Praxis Reading Specialist Study Questions with Answers and Rationale

Mrs. Cane plays a word sorting game with her second grade students. She asks them to sort the words on their spelling list and to put them into word families. She then pairs them and asks them to add other words which belong in each family. What is most likely her purpose with this word game? To help students understand prefixes and suffixes. To develop phonemic awareness To develop phonics skills To build student vocabulary The Correct answer is: To develop phonics skills This sorting game helps students focus on looking for phonetic patterns or rimes in the words. Phonics is associating sounds with letters to make words and looking for common patterns to read words. Prefixes and suffixes change word meaning. Phonemic awareness activities help students make connections between sounds and letters or phonemes. A student reading a second grade level passage is reading at the Independent Reading level for word recognition. According to the Powell Criteria, which of the following indicates this? 89%. 95%. 92%. 73%. 61% Correct answer: 95% According to the Powell Criteria: 2nd grade and below passage level: Word recognition percent correct = 94% and above (Independent), 87 - 93% (Instructional), and below 87% (Frustration). Comprehension percent correct = 81% and above (Independent), 55-80% (Instructional), and below 55% (Frustration). 3rd to 5th grade passage level: Word recognition percent correct = 96% or greater (Independent), 92 - 95% (Instructional), and below 92% (Frustration). Comprehension percent correct = 85% and above (Independent), 60-85% (Instructional), and below 60% (Frustration). 6th grade and above passage level: Word recognition percent correct= 97% or greater (Independent), 94-96% (Instructional), and below 94% (Frustration). Comprehension percent correct = 91% and above (Independent), 65 - 90% (Instructional), and below 65% (Frustration What type of reading cues do whole language theorists consider most important? Graphophonemic. Basal. Semantic. Linguistic. Variable. Correct Answer: Semantic. Whole language theorists believe that people decode new vocabulary by deciding what type of word would make sense in a particular context. This approach relies on semantic cues. The reading specialist is reviewing the average of the group of scores on a test. What is the specialist reviewing? Mean. Median. Mode. Raw score. Standard deviation. Correct answer: Mean The mean is the average of a group of scores and median, the middle score in a group of scores. The mode is the score that was received by the largest number of test takers. A raw score is just that, the first score given to test performance. Standard deviation shows the variability of test scores.