Practice Test: Reading Specialist (62)

In a team meeting, prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers consult with the school's reading specialist about which approach is most effective for teaching the alphabet to young children. According to evidence on how children best learn to recognize and name letters, which of the following approaches should the specialist recommend?

1. teaching letter recognition and formation of uppercase letters to mastery before introducing the concept of lowercase forms and then providing supplemental instruction in lowercase letters for those that differ from their uppercase forms
2. focusing attention on distinctive features of a given letter, such as a vertical line or a closed curve, and helping children compare the letter to one or more letters with dissimilar features (e.g., comparing i and o)
3. categorizing letters of the alphabet into sets of letters that are formed and pronounced in similar ways (e.g., grouping the letters c, e, b, d, and p together) and teaching letter names in sets of five or six letters per week
4. introducing the alphabet song with accompanying whole-body movements that correspond to the holistic shapes of each letter before beginning practice in naming randomly ordered sets of letters

Which of the following strategies for promoting young children's writing development, including their understanding that print conveys a message, would be most effective and developmentally appropriate for a reading specialist to recommend to prekindergarten teachers?

1. creating opportunities for children to write or draw meaningfully for a variety of purposes, such as telling a story, communicating with a friend, and making a list
2. emphasizing letter-formation skills by having children trace their original sentences scribed by a teacher until they can copy sentences freehand on blank lined paper
3. providing age-appropriate prompts that ensure children can write in a variety of genres, including writing explanations, stories, and responses to books
4. transitioning children gradually throughout the school year to writing independently for pleasure without emphasizing correct use of letters or print conventions

An elementary school reading specialist is working with kindergarten teachers in preparation for the first curriculum night of the new school year. Which of the following activities would be most appropriate for the specialist to suggest the teachers engage parents/guardians in to help them understand the important role phonemic awareness skills play in their child's literacy development?

1. using a book of familiar rhymes to demonstrate all the different types of activities the teachers and parents/guardians can use to develop children's phonological awareness skills
2. having parents/guardians play a game of matching written words that begin or end with the same initial or final sound and then compare this activity to the process of spelling words
3. demonstrating to parents/guardians how to match consonant pairs based on how the consonants are produced in the mouth to explain why children typically spell words the way they feel and hear them
4. leading parents/guardians in a game in which they listen to a sequence of sounds and try to blend the sounds to make a word and then comparing these skills to the process of decoding

A reading specialist conducts a workshop for families of entering kindergartners about the role different genres of books play in children's reading development. One genre of books the specialist shows to parents/guardians are books featuring alliteration, such as "baboons bouncing balls between bags of buttons." Reading aloud books that feature alliteration is most likely to promote development of which of the following foundational literacy skills?

1. metacognitive awareness
2. phonological awareness
3. morphemic awareness
4. syllable awareness

A reading specialist has been working with a group of first-grade students who scored below the 25th percentile in phonemic awareness on the universal screening. Progress-monitoring data indicate that the students can orally segment three-phoneme words and can read regular CVC words. The specialist now wants to help them progress to four-phoneme words that contain an initial consonant blend. The specialist has selected a decodable text for instruction that features target CCVC words such as frog. Which of the following prereading activities would be most effective for the specialist to use to support the students' decoding skills by developing their phonemic awareness?

1. moving discs into Elkonin boxes to segment and blend the sounds in target four-phoneme words they will encounter in the decodable text (e.g., /f/ /r/ /ŏ/ /g/ = frog)
2. generating lists of rhyming words for target words they will encounter in the decodable text (e.g., frog, log, jog, hog)
3. segmenting target words they will encounter in the decodable text into their onset and rime (e.g., fr/og)
4. matching pictures of target words that begin with the same initial blend (e.g., frog and frown, spot and spill)

A reading specialist wants to enable kindergarten teachers to plan appropriate instruction and select appropriate books to support all children's growth as readers by helping the teachers learn how to distinguish between children who are in the partial-alphabetic phase of word recognition and children who are in the full-alphabetic phase. Which of the following characteristics should be a primary consideration in helping identify full-alphabetic readers?

1. being able to read words that have a unique visual form by recalling and recognizing the words' salient outline/visual features
2. being able to apply knowledge of letter-sound relationships to identify the most salient sounds in words (e.g., spelling nest with the letters ns n s  )
3. being able to decode words they have never read before by blending letter-sounds into a recognizable pronunciation/word
4. being able to recall and recognize a larger unit of sound (e.g., -ake - a k e ) to read words such as bake, cake, fake, and take

A reading specialist is working with a small group of first-grade students who benefit from support with letter-sound correspondences. Specifically, they tend to confuse certain consonant sounds when reading CVC words in isolation or in connected text, including /b/ and /p/, /k/ and /g/, /t/ and /d/, and /f/ and /v/ buh and puh kuh and guh tuh and duh and fuh and vuh . Which of the following approaches would be most appropriate to use to address these confusions?

