Praxis II - Elementary Education MultipleSubject 5001
Reading & Language Arts (5002):
The skills you need to know in this section include the following:
A. Foundational Skills:
Phonological awareness is an overarching skill that includes identifying and manipulating units of oral language, including parts of words, syllables, onsets, and rhymes.
Children who have phonological awareness are able to:
1. identify and make oral rhymes
2. clap out the number of syllables in a word
3. recognize words with the same initial sounds like monkey and mother
4. blend sounds together
5. divide and manipulate words
Phonological awareness is understanding the individual sounds in words. For example, students who have phonemic awareness can separate the sounds in the word cat into three distinct phonemes. /k/, /t/.
Phonics is understanding the relationship between sounds and the spelling pattern representing those sounds. For example, when a student sees that a c is followed by an e i, y, the student knows the c makes an /s/ sound.
Phonemes are the individual sounds in words. Usually, phonemes are expressed without a written letter because a letter can have different phonemes or sounds attached to it. For example, the letter g can make an /g/ sound, as in-game, and a/j/ sound as in the gym.
Syllables are units of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of the word. For example, there are two syllables in water and three in elephant.
Onsets are the beginning consonant and consonant clusters. For example, the onset for the word tack is /t/.
The onset for the word track is /tr/.
Rimes are the vowel and consonants that follow the onset. For example, in the word tack and track, the rhyme is -ack.
Students must be able to break down words and understand the different components of words. Teachers can help students do this in a number of ways.
Blending is the ability to string together the sounds that each letter stands for in a word. For example, when students see the word black, they blend the /bl/, the /a/ sound and the ending /k/ sound. Sometimes blending exercises focus just on the consonant blend, like the /bl/, the /a/ sound and the ending /k/ sound. Sometimes blending exercises focus just on the consonant blend, like the /br/ sound in the word brick.
Segmenting is breaking a word apart. This can be done by breaking compound words into two parts, segmenting by onset and rhyme, segmenting by syllables, or breaking the word into individual phonemes.
Substituting is replacing one phoneme with another in a word. For example, students say the wordplay, and the teacher asks them to change the first sound of play with /st/. The students say the word stay. Another example is changing the ending sound of play to /ate/, which forms the word plate.
Deleting is when students take words apart, remove one sound, and pronounce the word without the removed sound. For example, using the word mice, a teacher may ask students to delete the initial /m/ sound, resulting in the word ice. This skill is usually practiced orally.
Phonics is the ability to map certain sounds in words based on written letters. For example, in the word chain, the c + h makes a /ch/ sound.
Morphology is the study of words and their forms. Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in words.
Word analysis is a process of using relationships between spelling and pronunciation to identify words. Word analysis requires students to identify the meanings of words by using prefixes, root words, and suffixes.
World-class instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) - WIDA is an organization that supports multilingual students and creates standards and assessments to help with the instruction of ELLs. WIDA supports students, families, educators, and administrators with research-based tools and resources.
The WIDA framework includes five components that are interactive and independent. These components exemplify the WIDA vision for academic language development (WIDA, 2014).
1. Guiding Principles of Language Development
2. Developmentally Appropriate Academic Language in Sociocultural Contexts
3. Performance Definitions
4. Can Do Descriptors
5. Standards Matrics
Linguistic complexity is the quantity and variety of language used by ELLs at the discourse level and refers to how ELLs express their ideas and understand interactions.
Language usage refers to the type and use of structures, phrases, and words. Some features include choices of intonation to convey meaning and types of grammatical structures (WIDA, 2004).
Cueing Systems:
Syntactic - The syntactic cueing system focuses on the structure of the sentence.
Semantic - The semantic cueing system focuses on the meaning derived from the text.
Fluency is reading without having to stop and decode (sound out) words. Fluency involves reading a paragraph from start to finish with very few errors.
Prosody is reading with expression while correctly using words and punctuation. Reading with prosody means the reader is conveying what is on the page, pausing at commas and periods, and using inflection based on punctuation.
Teaching strategies to increase and monitor fluency:
* Choral reading - Reading aloud in unison with a whole class or group of students. Choral reading helps build students' fluency, self-confidence, and motivation.
