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Study Guide

Field 005: Reading
Sample Multiple-Choice Questions

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Subarea 1—MEANING AND COMMUNICATION

Objective 001
Understand reading as a dynamic process.

1. Which of the following examples best illustrates the dynamic nature of living languages?

  1. The words mouse and monitor have acquired additional meanings.
  2. Fourth and forth sound the same, but they have different meanings.
  3. The word story changes to stories in the plural form.
  4. Burst and spread are spelled the same regardless of the verb tense.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Objective 003
Identify factors that affect students' learning.

2. Which of the following instructional activities best exemplifies the constructivist view of learning?

  1. Students work as partners to review ideas and concepts that will be tested on an upcoming exam.
  2. A teacher shares information through a lecture with visual aids.
  3. Students work in collaborative groups to research and solve a real-life problem posed by a teacher.
  4. A teacher guides a class discussion of an editorial in a newspaper.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
Objective 004
Identify factors that affect language development and reading acquisition.

3. Students who are not part of the dominant culture in a community are most likely to maintain a positive view of learning and their own literacy development when:

  1. teachers help them realize the way literacy and learning will affect their adult lives at home and at work.
  2. their peers are taught and reminded to treat all students in the same way.
  3. staff members take steps to learn about their languages and cultures.
  4. the school values and uses their experiences and backgrounds in educational activities.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

Subarea 2—GENRES AND CRAFT OF LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE

Objective 006
Understand literature and its uses in reading instruction.

4. Which of the following would be most appropriate as a theme for second-grade students to explore through literature?

  1. the exploration of space
  2. telling stories through biographies
  3. how technology helps us
  4. the ups and downs of friendship
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Objective 007
Identify various literary genres and their uses in reading instruction.

5. Use the excerpt below from a short story to answer the question that follows.

Claude had walked nearly a mile through a soaking rain by the time the last remnants of daylight vanished. He had no more moments in half-light; no more reassuring dusk. He heard his heavy boots slapping across widening rivulets that cut across the road.

He remembered walking out of the woods on another logging road when he was a boy. He had walked with uncles on his right and his left. The two men spoke in rumbling baritones that met and mingled above his head. He had to hurry to match their aggressive strides. Each time they came to a barrier, cattle guard, or meandering drainage from the creek, their hands would encircle his wrists. After pulling him up and swinging him beyond the point of danger, his uncles would set him back onto the road. He found himself missing their assistance.

Beginning in the first sentence of the second paragraph shown above, the author provides information about a character through the use of:

  1. foreshadowing.
  2. a metaphor.
  3. a flashback.
  4. personification.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
Objective 008
Understand the appropriate use of mechanics and the author's craft to convey meaning.

6. Read the paragraph below from a twelfth-grade student's paper; then answer the question that follows.

1Many people in our community want to see a new youth center built on Henry Street. 2When it comes to activities and entertainment, the teens in this town have too few options. 3It is good that the mayor and chief of police support the center, but actions speak louder than words. 4They are the people who are in a position to move the project forward.

Which of the following sentences in the paragraph shown above should the student revise to eliminate the use of a cliché?

  1. Sentence 1
  2. Sentence 2
  3. Sentence 3
  4. Sentence 4
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

Subarea 3—SKILLS AND PROCESSES

Objective 011
Understand the developmental nature of the language arts.

7. It is typically most productive for a teacher to introduce a writers' workshop to a class of second graders by:

  1. providing a literacy box for each child, including writing supplies, so that students are ready to write.
  2. giving all of the children an opportunity to tell about themselves in order to open them to writing.
  3. creating a well-organized, attractive writing center that invites the children to participate in writing.
  4. describing to the children how writing can be used in different settings for various purposes.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 012
Understand methods for promoting literacy as a lifelong skill.

8. A seventh-grade reading teacher is introducing a unit on identifying opinions in written texts. The teacher could engage students in the content of the unit most effectively by having them:

  1. find sites on the Internet that express differing opinions about issues.
  2. conduct a survey of other students about a controversial topic and write about their findings.
  3. read several newspaper articles about controversial topics.
  4. watch a television program showing two sides of an issue and discuss their opinions about the issue.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 013
Understand a variety of reading comprehension strategies.

9. Which of the following skills do most students typically develop only after they have become fluent readers?

  1. giving most of their attention to the meaning of the text they are reading
  2. recalling the sequence of events in a story they have read
  3. recognizing how a multiple meaning word is used in a particular context
  4. using illustrations to enhance their comprehension of a text
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Objective 014
Recognize uses of various study strategies.

10. A second-grade teacher is reading aloud to the class from a story about a family with an elephant. One student asks why elephants have tusks, while another student asks if elephants are the only animals with tusks. In response to the students' questions, the teacher decides to help the class conduct an inquiry into which animals have tusks and why they need them. The primary value of having students learn through inquiry is that the students are likely to be:

  1. comfortable with the process because they will have control over the final product.
  2. invested in new learning because they have set the purpose for it.
  3. eager to gather information because the content is set at their level of comprehension.
  4. confident about learning because they will be working together.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.