1. using an air-writing approach to reinforce print directionality and the distinctive differences that exist between letters when they are printed in isolation or in word context
2. identifying letter-sound relationships with a multisensory approach that focuses on how and where a sound is produced in the mouth and whether it is voiced or unvoiced (e.g., prompting, "What do you feel?" "What do you hear?" "What do you see?")
3. emphasizing a phoneme-grapheme mapping approach using Elkonin boxes to reinforce phonemic awareness and the spelling of consonant blends and vowel teams
4. applying a tactile-kinesthetic approach that involves constructing and deconstructing target words by manipulating magnetic letters to improve the students' motor memory and automaticity in identifying letter-sound relationships

A middle school science teacher consults with the school reading specialist about a number of students who are not yet consistently reading multisyllabic Tier Three words in the science textbook. The teacher would like a strategy that would benefit most students so that it can be incorporated into the classroom routine. Which of the following strategies for reading multisyllabic words would be most useful for the specialist to model in disciplinary subjects?

1. predicting word pronunciation and meaning using context clues explicitly stated in the text
2. using sound-by-sound decoding to ensure the pronunciation of all word parts
3. applying an approach that analyzes a word's structure by identifying the affixes and root before dividing the word into syllables
4. identifying appropriate syllable-division strategies based on consonant-vowel patterns (e.g., VC/CV, V/CV, VC/V, V/V, C +le)

A reading specialist meets with first-grade teachers during a team meeting to discuss evidence-based practices that promote automatic word recognition. The teachers share examples of the book boxes they have created for individual students to use during independent reading time. The boxes consist of texts students have either read in small-group instruction or have self-selected on topics of interest. According to evidence-based practices, which of the following types of text should the specialist recommend be included in students' book boxes to improve their automatic word recognition?

1. alliterative alphabet books, nursery rhymes, and rhyming books with predictable text with which students are already familiar
2. a wide variety of genres, including at least 50 percent informational texts
3. unfamiliar decodable stories and poems that align with phonics patterns the students already know or are currently learning
4. texts that include the same words the students have studied during instruction

A reading specialist meets with a small group of first-grade students who scored well below the 25th percentile on the midyear oral reading fluency benchmark assessment. The teacher reports that the students have developed sound-symbol associations for most consonants but are confusing short vowels. They also tend to guess when they come to unfamiliar words in connected text rather than trying to apply decoding skills. The specialist plans to use decodable text with the students. Which of the following instructional approaches is most likely to address the students' decoding needs to support their oral reading fluency?

1. using tactile-kinesthetic techniques with the students, such as tracing and air writing new words they will encounter in their decodable texts
2. engaging the students in sound-by-sound blending when initially reading new decodable texts and repeated whisper reading with monitoring and corrective feedback until accurate decoding becomes automatic
3. having the students read targeted phonics patterns in word families for extra practice and read a list of words rapidly in succession, one after another
4. identifying the pronunciation of letters for the students using multisensory cues that include the position of the articulators in the mouth for each letter-sound relationship and using a mirror to reinforce accurate articulation

A reading specialist recommends that upper elementary teachers promote students' oral reading with expression at the passage level to support students' reading comprehension. Which of the following strategies would be most critical for teachers to implement to improve students' prosody and comprehension?

1. providing sufficient time for students to practice expressive reading on their own without monitoring to gain confidence
2. reading informational passages chorally and then inviting various interpretations of the content for discussion purposes
3. modeling expressive reading of a selected part of a text and then having students immediately echo read the same selection
4. marking informational texts with phrase boundaries for students to follow independently and then with a peer

A reading specialist observes that when students mispronounce a word when reading aloud a text, teachers tend to immediately supply a correction. Which of the following strategies for improving teacher feedback would be most appropriate for promoting students' self-correction?

1. reminding students to use an analogy strategy in which they try to think of another word they know that has a similar spelling (e.g., "If you can read bread, you can read dread.")
2. providing students with prompts to promote rereading and confirmation (e.g., asking the student to reread the word, asking the student to reread the sentence, asking the student if the word or sentence makes sense as it was read)
3. monitoring students' oral reading while recording their reading errors and then providing them with the transcript to review and correct at the end of their oral reading
4. providing students with a specific decoding strategy each time they misread a word in a connected text (e.g., "look up the word's pronunciation in a dictionary," "read the word sound-by-sound," "divide the word into syllables")

A reading specialist works on a content-area reading unit with a fifth-grade teacher. Over the course of several weeks, students work in small, heterogenous groups to read, analyze, and write about three or four complex texts. The teacher supports the groups as they complete an outline identifying main ideas and key details from each text. This unit most closely addresses which of the following guiding principles outlined in the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for English Language Arts and Literacy?

