Skip to main content

Study Guide

Sample Selected-Response Questions
Field 47: Reading Endorsement 6–12

Practice Questions

Expand All | Collapse All

Subarea I–Theoretical and Research Foundations

Objective 0001: Understand linguistic foundations of language and literacy.

1. Which of the following common English morphemes is a derivational morpheme that is typically taught in the context of instruction in structural analysis?

  1. –ing
  2. –s
  3. –ed
  4. –ful
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Objective 0001: Understand linguistic foundations of language and literacy.

2. Which of the following characteristics distinguishes readers who are in the orthographic phase of word reading?

  1. primary reliance on sounding out letters and blending to pronounce unfamiliar words
  2. frequent errors identifying words with high-frequency spelling patterns
  3. primary reliance on context for identifying unfamiliar words in continuous text
  4. recognition of word parts and syllable chunks in multisyllabic words
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Objective 0002: Understand neurological, cognitive, and sociocultural foundations of language and literacy.

3. Which of the following conclusions about dyslexia can best be drawn based on the results of longitudinal neurological studies of skilled and dyslexic readers and their patterns of brain activation during reading?

  1. Dyslexia appears to have no neurological basis and can be prevented or eliminated by improving a reader's ability to maintain focus during reading.
  2. As the brain matures, many children with dyslexia will outgrown it naturally without specific intervention or remediation.
  3. The onset of dyslexia typically occurs in late childhood, and it cannot be prevented or remediated.
  4. Dyslexia has a neurological basis that can be effectively treated through explicit and intensive instructional intervention.
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

 

Subarea II–Assessment, Instruction, and Leadership Foundations

Objective 0003: Understand foundations of literacy assessment.

4. A reading teacher develops individual literacy profiles for each student that include standardized test scores, results of screening and diagnostic assessments, and representative work samples. This type of tool is most appropriate to use for which of the following assessment purposes?

  1. evaluating the alignment of a student's intervention plan with grade-level literacy standards
  2. preparing a detailed analysis of a student's development in multiple dimensions of literacy
  3. measuring the effect of specific interventions on a student's achievement of literacy standards
  4. determining a student's rate of progress toward achieving long-term literacy goals
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 0004: Understand foundations of literacy instruction and intervention.

5. Which of the following procedures would best ensure the effectiveness of a school's early intervention program, such as a Response to Intervention (RTI) program?

  1. inviting stakeholders to submit anonymous summative evaluations of the program to the public education agency
  2. providing parents/guardians with information about the program and how they can supplement it at home
  3. making continual modifications to the program to accommodate participant teachers' instructional styles
  4. establishing specific criteria to define fidelity of implementation for each component of the program
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Objective 0004: Understand foundations of literacy instruction and intervention.

6. In a secondary school that follows an effective, evidence-based Response to Intervention (RTI) program, differentiated instruction should take place in which of the following instructional settings?

  1. in general education classes only
  2. in both general education classes and reading intervention classes
  3. in reading intervention classes only
  4. in general education classes in grades 6–8 and reading intervention classes in grades 9–12
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 0005: Understand foundations of leadership in reading and literacy.

7. A reading teacher serves, with other teachers, administrators, and parents in a school district, on a committee charged with implementation of an initiative designed to enhance students' academic-language development. Which of the following strategies for including the school's faculty in the development of the implementation plan would be most likely to promote the effectiveness of this initiative?

  1. asking teachers to keep detailed records regarding how they implement the initiative in their classrooms
  2. explaining the rationale for the initiative and eliciting teachers' input about applying the plan to their age level and content area
  3. ensuring that teachers include training related to the initiative in their professional development plans
  4. distributing manuals about the initiative to teachers and offering hands-on training in applying the initiative to particular content areas
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.

 

Subarea III–Literacy Assessment in Grades 6–12

Objective 0006: Understand the selection and administration of assessments in essential elements of literacy in grades 6–12.

8. Based on literacy motivation research, which of the following dimensions of motivation would be most important to focus on when assessing a particular student's reading motivation?

