's spontaneous exploration of how objects behave.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

13. Four-year-old Paul, a student who has Down syndrome, attends Ms. Riley's general education preschool class. In addition to cognitive impairment, Paul faces a number of challenges, including difficulty with fine-motor coordination and tactile aversiveness to certain substances (e.g., paste, glue, finger paint). His class has been learning about the weather, and Ms. Riley is planning an activity in which the children will use construction paper, crepe paper, and glue to make wind socks to hang in the school yard. Ms. Riley confers with Paul's special education teacher about how best to support Paul's participation during the creation of the wind socks. Which of the following would be the special education teacher's best suggestion?

  1. having Paul act as the teacher's helper to allow him to be involved while avoiding contact with substances he dislikes
  2. pairing Paul with a friend who can perform the tasks that Paul finds unpleasant, such as gluing and pasting
  3. giving Paul the same materials as his classmates to help him become desensitized to the substances he dislikes
  4. providing Paul with a variety of alternative methods of joining the materials, such as stapling and taping
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Objective 010
Understand social studies concepts and skills and how to promote learning in the social studies in children from birth through age eight.

14. As part of a social studies lesson, a kindergarten teacher provides the following items and asks students to tell the class which ones are important for people to stay alive: coat, box of cereal, stuffed animal, video game, picture of an apartment building, pencil sharpener, bottle of water, bath toy. Engaging students in this activity would be most effective for promoting their understanding of which of the following economic concepts?

  1. wants and needs
  2. producers and consumers
  3. scarcity and choice
  4. supply and demand
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Objective 011
Understand creative arts development in children from birth through age eight and how to promote young children's learning in and through the visual arts, music, creative movement, and dramatic play.

15. Which of the following actions by an early childhood teacher would be most likely to foster an infant's ability to respond to music?

  1. rocking or swaying the infant while listening to recordings on a regular basis
  2. giving the infant a rattle to hold and manipulate each day during floor time
  3. indicating pleasure whenever the infant claps or babbles in a rhythmic manner
  4. sharing board books about musical instruments with the infant during story time
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.

16. A preschool teacher asks a group of children to imitate a series of simple dance movements. Examples of the movements are shown below.

toe, toe, stomp

heel, toe, heel, toe

hop, hop, turn, turn

This type of dance activity is most closely related to which of the following mathematical concepts?

  1. comparisons
  2. measurement
  3. patterns
  4. estimation
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
Objective 012
Understand health, safety, and physical activities for children from birth through age eight and how to promote young children's learning about lifelong health and safety.

17. At the beginning of the school year, a prekindergarten teacher takes the children on a walk around the playground to explore the equipment and discuss safety rules. The teacher asks the children if they can imagine ways someone might get hurt when playing on particular equipment. One child says that roughhousing on the climbing structure could make somebody fall. Another child says that a person might get knocked down by someone on a swing if they were not looking. Such a discussion would be likely to promote safety on the playground primarily by:

  1. encouraging children to be cautious about what equipment they choose to play on.
  2. prompting children to tell the teacher if they see classmates playing too actively.
  3. involving children in thinking about how their own behavior can affect their well-being.
  4. helping children know what to do if someone gets hurt during outdoor play.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

Subarea 4—PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Objective 013
Understand strategies for building positive, collaborative relationships with the families of children from birth through age eight.

18. A local pediatrician has offered to make an evening presentation at an infant and toddler center for families regarding young children's health. The teachers would like to take advantage of this opportunity and want to ensure that the presentation is as meaningful as possible. Which of the following steps should the teachers take to address this goal?

  1. providing the pediatrician with demographic information regarding the children in the class
  2. seeking input from families regarding health issues and concerns that directly affect their own children
  3. sending home an invitation to the children's families and inviting them to bring their friends and neighbors
  4. developing health-related play activities for the children the same week as the presentation
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 014
Understand strategies for establishing and maintaining positive, collaborative relationships with other professionals, staff members, and community agencies and organizations to support learning and development in children from birth through age eight.

19. A second-grade student with a speech and language impairment (SLI) attends a general education class and receives pull-out services from a speech-language pathologist (SLP) twice a week. The general education teacher schedules a regular weekly meeting with the SLP. The primary purpose of these weekly meetings should be to:

  1. provide the SLP with information regarding the student's overall academic progress.
  2. determine how long the student should continue to receive pull-out services.
  3. coordinate pull-out and classroom activities to help the student achieve individual goals.
  4. provide the teacher with professional development regarding communication disorders.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
Objective 015
Understand the professional, legal, and ethical roles and responsibilities involved in the education of children from birth through age eight.

20. During the first few weeks of school, a prekindergarten teacher wonders whether a child in the class may have developmental delays. Which of the following actions by the teacher in response to this concern would require permission from the child's parents beforehand?

  1. modifying classroom activities and instruction to address the child's learning needs
  2. asking the school psychologist to collect diagnostic information on the child
  3. administering to the child's class a screening assessment that covers multiple domains
  4. asking a special education teacher to conduct an informal observation of the child
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.