1. Reading well-crafted text is an essential foundation for developing effective writing skills.
2. Students should read a diverse set of authentic texts balanced across genres, cultures, and time periods.
3. Developing the ability to write well demands regular practice across multiple forms and genres of writing.
4. Students should have frequent opportunities for discussing and writing about their readings.

Use the information below to answer the question that follows.

As part of a professional development seminar, a high school reading specialist and a group of teachers examine the following passage to analyze aspects of text complexity that may be challenging for students.

In the passage, which of the following dimensions of text complexity is most likely to present the greatest challenge for high school readers?

1. the complexity of syntactic structures and figurative language
2. the raw word length and morphological complexity of words
3. the presence or absence of cohesive elements in the text
4. the thematic content and levels of meaning in the text

An elementary school reading specialist who is selecting materials for a small-group intervention focused on analyzing poetry begins by identifying several poems that are aligned with the students' instructional content. As a general rule, which of the following questions would be most important to consider when determining the complexity level of poetry?

1. Is the genre derived from a historic form no longer widely in use?
2. Are the ideas and themes expressed appropriate to the grade level?
3. Is the meaning partly dependent on graphical elements or features?
4. Are the rhyme schemes or metrical forms already familiar to the students?

A middle school reading specialist is building a resource room library with the goal of including materials that will promote independent reading for pleasure among readers receiving support. Which of the following types of text would be most effective for this purpose?

1. popular magazines with multiple subject matters and photographs, but limited text
2. picture books with appealing illustrations and complex characters and stories
3. texts on grade-appropriate topics with compelling prose and appropriate readability
4. grade-level short stories with easily recognizable conventions, genres, and predictable plots

An elementary school reading specialist is helping a third-grade team select content-area texts to support instruction for students who are not yet consistently decoding grade-level words. Which of the following text profiles would be most appropriate for this purpose?

1. texts using simple language structures and Tier One vocabulary that focus on concepts matching grade-level content-area standards
2. texts that are composed mostly of decodable words and contain very few challenging words, but include a few conceptually key academic words that are repeated several times
3. texts that supplement information presented verbally with a wealth of illustrations and other elements, such as tables, maps, and graphs
4. texts that reduce cognitive load by simplifying sentences and providing engaging illustrations, but which also include Tier Three academic vocabulary

High school students watch segments of a performance of the William Shakespeare play they are reading in class. The students then participate in close readings of key scenes from the play before writing a literary analysis. In addition to promoting students' deep appreciation for a work of literature, this approach also promotes students' comprehension of challenging texts by:

1. requiring them to identify a clear purpose and a well-defined audience before writing.
2. providing them with opportunities to build and expand on their background knowledge.
3. ensuring that they read a diverse range of authentic texts balanced across multiple genres.
4. having them read well-crafted texts that can serve as models for their own writing.

Eleventh-grade students are asked to research and write an essay that recounts an important event or moment of decision in the life of a historical figure. The finished essay must include the following information.

1. background information about the historical figure
2. an account of the pivotal event
3. a review of primary sources
4. an analysis of the event's importance in the life of the historical figure and in a broader historical context

When writing the section of the paper that provides background information on the historical figure, students would benefit most from instruction in which of the following writing modes?

1. description
2. exposition
3. analysis
4. reflection

Use the information below to answer the question that follows.

A school is planning to purchase a computer-based program for teaching keyboarding skills. The reading specialist and the school's technology teacher consult to review the available options and determine which program would be most appropriate for supporting students who demonstrate reading and writing challenges. The chart shown summarizes the key features of each program.

According to the information in the chart, which program would best support students who are experiencing reading and writing challenges in developing their keyboarding skills?

1. Program A
2. Program B
3. Program C
4. Program D

Several middle school teachers who are new to conducting close reading of complex texts tell the reading specialist that students do not like having to reread the same text. The specialist can best support the teachers in implementing effective evidence-based close reading by recommending which of the following strategies?

1. pre-teaching or frontloading vocabulary or other aspects of the text that are likely to challenge students
2. guiding teachers to set a purpose for each reading (e.g., looking for evidence in response to specific questions)
3. switching to scaffolded instruction by asking more questions that check for general understanding and providing direct explanations, as needed
4. allowing students to provide evidence from their own experiences to answer questions about a text in order to make lessons more relevant to their own lives

A reading specialist wants to introduce an explicit, systematic, and cumulative approach for teaching K–  to  2 students to comprehend narrative text. Which of the following evidence-based approaches to teaching text comprehension is best aligned with the learning standards regarding students' understanding of story elements?

1. using a student-led reciprocal-teaching model with narrative texts (predicting, clarifying, questioning, summarizing)
2. determining Question-Answer Relationships (QAR  Q A R ) using a narrative text (answer right there, think and search, author and me, on my own)
3. providing students with story maps during reading and modeling how to track and analyze specific content (characters, settings, and events)
4. implementing literature circles with narrative texts to develop specific student roles (word wizard, discussion director, super summarizer, connector, passage picker)

A reading specialist is comparing discussion frameworks by their features. The specialist wants to model a framework that upper elementary school teachers can use to promote high-quality discussions that prompt readers to reach a deeper understanding of a text by taking a critical-analytic stance. Which of the following frameworks aligns best with this goal?