Subarea 4—INSTRUCTION

Objective 015
Identify literacy instruction theories.

11. Use the instructional activity below to answer the question that follows.

Teacher: Now that we have finished this story, I have a game for you to play. I want you to help me read the story again. You fill in the words that I leave out. Okay? Let's try this sentence. "The king took the crown off his short blank." (head)

The instructional process used in the activity shown above would be most appropriate for helping kindergarten students develop which of the following skills?

  1. recognizing the separations between words
  2. categorizing words by initial sounds
  3. identifying the beginning and end of a sentence
  4. using context to determine meaning
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Objective 016
Understand ways to enhance students' reading comprehension.

12. Teachers in fourth-grade classrooms will be introducing a new science text-book. Though students are proficient in reading narrative selections and informational books, the textbook is a new element of their classroom learning. To prepare students to use this new resource effectively, which of the following activities should the teacher assign first?

  1. Have the students meet in small groups to discuss the format of the text.
  2. Provide each student with a guide to the new book that describes its layout.
  3. Have students take turns reading the book aloud to get accustomed to its organization.
  4. Identify some of the topics included in different chapters to enhance their interest in the material.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Objective 017
Understand ways to enhance students' oral and written communication.

13. Students in a fifth-grade class are pre-paring to give oral reports on famous people whom they have researched. Which of the following strategies would best help students speak effectively before an audience of their peers?

  1. writing out the report before their presentation and memorizing it
  2. writing the report on large note cards and reading from them
  3. writing key words from the report on note cards and referring to them as they speak
  4. putting the report on an overhead projector to help them remember their material
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
Objective 019
Identify ways to establish a learning environment that supports the literacy development of all students.

14. A student is having difficulty with reading and is beginning to display behaviors associated with learned helplessness. A student with a sense of learned helplessness would likely benefit most from reading instruction that:

  1. is based on repetitive exercises.
  2. uses reading materials that are related to the student's interests.
  3. features group work with peers.
  4. is designed to ensure that the student will experience success.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

Subarea 5—ASSESSMENT

Objective 020
Understand the principles and practices of literacy assessment.

15. When reading teachers and other staff are working to ensure that their assessment practices are closely aligned with the school's literacy goals, which of the following questions should they consider first?

  1. How frequently should we assess students' literacy skills as they move through the school system?
  2. Which literacy skills do we identify as being the most important for our students to acquire?
  3. How can we track students' progress as they acquire the literacy skills we expect of them?
  4. Which assessment methods will best help students demonstrate the range of their literacy skills?
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 021
Understand the uses of various literacy assessment instruments.

16. To get the most complete understanding of a student's ability to recognize or decode words, a reading teacher should use an assessment that requires the student to:

  1. identify words in context and in isolation.
  2. demonstrate correct pronunciation and spelling.
  3. recognize onsets and rimes for each word.
  4. distinguish inflectional endings and other affixes.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.

Objective 022
Identify concepts of self-assessment.

17. A high school reading teacher wants students in the reading class to develop a rubric they can use to evaluate their portfolios of written work. To help students develop such a rubric, it would be most effective for the teacher first to:

  1. develop a list of requirements based on curriculum standards for a portfolio that would receive an A.
  2. have students work in groups to list the qualities of an average portfolio by analyzing each other's portfolios.
  3. have the students use the individual goals that they each developed at the beginning of the year as the rubric.
  4. work with the class to list qualities that should be present in inad-equate, proficient, and advanced portfolios.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

Subarea 6—PROFESSIONAL, PROGRAM, AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

Objective 024
Understand approaches to assisting students with reading difficulties.

18. Which of the following best describes the reason why using one-on-one teaching or tutoring for remediating a student's reading difficulties is especially effective?

  1. Most students' reading difficulties can be identified and addressed more quickly in a one-on-one situation.
  2. Most students with reading difficulties need the teacher's personal attention to feel confident about their learning.
  3. Most teachers have a wider range of instructional methods for individual sessions than they have for teaching reading to groups.
  4. Most of the methods and materials for remedial reading instruction have been created for one-on-one teaching.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Objective 026
Identify effective methods for interacting with others in the learning community.

19. Prior to beginning a new unit in a sixth-grade class, a classroom teacher, reading teacher, and special education teacher meet to examine the materials that will be available. Which of the following tasks would be most important for the teachers to complete first in this meeting?

  1. selecting instructional and grouping strategies to use
  2. identifying a set of common goals and objectives
  3. creating an assessment to measure the success of the unit
  4. setting a schedule of instructional activities
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 027
Understand methods for promoting professional growth.

20. A new paraprofessional working in a first-grade classroom works well in individual and small-group situations, but has difficulty managing activities for larger groups. The reading teacher can best help the paraprofessional by:

  1. providing reading journal articles related to large-group instruction for the paraprofessional to read.
  2. selecting instructional tasks for the paraprofessional with small groups and fostering the paraprofessional's confidence.
  3. modeling a large-group activity as the paraprofessional observes and conferring about the observation afterward.
  4. asking the paraprofessional to watch videotapes of other staff members leading large-group activities.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.