Study Guide

Field 008: Reading Specialist
Sample Multiple-Choice Questions

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Reading Processes and Development

Objective 0001
Understand the connections among listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

1. A third-grade student is a proficient reader. Which of the following changes is most likely to occur as the student enters the upper-elementary grades and begins reading more complex content-area texts?

  1. The student's reading rate will become more consistent and uniform across all types of texts.
  2. The student's reading vocabulary will start to exceed the student's oral vocabulary.
  3. The student's independent reading preferences will shift from fiction texts to nonfiction texts.
  4. The student's interests will shift from oral language activities to written language activities.
Answer
Correct Response: B.
Objective 0002
Understand phonological and phonemic awareness.

2. Which of the following statements best explains why most young children require explicit instruction to help them distinguish the phonemes in spoken words?

  1. The correspondence between sounds and symbols in English is only partially regular.
  2. Many students have had limited exposure to environmental print before entering school.
  3. In normal speech, the phonemes in a word are coarticulated, or blended together.
  4. Written language makes use of some phonemes that rarely occur in oral language.
Answer
Correct Response: C.
Objective 0004
Understand the role of phonics knowledge in reading development.

3. A first-grade teacher is helping a student decode the word stop. Which of the following teacher prompts illustrates the synthetic approach to phonics instruction?

  1. "Can you think of other words that end with the letters op? What sound do the letters make in those other words?"
  2. "Say the sounds made by the individual letters s, t, o, and p. What word do you get if you blend those sounds together?"
  3. "Look at this sentence: The stop light is red. Can you decode the second word by using clues from the rest of the sentence?"
  4. "Does the word look like any other words that you know how to read? Can you sound out this word by comparing it to those other words?"
Answer
Correct Response: B.
Objective 0008
Understand skills and strategies for comprehending expository and content-area texts.

4. A middle school teacher develops a set of postreading questions for students to answer in writing after they read a difficult content-area text. To facilitate the students' analysis and recall of the text, the questions should require students to:

  1. focus repeatedly on one or two ideas of the text.
  2. integrate important information from different parts of the text.
  3. quote directly from sections of the text that are especially difficult.
  4. answer each question in several different ways.
Answer
Correct Response: B.

Reading Assessment

Objective 0009
Understand principles of test construction and the interpretation of test results.

5. Two standardized reading tests have a similar mean score, but the standard deviation of test A is significantly greater than the standard deviation of test B. Based on this information, which of the following statements is accurate?

  1. Scores on test A tend to be relatively spread out, while scores on test B tend to be relatively close to the mean.
  2. There were more students in the norm group for test A than in the norm group for test B.
  3. A student's score on test A predicts the student's reading achievement better than the student's score on test B.
  4. Scores on test A are reported as raw scores, while scores on test B are reported as grade-equivalent scores.
Answer
Correct Response: A.
Objective 0012
Understand the screening and diagnosis of reading difficulties and disabilities.

6. An elementary student has shown little improvement in reading skills after intervention by the classroom teacher and reading specialist. Which of the following steps would be most appropriate for the reading specialist to take next?

  1. Conduct a variety of additional assessments to verify the findings of previous reading tests.
  2. Meet with a prereferral team to determine whether further evaluation is needed.
  3. Concentrate on increasing the student's motivation through independent reading of high-interest texts.
  4. Make an independent referral for the student to receive special education services.
Answer
Correct Response: B.

Reading Instruction

Objective 0013
Understand research-based instructional strategies, programs, and methodologies for promoting early reading and writing development.

7. An early elementary class includes one highly proficient reader who reads several grade levels above the other students in the class. When planning instruction for this student, which of the following guidelines would be most important for the teacher to follow?

  1. Reinforce the student's mastery of reading skills by including the student in group instruction for the other students in the class.
  2. Use ongoing assessment of the student's reading level to help select challenging and engaging texts for the student's independent and guided reading.
  3. Encourage the student to select a wide variety of independent reading materials from the texts that are included in the classroom library.
  4. Use paired reading activities that will enable the student to model reading skills and strategies for classmates who are reading at a lower level.
Answer
Correct Response: B.
Objective 0016
Understand characteristics and uses of reading resources, materials, and technologies.

8. Which of the following describes the most appropriate instructional use of decodable texts?

  1. to help young children acquire letter-recognition skills
  2. to help English Language Learners develop phonemic awareness
  3. to give beginning readers practice applying phonics skills
  4. to develop the sight-word vocabulary for beginning readers
Answer
Correct Response: C.

Professional Knowledge and Roles of the Reading Specialist

Objective 0017
Understand the interpretation, evaluation, and application of reading research.

9. Based on current research, which of the following is an accurate statement about reading development?

  1. By second grade, fluent readers are relying more on recognition of familiar spelling patterns and less on the blending of phonemes to sound out individual words.
  2. In fourth grade, fluent readers have sufficiently large sight vocabularies and command of context that they rarely need to decode individual words in grade-level texts.
  3. As they progress through the upper-elementary grades, students are able to rely less on prior knowledge and more on literal comprehension to understand unfamiliar concepts.
  4. Middle school students with reading difficulties are more likely to require help with comprehension strategies than instruction in word identification skills.
Answer
Correct Response: A.
Objective 0018
Understand the multiple roles of the Reading Specialist in planning and implementing reading instruction in collaboration with other members of the school community.

10. Which of the following is a central provision of the 2001 Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known as the "No Child Left Behind Act" (reauthorized 2013)?

  1. State and local education agencies will be encouraged by the federal government to implement a variety of experimental approaches to reading instruction and assessment.
  2. The federal government will support those state and local reading programs that provide primary-language instruction to students who are English Language Learners.
  3. The U.S. Department of Education will distribute approved reading assessment instruments for students in the primary and secondary grades.
  4. Federal funding will support those state and local reading programs that are consistent with current scientific research on reading development and instruction.
Answer
Correct Response: D.