1. Question-Answer Relationships
2. reader's theatre
3. literature circles
4. Socratic Seminar

Use the information below to answer the question that follows.

A middle school reading specialist shares the following findings with content-area teachers.

Given this information, the reading specialist recommends teachers follow an evidence-based instructional sequence designed to guide students to be more objective in their online research. Which of the following steps would be most appropriate for the teachers to include at the beginning of this process?

1. teaching students explicitly about the dimensions of critical evaluation, including relevance, accuracy, bias/perspective, and reliability
2. prompting students to look for evidence that supports their own claims
3. having students cross-check claims made by an author across multiple websites using an online framework designed for this purpose
4. selecting and providing sources to support the students' online research projects

After presenting an overview of disciplinary literacy to faculty, a high school reading specialist facilitates a discussion about the specific traits of literacy in each of the major disciplines. Which of the following statements would be most appropriate for the specialist to include when discussing mathematics?

1. Alternative explanations and interpretations of the data are routinely examined when creating a statement of the problem.
2. Observations are central to the discipline and these are analyzed and interpreted within a theoretical framework.
3. The context in which the work was produced is considered when interpreting and understanding the content.
4. Proofs are unusually succinct, relying on bare statements of essential ideas and symbolic representations.

A reading specialist works with a small group of students after a social science lesson. With support from the specialist, the students evaluate an editorial piece about the ratification of a constitutional amendment written at the time of the event. Students identify the writer's argument and supporting evidence and assess the soundness of the writer's reasoning. Which of the following steps would be most appropriate for the students to take next to evaluate this document in historical context?

1. rereading the editorial to determine if the writer has offered a way forward, either implicitly or explicitly, and whether any such proposed solution would be practical
2. analyzing the tone, the formality or informality of the language used in the piece, and the writer's rhetorical skill to determine the likely educational level of the writer
3. establishing the writer's credibility and potential biases by considering the accuracy of the facts included in the piece, any omission of relevant facts, and any use of loaded language
4. making an analogy between the issues addressed in the piece and contemporary issues and predicting the position the editorial writer would likely take on the contemporary issues

A reading specialist is assisting second-grade teachers in forming groups for reading instruction based on universal screening data. Several English learners scored in the "no risk" range for code-based skills. According to evidence-based practice, which of the following additional factors should the specialist and teachers consider when making instructional grouping decisions for the English learners in reading?

1. identifying each student's home language and grouping them according to whether the home language is alphabetic or nonalphabetic
2. using decoding measures that focus on multisyllabic words in addition to measures that focus on single-syllable words and syllable types
3. ensuring that students who share the same home language are assigned to the same group for reading instruction
4. supplementing students' decoding and text-reading fluency data with data in the domains of language and reading comprehension

As part of a faculty presentation on meeting the literacy needs of all students, an elementary school reading specialist would like to increase awareness among teachers of advantages as well as unique challenges bilingual students (i.e., students fluent in two languages) may experience in the course of their literacy education. Which of the following statements identifies an evidence-based advantage or challenge experienced by readers who are bilingual compared to their monolingual peers?

1. Bilingual learners' metalinguistic awareness is more advanced than their age-level peers.
2. Bilingual learners will need instruction to understand illustrations that are presented in text.
3. Bilingual learners' development of separate lexical and syntactic systems for each language may promote their skill in academic vocabulary development.
4. Bilingual learners may be more likely to need explicit guidance to negotiate conventions in written or spoken discourse in their home language.

A middle school reading specialist recommends that content-area teachers support English learners' vocabulary and concept development in English by using small discussion groups that take advantage of shared home languages. For example, after explicitly introducing a text's new content vocabulary in English (e.g., flexibility and conductivity for an assignment comparing the properties of metals, plastics, wood, and ceramics), teachers should provide discussion prompts and have students discuss the new terminology and related concepts in their home language. Which of the following statements best explains the evidence-based rationale for the specialist's approach to vocabulary learning?

1. English learners acquire academic language most effectively when new vocabulary words are introduced implicitly during informal, social interactions.
2. English learners who have not yet achieved Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP C A L P ) in English can effectively rely on their Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS B I C S ) in English to understand new academic vocabulary.
3. English learners who have the opportunity to discuss new vocabulary and content in the home language increase the depth of their learning in both the home language and English.
4. English learners develop confidence and skill in performing complex academic tasks when they are given responsibility to learn the tasks on their own.

Which of the following statements accurately identifies a difference between first- and new-language development?

