A third-grade teacher has been conducting a series of ongoing assessments of a student's oral reading. Shown below is a sentence from a text, followed by a transcription of a typical example of the student's oral reading performance.
- Text:
- Her boots crunched through the snow.
- Student:
- Her boats crucked throw the snow.
After reading the sentence, the student paused and then reread it without the teacher's prompting and
self-corrected the errors. Based on this information, the teacher could best meet this student's needs by
adjusting instruction in order to:
- enhance the student's oral vocabulary development.
- develop the student's ability to self- monitor comprehension.
- improve the student's decoding skills.
- promote the student's ability to track print.
Which of the following types of assessments would best provide information about the comparative reading proficiency of students in an elementary school?
- a test of vocabulary development
- a norm-referenced survey test
- a reading miscue inventory
- a diagnostic portfolio
Considerations of validity in test construction relate most closely to:
- how a particular examinee's test performance relates to a preestablished standard.
- whether the test questions effectively measure their specified content.
- how a particular examinee's test performance compares to the performance of other examinees.
- whether the test results are likely to be repeatable with a similar examinee test group.
If a standardized test is said to lack reliability, the test:
- is not measuring what it is supposed to measure.
- has not proven to be useful as an instructional intervention.
- gives fluctuating scores in different administrations.
- has poor predictive value relative to students' classroom performance.
Which of the following informal assessment results provides the clearest indication that a kindergarten child has attained a beginning level of phonemic awareness?
- The student can clap the "beats" or syllables of familiar multisyllable words.
- The student can delete the second "word" or syllable in compound words.
- The student can identify the beginning sound of single-syllable words.
- The student can substitute phonemes in the medial position of singlesyllable words.
An advantage of using assessment tools such as portfolios and scoring rubrics is that they:
- provide more objective results than do multiple-choice tests.
- promote student participation in self-assessment activities.
- ensure consistency among different evaluators.
- offer more reliable assessment data.
Which of the following best describes the primary advantage of having a student read a passage silently and then provide a "retelling" as a means of assessing the student's comprehension, rather than
having the student answer questions?
- A retelling is open-ended and requires the student to construct a description of the passage more
independently of the examiner.
- The results of a retelling are more objective and easier to quantify than the results of direct questioning.
- The procedure involved in retelling tends to be more familiar to a wider range of students, including English Language Learners.
- A retelling can provide information about the student's inferential comprehension skills, which questioning cannot provide.
In order to select a trade book that emphasizes predictability, a teacher should ensure that:
- the text includes some pictures or illustrations.
- the concepts in the text are at an appropriate level of difficulty for the target student(s).
- a phrase, rhyme, or sentence is repeated throughout the text.
- the length of the text is not likely to exceed the attention span of the target student(s).
A fourth-grade English Language Learner is new to a school. Assessments suggest that the student can read orally with accuracy on grade level; however, the student's comprehension of grade-level textbooks fluctuates widely. Which of the following steps would be most appropriate for the teacher to take first in order to determine the cause of the student's difficulty?
- Assess the student's word analysis and decoding skills.
- Determine whether the student has a specific learning disability that affects language processing.
- Assess the student's level of first language literacy.
- Determine whether the student has adequate vocabulary and background knowledge to support
comprehension of the textbooks.
Questions from the Foundations of Reading Test. Copyright ©2013 Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliate(s).
All rights reserved. Evaluation Systems, Pearson, P.O. Box 226, Amherst, MA 01004.