Foundations of Reading

Which of the following best describes the relationship between word decoding and reading comprehension in a beginning reader's development?

• Decoding skills and reading comprehension skills tend to develop independently of one another

• Reading comprehension skills directly facilitate the development of decoding skills

• Development of decoding skills is secondary to the development of reading fluency and comprehension skills

• Rapid automatic decoding skills help facilitate development of reading fluency and comprehension

A kindergarten teacher wants to promote students' understanding of the alphabetic principle. Which of the following would be the most effective first step in a sequence of instruction designed to achieve this goal?

• Talk with students about selected consonants using a series of posters that each feature one consonant and contain pictures of items whose initial phoneme demonstrates that consonant's sound

• Have students trace both lowercase and uppercase letters of the alphabet and then practice reproducing the letters on their own

• Talk with students about the title, beginning, middle, and end of a story and point to these parts while reading the story aloud from a big book

• Put labels on several familiar objects in the classroom and regularly read the labels aloud to the students

A second-grade teacher regularly reviews spelling patterns previously taught. The teacher also provides students with multiple opportunities to read and write connected text that features words containing the target spelling patterns and to engage in word sorts focused on previously taught spelling patterns. These types of activities are likely to promote students' reading proficiency primarily by developing their:

• knowledge of grade-level vocabulary

• reading fluency with respect to accuracy

• awareness of different types of morphemes

• word recognition with respect to sight words

A teacher can most effectively support first graders' development of rapid automatic word recognition by first teaching students how to:

• apply consistent phonics generalizations in common words

• use context clues to determine the meanings of words

• identify the constituent parts of multisyllable words

• look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary

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

• ir

• kn

• th

• oi

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

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

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

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

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

Which of the following provides the best rationale for incorporating spelling instruction into a first-grade reading program?

• Spelling promotes phonemic awareness by teaching students to break words into onsets and rimes

• Spelling facilitates vocabulary development by introducing students to new words

• Spelling simplifies the reading process by focusing students on a limited set of decoding rules

• Spelling supports word recognition by helping students learn and retain common phonics patterns

Which of the following statements best describes how oral vocabulary knowledge is related to the process of decoding written words?

• A reader applies decoding skills to unfamiliar written words in order to increase his or her oral vocabulary knowledge

• A reader's oral vocabulary knowledge allows the reader to derive meaning as he or she decodes written words

• A reader must have extensive oral vocabulary knowledge in order to learn decoding processes

• A reader's oral vocabulary knowledge is dependent on his or her development of strong decoding skills

A first-grade teacher encourages beginning readers to "write" their own captions beneath their drawings. This practice is most likely to lead to which of the following?

• The students will tend to lose interest in writing because of their frustration with their lack of mastery of the English spelling system

• The students' overall reading proficiency will be adversely affected by any spelling errors that go uncorrected

• The students will tend to develop strong automatic word recognition skills from their interaction with print

• The students' development of phonics knowledge will be reinforced as they experiment with their own phonetic spellings

Which of the following types of activities would be most important to include on a daily basis when planning reading instruction for first graders who are developing as beginning readers?

• activities that introduce students to basic concepts about print

• activities that emphasize listening to and producing rhyming, alliteration, and similar forms of wordplay

• activities that promote students' development of decoding and other word analysis skills

• activities that emphasize memorization of lists of grade- level-appropriate sight words