1. Age of acquisition affects a new-language learner's phonological proficiency level in the new language, but age of acquisition does not affect phonological proficiency in the first language.
2. Syntax development in the first language builds on universal grammar and language input, but syntax in a new language is also influenced by the syntax of the first language.
3. A first-language learners' word length in expressive vocabulary is limited by their morphological knowledge, but morphology does not directly affect new-language learners' vocabulary.
4. Pragmatic competence in interpreting and using nonverbal communication such as gestures is innate in one's first language, but it has to be learned in a new language.

Which of the following statements refers to a generalization about language development that is accurate for both first- and new-language learners?

1. Language learners are able to comprehend language that is more complex than the language they are able to produce themselves.
2. A language learner's mean length of utterance increases slowly and very incrementally over an extended period of time.
3. A language learner's vocabulary growth is most dependent on direct instruction in a decontextualized setting.
4. Language learners use metacognitive processes to develop syntax in the early stages of language acquisition.

An elementary school reading specialist is part of a school task force evaluating school protocols for identifying students with learning disabilities. A retrospective review of school data shows that a disproportionately greater percentage of English learners have been identified as having a specific learning disability (SLD) compared to their peers whose home language is English. According to evidence-based practices related to identifying culturally and linguistically diverse students with learning disabilities, which of the following questions would be most relevant for the task force to consider when evaluating the school's identification process?

1. What consideration is given to alignment between a student's performance on diagnostic assessments and the results from progress-monitoring assessments?
2. Are school staff informed about new-language development and prepared to recognize and support English learners' language-learning needs with specialized instructional strategies?
3. Are all students closely monitored for adequate language and literacy development or only some student populations?
4. Do English learners who need support with grade-level curricula and who are referred for diagnostic assessments have access to an advocate who can communicate effectively with school staff?

Which of the following early childhood diagnoses increases the risk that a child will experience difficulty later in their reading development?

1. atypical craniofacial features
2. nonverbal learning disability
3. low oral muscular tone
4. articulation and pronunciation difficulties

Children who have challenges with nonphonological language skills are most likely to require support in which of the following areas of reading?

1. fluency
2. decoding
3. comprehension
4. phonemic awareness

A child who has been diagnosed with dyslexia may exhibit a higher level of comprehension than word-reading ability primarily for which of the following reasons?

1. Oral language strengths provide a foundation for understanding texts that may be challenging to decode.
2. Long- and short-term memory skills are unrelated to the phonological processes required for accurate decoding.
3. The brain processes expressive vocabulary and its orthographic representation simultaneously.
4. The brain's visual processing system allows readers to generate the accurate mental pictures required for strong comprehension.

A sixth-grade science teacher approaches the reading specialist with concerns about meeting the needs of a student who exhibits strong oral language skills and vocabulary and was recently diagnosed with dyslexia. The student is highly engaged during classroom discussions but is reading significantly below grade-level expectations. Which of the following approaches for meeting this student's needs would be most appropriate for the specialist to recommend?

1. adapting classroom materials and assignments to include fully decodable texts so that the student can read them independently
2. modifying course content to include videos and audiobook versions of informational texts at and above the student's reading level
3. providing the student with extra assignments written at a lower reading level so that the student does not become bored or frustrated
4. allowing the student to complete all assignments with the help of a peer who is reading at or above grade level

Which of the following students exhibits traits, that in addition to reading challenges, are commonly experienced as part of a diagnosis of double deficit dyslexia?

1. a third-grade student who has not yet mastered recalling multiplication facts with automaticity
2. a third-grade student who does not yet consistently follow multistep directions given orally
3. a first-grade student who cannot yet articulate several unvoiced fricative consonant sounds
4. a first-grade student who leaves their seat frequently and does not consistently complete work

Which of the following students would most likely be at risk for a later diagnosis of dyslexia?

1. a kindergarten student possessing limited expressive and receptive vocabulary in both a primary and secondary language
2. a second-grade student who has received adequate spelling instruction and is spelling high-frequency and grade-level words phonetically
3. a kindergarten student who is having difficulty maintaining focus on assignments and tasks when they are not preferred activities
4. a second-grade student who is not making adequate progress in reading despite effective instruction and age-appropriate cognitive skills

At the end of the school year, students at each grade level are asked to read aloud a grade-level text that they should be able to read in the 50th percentile range for words correct per minute (WCPM) with 95 percent accuracy. Which of the following types of assessment is being administered?

1. diagnostic
2. dynamic
3. norm referenced
4. screener

An elementary school reading specialist works with classroom teachers to identify students at each grade level who did not make adequate progress to meet midyear benchmarks in various areas of reading. The specialist is concerned that the students are not going to meet end-of-year goals. Which of the following assessment strategies should the specialist use to improve outcomes for the students by the end of the school year?