* Repeated reading - Reading passages, again and again, aiming to read more words correctly per minute each time.
* Running records - Following along as a student reads, marking when he or she makes a mistake or miscues.
* Miscue analysis - Looking over the running record, analyzing why the student miscued and employing strategies to help the student with miscues.
The impact fluency has on comprehension:
Fluency is necessary for comprehension. For students to understand the text, they must first read through the text with fluency. This way they can focus on meaning rather than sounding out words.
Comprehension is the essence of reading. This is when students begin to form images in their minds as they read. They are able to predict what might happen next in a story because they understand what is happening in the story. Students who are in the comprehension stage of reading do not need to decode (sound out) words. They read fluently with prosody, automatic, and accuracy.
Critical thinking is when students can apply certain concepts to their reading and extract meaning from the text. Students in the critical thinking stage are using high-level skills to relate meaning in the text to themselves and to real life.
Metacognition is thinking about thinking. When students have metacognition, they understand the processes in their minds and can employ a variety of techniques to understand the text. Strategies for boosting comprehension, critical thinking, and metacognition are:
* Predicting- Asking students what they think will happen next.
* Questioning - Having students ask questions based on what they are reading.
* Read aloud/think aloud - Teacher or student reads and stops to think aloud about what the text means.
* Summarizing - Ask students to summarize what they just read in their own words.
When students read through large sections of text and build meaning from that text, students have cognitive endurance. Students are not wasting cognitive energy on decoding words. Instead, students are reading fluently, using their cognitive energy towards comprehension and critical thinking, not word recognition and meaning.
Practice Test:
Q.1. When a student has awareness of phonemes in words, syllables, onset-rime segments, and spelling, he or she is demonstrating:
Ans: Phonological awareness
Q.2. Phonemic awareness includes the ability to:
Ans: pronounce individual sounds in words
Q.3. Which is NOT a best practice for vocabulary instruction?
Ans: Explicit instruction using a dictionary
Q.4. Students are using the tules below. They use the first tile (tr) and match it with the others to make words. The students are working on:
Ans: Onset and rime
Q.5. A student is struggling during reading. The student often stops when encountering high-frequency words and tries to decode them. This interrupts the reading and makes it difficult for the student to understand the meaning in the text. Which of the following interventions should the teacher employ?
Ans: The teacher should focus on fluency and automaticity strategies for this student because proper fluency and automaticity will reduce the cognitive demand needed for decoding, leaving more cognitive space for comprehension
Q.6. When a teacher asks students to make predictions about a text, he or she is fostering the students:
Ans: comprehension
Q.7. Which of the following is an example of prosody?
Ans: reading text, pausing at commas, and using inflection for meaning
Use the passage below to answer questions 8 - 10.
THE ANT AND THE DOVE
By Aesop
An ant came down to the brook; he wanted to drink. A wave washed him down and almost drowned him. A Dove was carrying a branch; she saw the Ant was drowning, so she cast the branch down to him in the brook. The Ant got up on the branch and was saved. Then a hunter placed a snare for the Dove, and was on the point of drawing it in. The Ant crawled up to the hunter and bit him on the leg; the hunter groaned and dropped the snare. The Dove fluttered upwards and flew away.
Q. 8. In the fable, the words Ant and Dove are capitalized. Why might the author do this?
Ans: The author is attempting to give the animals human-like characteristics, using Ant and Dove as their proper names.
9. In the fable, the word snare (highlighted in the text) most likely means a :
Ans: Trap
Q.10. Which of the following sentences summarizes the meaning of the fable?
Ans: It is important to help those in need because you never know when you will be in need yourself.
Students in a 5th-grade language arts and reading class are creating stories using different literary elements. Use the student writing sample below to answer questions 11 -13.
(1) Bridgett could not wait to tell her parents about the A+ she earned on her math exam. (2) She had worked for days. studying meticulously for the exam. (3) She looked over her notes, practiced her questions, and didn't let anyone distract her from her goal. (4) That was how Bridgett was, she was determined and resilient. (5) It paid off, and Bridgett was able to achieve the score she wanted: an A+.
Q.11. What literary element are the students focusing on in the paragraph above?