  1. the type of extrinsic incentive the student most prefers
  2. the student's skill level as a reader
  3. the type of reading task the student engages in most frequently
  4. the student's self-concept as a reader
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Objective 0007: Understand how to interpret the results of various literacy assessments and to use assessment data to plan appropriate instruction and interventions for students in grades 6–12.

9. One goal in a middle school student's Tier 2 intervention plan is for the student to achieve the fall grade-level benchmark in oral reading fluency (ORF). The student's diagnostic ORF score was over 20 words correct per minute less than the benchmark. After receiving the targeted instruction outlined in the intervention plan for a period of time, the student's trend line on his fluency progress-monitoring chart is flat for three consecutive assessments. Which of the following steps would be most appropriate for the student's intervention team to take at this time?

  1. readministering the diagnostic ORF assessment to determine if the initial results were inaccurate
  2. increasing the student's aim line to the winter benchmark to foster continued growth in fluency
  3. focusing attention on the student's other goals now that the established fluency goal has been achieved
  4. adjusting the intervention to better facilitate the student's growth toward the fluency goal
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Objective 0007: Understand how to interpret the results of various literacy assessments and to use assessment data to plan appropriate instruction and interventions for students in grades 6–12.

10. During a diagnostic assessment, a ninth-grade student writes about nearly being hit by a truck the previous evening. An excerpt from the student's written work is shown below.

"The truck was located on the opposite side of the intersection, so I probably wouldn't have even noticed it except its lights were especially bright."

Based on this writing sample, which of the following goals would likely be most appropriate to include in the student's intervention plan?

  1. identifying and mastering consonant digraphs
  2. following orthographic rules when adding common inflections to words
  3. recognizing and encoding common sight words
  4. segmenting consonant and vowel sounds to spell regular words
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

 

Subarea IV–Essential Elements of 6–12 Literacy Instruction and Intervention

Objective 0008: Understand engagement and motivation with respect to adolescent readers.

11. Research conducted by the National Reading Research Council (1997) suggests that which of the following components of a literacy motivation program is likely to be most effective in encouraging middle and high school students to read for pleasure?

  1. talking with peers about their reading
  2. maintaining personal reading logs
  3. responding to open-ended teacher questions about their reading
  4. earning bonus grades for reading
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Objective 0009: Understand instruction and intervention for adolescents in phonemic awareness and in phonics and other word identification skills.

12. A high school reading teacher is working with the school's English Language Development (ELD) teacher in planning beginning reading instruction for a recently arrived English language learner who has intermediate-level oral language skills in English but has no literacy skills in either English or the home language. In addition to teaching letter recognition, the reading teacher plans to focus initial reading instruction on oral activities designed to develop the student's phonemic awareness. Which of the following statements accurately explains the research-based rationale for this instructional decision?

  1. Phonemic-awareness activities are designed to promote the accurate articulation of words, which contributes to the development of skilled decoding and encoding.
  2. Strong oral vocabulary development is foundational to the development of effective reading comprehension skills and strategies.
  3. Phonemic-awareness skills are prerequisite for developing the beginning reading skill of sounding out and blending the letters of regular printed words.
  4. Strong auditory discrimination and listening comprehension skills promote skillful decoding of morphologically complex words.
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
Objective 0009: Understand instruction and intervention for adolescents in phonemic awareness and in phonics and other word identification skills.

13. A reading teacher writes the following pairs of words on the board.

ridden rider
dotted doting
buggy bugle

These word pairs would be most appropriate to use as examples in a targeted intervention designed to promote students' recognition of:

  1. the difference between inflectional and derivational morphemes.
  2. the distinguishing features of regular open and closed syllables.
  3. the difference between denotative and connotative word meanings.
  4. the distinguishing features of continuant and stop phonemes.
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 0010: Understand instruction and intervention for adolescents in vocabulary and academic language.

14. A middle school reading coach shows content-area teachers how to construct and use a semantic features analysis chart to support students' understanding of new content-specific vocabulary. Such charts are designed to promote students' comprehension and retention of new content-specific vocabulary primarily by helping them achieve which of the following objectives?