1. progress monitoring to gauge the students' progress and then make appropriate adjustments to instruction
2. adding summative assessments several times a year to provide additional data on individual students
3. implementing norm-referenced tests to be able to compare the students' progress with that of peers from comparable districts
4. obtaining standardized scores for the students to obtain a percentile ranking for the students who did not meet the midyear benchmarks

A reading specialist asks upper elementary school teachers to share progress-monitoring assessment data for students in various areas of reading. In reviewing the data against midyear benchmark assessment data, the specialist notices that teachers who use progress-monitoring assessments on a regular basis have students with better reading outcomes than teachers who do not regularly administer progress-monitoring assessments. Which of the following attributes of progress-monitoring assessments most likely accounts for this trend?

1. Progress-monitoring assessments can be administered to a whole class in a single sitting.
2. Progress-monitoring assessments can be administered according to a regular schedule.
3. Progress-monitoring assessment data can be used to adjust instruction in response to current data.
4. Progress-monitoring assessment data can be used to establish baseline data on a student's performance.

A reading specialist wants to select an assessment to use midyear to evaluate student learning in various areas of reading development compared to universal grade-level standards or school benchmarks. Which of the following types of assessment is most appropriate for this purpose?

1. summative
2. norm referenced
3. progress monitoring
4. criterion referenced

A high school reading specialist reviews the data for a ninth-grade student. The student has above-average word-recognition skills, including reading multisyllabic words with automaticity. However, the student's performance on both formal and informal assessments of comprehension is below grade-level expectations. Which of the following types of assessment is likely to yield the most useful information about the student's potential for responding to instruction in comprehension?

1. norm referenced
2. summative
3. criterion referenced
4. dynamic

The fifth-grade English language arts teachers in a middle school regularly administer standards-aligned, end-of-quarter assessments in reading comprehension and vocabulary skills (e.g., morphemic analysis). After each test is given, the school's reading specialist supports the teachers in analyzing students' responses item-by-item to tally the number of students who responded to each item correctly. They then analyze the questions that the largest number of students got wrong to discuss implications for instruction. In this scenario, the specialist and teachers use which of the following types of statistical processes to support their analysis?

1. mode
2. standard deviation
3. sample size
4. mean

Use the information below to answer the question that follows.

A reading specialist is reviewing a third-grade student's results on norm-referenced tests as part of a diagnostic assessment. The results are shown below.

The specialist is considering appropriate scaffolds for core reading instruction for this student. Given the data provided, which of the following scaffolds and/or accommodations would be most appropriate?

1. teaching alternative strategies for word identification that emphasize whole-word recognition rather than decoding
2. articulating and repeating the pronunciation of new vocabulary words slowly multiple times
3. instruction and repeated practice opportunities for new words/syllable types to build orthographic knowledge
4. using colorful picture books for reading instruction instead of decodable texts

A reading specialist has joined the staff of a middle school that has recently begun implementing a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS). The principal asks the specialist to review the MTSS Implementation Drivers for the reading program to determine whether an appropriate feedback loop is in place. For this purpose, the specialist will need to obtain information about which of the following factors?

1. Are teachers using evidence-based instructional practices?
2. Is reading instruction being implemented with fidelity?
3. Is the curriculum aligned with state reading standards?
4. Are teachers engaging in data-based decision making?

An elementary school reading specialist is leading a team of stakeholders who are evaluating various literacy curriculum materials for potential adoption for core instruction. The specialist reviews the phonics components for beginning readers. Which of the following materials should the specialist recommend be eliminated from consideration because it emphasizes practices that are not evidence based?

1. Option 1: "Student texts are predictable leveled texts, which promote students' ability to use context to predict words above their phonics knowledge."
2. Option 2: "Instruction includes recursive review of phonics skills, including spelling practice."
3. Option 3: "Irregular high-frequency words are taught by calling attention to both regular and irregular phoneme/grapheme correspondences."
4. Option 4: "Sound-by-sound blending is taught explicitly and practiced daily using decodable texts."

According to scientific evidence on eye movements and reading, which of the following statements is accurate?

1. Proficient readers skip, skim, and sample text.
2. Proficient readers process almost every letter in a text.
3. Readers can derive meaning from a text without fixing on each word.
4. Readers can increase the amount of information they process in a single fixation.

A reading specialist uses the Simple View of Reading to provide a theoretical framework for reading instruction practices at the school. Which of the following school practices best aligns with the Simple View of Reading?

1. implementing targeted instruction sequentially for students by focusing on promoting foundational reading skills in the early grades and text comprehension in later grades
2. focusing screening measures on foundational reading skills in the early grades and beginning comprehension screenings once students achieve proficiency in word reading
3. grouping students for differentiated reading instruction according to their assessed word-reading skills and using a whole-class format for teaching reading comprehension
4. planning interventions for students who need reading support according to the student's specific needs, which may be in decoding, language comprehension, or both

Use the information below to answer the question that follows.

A reading specialist provides professional development sessions in phonological terms and concepts to early childhood teachers. The specialist introduces an activity in which teachers practice matching the newly learned terms with example words that demonstrate the concept.

