Study Guide

Field 013: Reading
Sample Selected-Response Questions

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Sample General Test Directions

A sample of the general directions for the New Mexico Content Knowledge Assessment of Reading is shown below.

Each question in this test is a selected-response question with four answer choices. Read each question carefully and choose the ONE best answer. Try to answer all questions. Even if you are unsure about an answer, it is better to guess than to not answer a question at all. You will NOT be penalized for guessing.

You may NOT use any type of calculator or reference materials during the testing session.

Sample Selected-Response Questions

This section presents sample selected-response questions for you to review as part of your preparation for the New Mexico Content Knowledge Assessment of Reading. To demonstrate how the test competencies may be assessed, each sample question is preceded by the competency that it measures. On an actual test, the competencies will not be given.

The sample selected-response questions are designed to illustrate the nature of the test questions. They should not be used as a diagnostic tool to determine your individual strengths and weaknesses. The selected-response questions require you to demonstrate more than the ability to recall factual information. They ask you to think critically about the information, to analyze it, to consider it carefully, or to apply it to a hypothetical situation. Work through each question carefully before viewing the answer.

Competency 0001
The teacher understands techniques of reading assessment.

1. Compared with standardized reading assessments, one important advantage of informal reading assessments is that they allow the teacher to:

  1. characterize a student's reading proficiency in terms of typical grade-level performance.
  2. personalize reading assessments to identify the needs of individual students.
  3. avoid bias in the administration and interpretation of reading assessments.
  4. compare the reading performance of individual students to other students in the class.
Answer
Correct Response: B.

Competency 0003
The teacher understands factors involved in planning, organizing, and managing reading instruction.

2. During class discussions about stories, a student who is learning English as a second language often mispronounces key words from the stories. The teacher's best response would be to:

  1. ask the student to pause and correct the pronunciation error before continuing the discussion.
  2. analyze the student's pronunciation patterns and plan an intervention to address the student's needs.
  3. encourage the student to ask class-mates for help in pronouncing words correctly.
  4. write down the words and include them on a list of words for the student to practice pronouncing.
Answer
Correct Response: B.

Competency 0006
The teacher understands the development of concepts about print.

3. Which of the following strategies would best help a first-grade student with visual discrimination difficulties distinguish between frequently confused letters?

  1. encouraging the student to observe closely as the teacher writes the letters
  2. helping the student locate the letters within the text of a favorite book
  3. repeating the name of each letter several times as the student points to the letter
  4. creating sandpaper letters that the student can trace with his/her finger while saying the letter name
Answer
Correct Response: D.

Competency 0007
The teacher understands phonics and other word identification strategies.

4. A first-grade teacher provides students with phonics instruction to promote their reading development. When designing activities to teach letter-sound correspondences, the teacher should:

  1. provide reading opportunities for students to practice sounds in con-text after studying the sounds in isolation.
  2. make certain that students have mastered vowel sounds before focusing on consonants.
  3. ensure that students master the spelling of practice words using the target sound before teaching a new sound.
  4. include instruction in related consonant blends when introducing individual consonants.
Answer
Correct Response: A.

Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow [items 5 and 6].

A fourth-grade class is beginning a unit on deserts. The teacher starts the unit by having the students form small groups and list everything they know about deserts. Then the whole class meets to share their lists, and the teacher asks the students to help arrange their ideas into a web. The class's partially completed web is shown below.

Image for Competency Question 0008 and 00010
Competency 0008
The teacher understands factors affecting reading comprehension and strategies for promoting reading comprehension.

5. As a prereading activity, creating the web shown is most likely to promote students' reading comprehension by:

  1. encouraging students to pay attention to new information on the topic rather than to familiar information.
  2. providing students with the vocabulary skills they need to make sense of information presented in the text.
  3. prompting students to assess the accuracy of their understanding of the topic.
  4. helping students learn to use categories to organize their prior knowledge about information presented in the text.
Answer
Correct Response: D.
Competency 0010
The teacher understands strategies for promoting content-area literacy.

6. The teacher gives each student a copy of the web developed by the class. The teacher could best help students make use of the web to learn and retain facts from their reading by asking them to:

  1. add continuously to the web as they encounter new information in their reading.
  2. try to maintain a mental image of the web while they are reading on the topic.
  3. review each category on the web to ensure that it is an appropriate one to have included.
  4. memorize the information on the web before they begin their reading.
Answer
Correct Response: A.

Competency 0011
The teacher understands strategies for promoting students' independent reading.

7. A kindergarten teacher could most effectively support at-home reading by:

  1. sending parents a regular newsletter describing classroom reading activities.
  2. sharing with parents important articles from professional reading journals.
  3. recommending available books that parents might enjoy reading aloud to their children.
  4. providing parents with periodic reports on their children's progress in reading.
Answer
Correct Response: C.

Competency 0012
The teacher understands the relationships among reading, writing, and oral language, and uses interrelated instruction in these areas to promote reading proficiency.

8. Which of the following activities would best help upper-elementary students who are learning English as a second language use the intonations and rhythms of the English language when reading?

  1. The teacher leads a class discussion on an age-appropriate topic, then each student reads a section of text aloud on the same topic.
  2. The students record their own oral reading of a passage and then listen to the tape while silently reading the passage.
  3. The teacher gives an expressive oral reading of a passage, then the students practice reading it in unison.
  4. The students read aloud and then silently from a text in which stressed words and punctuation marks are highlighted.
Answer
Correct Response: C.

Competency 0013
The teacher understands strategies for promoting vocabulary development.

9. After writing pasteurize and Louis Pasteur on the blackboard, a middle school teacher explains how Pasteur invented the process of pasteurization. Students then discuss how the word Pasteur relates to the word pasteurize. This instructional activity is likely to foster students' reading develop-ment primarily by:

  1. helping students use syllabication as a strategy to identify morphemes in an unfamiliar word.
  2. motivating students to improve their spelling by comparing and contrasting similar words.
  3. helping students use etymology to improve their word analysis and vocabulary skills.
  4. motivating students to use graphophonic cues as a word identification strategy.
Answer
Correct Response: C.

Competency 0014
The teacher understands how knowledge of English language structures and conventions relates to the development of reading proficiency.

10. A ninth-grade teacher writes the following sentence on the board:

Neither walking on the beach nor
running around the track
cheered Danny up.

The teacher prompts students to discuss how the phrases that come just after neither and just after nor are similar. This exercise is most likely to enhance students' reading comprehension by helping them:

  1. distinguish between explicit and implied main ideas.
  2. apply literal comprehension skills.
  3. identify cause-and-effect relationships.
  4. recognize parallel constructions.
Answer
Correct Response: D.