  1. parsing complex sentences into their component words and explaining each word's syntactic function and meaning
  2. breaking up multisyllabic words into pronounceable syllables and blending the syllables to identify the word (e.g., in-sen-si-tiv-i-ty—insensitivity)
  3. recognizing morphologically complex words in order to identify the meaning of the root that forms a word's base
  4. analyzing the key characteristics of related concepts (e.g., planetary satellite, comet, asteroid) to determine their similarities and differences
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Objective 0011: Understand instruction and intervention for adolescents in both oral and silent fluency.

15. As part of a high school student's Tier 3 reading intervention plan, a reading teacher will provide systematic, explicit instruction in phonics and syllabication skills that the student is lacking. In addition to promoting the student's decoding skills, targeted instruction in these areas would also have the most immediate and direct impact on which of the following dimensions of the student's reading fluency?

  1. accuracy
  2. rate
  3. prosody
  4. automaticity
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Objective 0012: Understand instruction and intervention for adolescents in reading comprehension and comprehension strategies.

16. After providing instruction in self-monitoring to a small group of students in a reading intervention class, a reading teacher has the students practice the strategy using an assigned chapter on the Civil War from their U.S. history text. Which of the following student think-alouds best reflects effective use of self-monitoring?

  1. "This subheading says the Battle of Gettysburg was an important turning point in the war."
  2. "It says here that the attack on Fort Sumter started the Civil War, but I still don't understand why some little fort was so important."
  3. "This chapter starts with a general introduction, and then it's divided up into eight main sections."
  4. "I keep hearing what a great president Abraham Lincoln was. It'll be interesting to read about some of the things he actually did."
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Objective 0013: Understand instruction and intervention for adolescents in spelling and writing.

17. A middle school reading teacher has been providing a small group of sixth graders with explicit instruction on targeted strategies for spelling multisyllabic words. Which of the following activities would be most effective in reinforcing what was taught during the intervention?

  1. including in regular weekly spelling assessments some multisyllabic words introduced during the intervention as well as new words they have been studying
  2. asking the students to work in pairs to write a short story that includes as many words as possible that were used in the intervention
  3. having the students look up the meaning of each of the words introduced during the intervention and include the definitions in their spelling notes
  4. conducting regular scaffolded dictations of multisyllabic words that follow the same patterns as the words used in the intervention
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

 

Subarea V–Content-Area Literacy in Grades 6–12

Objective 0014: Understand instruction and intervention for adolescents in comprehension of content-area texts.

18. A ninth-grade student who reads at the sixth-grade instructional level will be taking a biology class. The reading teacher is concerned that the textbook will be too difficult for the student to comprehend. Which of the following strategies would be most appropriate and effective for the reading teacher to use in addressing this issue?

  1. obtaining an audio recording of the biology textbook for the student to listen to at home
  2. arranging for another student in the biology class to take notes on the textbook chapters for the student
  3. using a readability measure to select supplemental nonfiction biology texts for the student
  4. providing popular science magazines for the student to read that address topics related to biology
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
Objective 0014: Understand instruction and intervention for adolescents in comprehension of content-area texts.

19. A middle school reading teacher is working with a small group of students in a reading intervention class. The teacher asks the students to read aloud the sentences shown below.

Next, the teacher asks the students to determine whether each sentence could be proven to be true. Engaging students in this exercise would be most effective for promoting their ability to:

  1. recognize subjective and objective statements in texts.
  2. make a personal connection to a given text by activating background knowledge.
  3. determine word meaning using contextual clues.
  4. analyze text structure by determining the main topic and supporting details.
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Objective 0015: Understand reading and writing as tools for promoting adolescents' content learning.

20. A high school reading teacher would like to teach struggling readers to use visualization as one strategy to support their independent reading of content-area texts. Which of the following steps would be most effective for the teacher to take first in introducing this strategy?

  1. reading aloud a passage from a content-area text, and then having the students draw a picture including as many details as possible from the passage
  2. having the students silently read a selected paragraph from one of their textbooks, and then showing them a photograph or illustration related to the paragraph
  3. asking the students to select a chapter in one of their textbooks and analyze how the author uses maps, charts, and other graphic features to clarify the chapter's content
  4. modeling for the students how to read a sentence or two about a particular concept or event and then to pause to form and describe a mental picture of that content
Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.