In which of the following lines in the chart is the phonological term accurately matched to a set of example words?

1. Line 1
2. Line 2
3. Line 3
4. Line 4

Which of the following statements provides the most accurate definition of a phoneme?

1. fundamental speech sounds shared across multiple spoken languages with common roots
2. the smallest unit of sound in a language that makes a difference in communication
3. a unit of sound produced by restricting the vocal tract in a particular manner and place while the larynx is vibrating
4. any sound that is recognizable in a spoken language as having developed and changed over time and which continues to evolve

Sentences that contain which of the following structures exemplify the grammatical development associated with academic language that is typically mastered last?

1. dummy subjects (e.g., It is snowing.)
2. relative pronouns (e.g., This is the boy whose dog is lost.)
3. irregular plurals (e.g., I have two mice.)
4. compound predicates (e.g., Frida skipped and hopped.)

A child who has reached the earliest of semantic development milestones would most likely use which of the following sets of words?

1. the, a, some, many
2. why, when, because, so
3. shoe, mouth, apple, dog
4. must, could, if, then

A prekindergarten teacher consults a reading specialist to address concerns about the grammatical language development of a child in the class. Earlier in the year, the child correctly used common irregular past-tense verb forms (e.g., went, ran, held) but now frequently uses incorrect past-tense verbs for the same words (e.g., wented, ranned, helded). Which of the following explanations would be most appropriate for the specialist to provide?

1. The child may require speech intervention to recognize grammatical errors.
2. The child exhibits early signs of a language disability affecting word retrieval.
3. The child would benefit from explicit, systematic instruction in irregular verbs.
4. The child is overgeneralizing the morphological rule for marking past tense.

Use the information below to answer the question that follows.

As part of an informal assessment of a first-grade student, a reading specialist reads aloud a short narrative text and then discusses the text with the student. A partial transcript from their conversation appears below.

Teacher: Can you tell me what happens in this story?

Student: Yes.

Teacher: Great! Tell me about the story.

Student: It's good!

Teacher: Do you remember what happened in the story?

Student: Uh-huh.

Teacher: Tell me what happens first in the story.

Student: The chicken named Red gets on the roof!

The student's initial responses to the reading specialist's prompts in this part of the conversation most clearly suggest that the student:

1. is unfamiliar with narrative structure and requires scaffolding to support a retelling.
2. may have difficulty processing the teacher's spoken language.
3. is unfamiliar with the discourse rules for this kind of teacher-student exchange.
4. does not recall specific details from the story.

A reading specialist implements a decoding intervention with a third-grade student based on a multisensory structured language approach. The student makes significant progress in oral reading accuracy during the intervention, and their accuracy scores are now consistently above 95%. However, the student's oral reading fluency (words correct per minute [WCPM]) is still below the 25th percentile. Given the reciprocal relationships between various foundational reading skills, the specialist could best gain insight into why the student has not shown the same progress trajectory in fluency as in decoding accuracy by considering the student's performance scores on a normative assessment in which of the following areas?

1. phonemic awareness
2. phonemic decoding
3. automatic word recognition
4. oral reading prosody

A reading specialist in a technical high school uses the following strategy with students who require support in comprehending and analyzing complex grade-level texts in their academic courses.

• The specialist prepares "think sheets" for assigned texts, which include prompts to elicit students' metacognition (e.g., What do I still have questions about?) that appear next to challenging segments of the text.
• The prompts require the students to reread the segment and provide evidence from the text in their written questions.
• The students also complete a graphic organizer that aligns with the text's organizational structure (e.g., flowcharts for cause and effect) and supports the students in integrating information from various segments of the text.

This type of approach is likely to enhance the students' reading comprehension of a complex academic text primarily because the various steps:

1. guide the students through academic reading and writing tasks step-by-step through the use of teacher think-alouds as scaffolds.
2. prompt the students to think and write about and synthesize the key parts of the text while they are reading, instead of waiting until the end to answer questions.
3. provide opportunities for the students to reflect on their reading, evaluate the information, and support their opinions about the text.
4. encourage the students to integrate the information they read in the text with what they already know about the topic to come to a new understanding of the text.

A high school reading specialist is working with content-area teachers to help them consistently integrate reading instruction with content-area instruction. The specialist could best employ which of the following approaches to achieve this goal?

1. modeling for teachers strategies that support close reading of informational texts
2. observing teachers' lessons and then rating them based on their performance
3. providing teachers with professional journal articles related to their identified needs
4. leading discussion sessions on subject-specific reading with teachers in the district

At the beginning of the school year, a second-grade teacher approaches the reading specialist with concerns about a student who is new to the school. The student meets benchmarks for reading grade-level single-syllable words with short and long vowels but does not yet consistently decode two-syllable words that follow basic patterns. The specialist can best respond by taking which of the following actions?

1. suggesting that the teacher try multiple instructional methods targeting a variety of learning styles and note the student's preference for future planning
2. providing the teacher with supplemental materials to enhance classroom instruction and allow for at-home practice of syllable-division skills
3. offering to guide the teacher in planning instruction to promote the student's development in recognizing and identifying syllable types
4. implementing diagnostic testing to determine if the student has learning disabilities that may be responsible for the challenges described by the teacher

A reading specialist can best support classroom teachers in staying current with evidence-based approaches to reading instruction by taking which of the following actions?

1. inviting teachers from other school districts to host informational sessions in which they share the strategies that they find most effective
2. providing in-class modeling of key components of research-based instruction as professional learning for teachers in their classrooms
3. supervising teachers in the school to ensure that they are implementing only the most current approaches to instruction
4. sharing subscriptions and memberships to national literacy organizations with interested teachers

A reading specialist helps oversee the implementation of new, school-wide, evidence-based literacy curriculum materials. Which of the following steps should the specialist take for teachers to successfully implement the new materials?

1. providing teachers with professional development to build the requisite knowledge and skills needed to implement the materials effectively
2. creating seminars for families and stakeholders to inform them of the instructional components and goals of the materials
3. assigning mentoring partnerships in which teachers who have experience with similar materials guide less-experienced teachers
4. working with individual teachers to design supplemental materials that can be shared across grade levels and content areas

An elementary school reading specialist, a team of teachers, and administrators are beginning the process of selecting core instructional materials that align with state English language arts standards and include appropriate grade-level content topics. Which of the following questions should they ask first as they evaluate each option?

1. Do the materials reflect the school's prevailing philosophy about reading instruction and development?
2. Are the materials centered around high-interest topics, and do they include illustrations that appeal to reluctant readers?
3. Do the materials include extension activities and supplemental materials for all learners?
4. Are the materials evidence-based, and do they include both literary and informational texts?

When evaluating and selecting instructional materials for reading interventions in an elementary school, the reading specialist should prioritize materials that:

1. use technology to provide students with both instruction and review.
2. use evidence-based strategies to support differentiated instruction.
3. include multiple workbooks for readers at all reading levels.
4. were developed using a collection of texts on high-interest topics.

Use the information provided in the exhibits to complete the assignment that follows.

A reading specialist is assessing the reading performance of a second-grade student using the results from two different assessments: (1) a record of the student's performance reading aloud a passage from a grade-appropriate text; and (2) a record of the student's performance reading aloud from a grade-appropriate word list.

Given the assessment results provided in the exhibits and your knowledge of foundational reading skills (e.g., phonemic awareness skills, phonics skills, recognition of high-frequency words, syllabication skills, morphemic analysis skills, automaticity, reading fluency [including use of context for confirmation or self-correction]), write a response of approximately 150–300 words in which you:

• identify one significant strength the student demonstrates in the area of foundational reading skills, citing specific evidence to support your conclusion;
• identify two significant needs the student demonstrates in the area of foundational reading skills, citing specific evidence to support your conclusion;
• describe one evidence-based instructional strategy to address one or both of the student's identified needs in the areas of foundational reading skills you have identified; and
• explain why the evidence-based instructional strategy you selected is likely to be effective in building on and improving the student's foundational reading skills.

Be sure to cite specific evidence from the information provided to support all parts of your written response.

Use the information provided in the exhibits to complete the assignment that follows.

Given the assessment results provided in the exhibits and your knowledge of reading comprehension (e.g., vocabulary knowledge; knowledge of academic language structures, including conventions of standard English grammar and usage; application of literal, inferential, or evaluative comprehension skills; use of comprehension strategies; application of text analysis skills to a literary or informational text, including determining key ideas and details, analyzing craft and structure, or integrating knowledge and ideas within a text or across texts), write a response of approximately 150–300 words in which you:

• identify one significant strength the student demonstrates in the area of reading comprehension, citing specific evidence to support your conclusion;
• identify two significant needs the student demonstrates in the area of reading comprehension, citing specific evidence to support your conclusion;
• describe one evidence-based instructional strategy to address the student's identified need in the area of reading comprehension you have identified; and
• explain why the evidence-based instructional strategy you selected is likely to be effective in building on and improving the student's reading comprehension.

Be sure to cite specific evidence from the passage, the student's response, and the conversation transcript to support all parts of your written response.

A reading specialist is assessing the reading performance of an eleventh-grade student. The specialist plans to use summarization and text-based and inferential questioning to assess the student's reading comprehension. The specialist begins by having the student read aloud the passage below from Walden by Henry David Thoreau. The student reads the passage accurately and fluently.

After the student finishes reading the passage, the specialist says, "Summarize for me what the passage is about." Shown below is a transcript of the student's oral response.

Following the student's oral summarization of the passage, the reading specialist asks the student some questions about what the student has read. A transcript of their conversation is shown below.