Ans: characterization
Q.12. The teacher suggests that the student change sentence 3 to:
She looked over her notes, practiced her questions, and focused on the goal.
This change reflects which of the following English grammar concepts?
Ans: Parallel structure
Q.13. Which sentences in the piece show that the student has an understanding of vocabulary and complex sentence structure. Choose all that apply.
Ans: Sentence 2,3,4,5
Q.14. Which of the following edits would be most effective for sentence 4?
Ans: Change the comma to a semicolon
Use the poem below to answer questions 15 -17.
The Road Not Taken (an except)
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged
Use the poem below to answer questions 15 - 17.
B. Literature and informational Texts:
* Key details are specific pieces of information in a text. These can include characters, setting, and plot. The key details help the reader summarize important information in the story. These specific key details will help build comprehension of the text.
United States History, Government, and Citizenship
A. European Exploration and Colonization
Key Motives:
* Spanish - Gold, Northwest Passage
*French - Spread Christianity, Northwest Passage
* England - colonize, Northwest Passage
Explorers to Know:
Early English Settlements
What challenges did the first English colonies face?
The Lost Settlement of Roanoke:
Roanoke:
Jamestown:
Westward Expansion:
Many factors contributed to the westward expansion, which was the movement of settlers into the American West from about 1840 to 1850. The primary factors for the expansion were population growth and the search for new land for economic benefit. The westward expansion was fueled by the Gold Rush, the Oregon Trail, and the benefit of Manifest Destiny.
* Gold Rush: When gold was discovered in California in 1848, people from California were the first to rush to the goldfields. News quickly spread to Oregon and Latin America and eventually throughout the world.
* Oregon Trail - A major route from Missouri to Oregon that pioneers used to migrate west.
* Manifest Destiny - Belief that the United States was destined by God to expand control and spread democracy across the continent.
* The Louisiana Purchase - The Louisiana Purchase was a land deal between the United States and France in which the United States acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase occurred during Thomas Jefferson's team as president.
* Lewis and Clark Expedition - President Thomas Jefferson instructed Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the area gained from the recent Louisiana Purchase. During the 8,000-mile expedition. Lewis and hostile Native American tribes. From the experience, they were able to provide a detailed description of the geographic, ecological, and social features of the new region.
* The Erie Canal (1825) - The Erie Canal is a man-made waterway that connects the Atlantic Ocean through New York City- to the Great Lakes. The completion of the Erie Canal was significant because it allowed people and freight to travel between the eastern seaboard and the Michigan port.
* The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 - This treaty between the United States and representatives of several Native American tribes assigned each tribe a defined territory, where they were to remain. The Fort Laramie Treaty was later broken by the U.S. government when gold was discovered on the land that was assigned to the Native American tribes. The United States seized back the land and pushed Native Americans farther into isolated territories.
Key Players of the Civil War:
* Ulysses S. Grant - Top Unin general after General George B. McClellan's termination; waged total war against the South starting in 1863, including a major victory at Vicksburg.
Robert E. Lee - General who turned down Lincoln's offer to command Union forces in favor of commanding the Army of Northern Virginia for the Confederacy.
* Stonewall Jackson - Confederate general during the Civil War.
* Jefferson Davis - Elected president of the Confederate State of America
* Charles Francis Adams - U.S. diploma for Abraham Lincoln who effectively kept France and Great Britain out of the War.
Industrial Revolution:
The Industrial Revolution, which began in the middle of the 18th century, was the transition from an agrarian economy to an industrialized economy.
Key Features of the Industrial Revolution:
* Population shifted; people moved from rural areas and agriculture work to cities and factory work.
* Goods were mass-produced
* increased efficiency, increased production, and lower coasts
* Wages increased
* Technology developments increased
* Many wealthy industrialists became philanthropists
* Government regulations increased, leading to standards in health care and education.
Q.1. Why is it important that the Three Sisters' agricultural system combined beans, corn, and squash?
Ans: The Iroquois and the Cherokee called corn, bean, and squash the three sisters' because they nurture each other like family when planted together. These agriculturalists placed corn in small hills planting beans around them and interspersing squash throughout of the field.
A depiction of Sioux teepees, painted by Karl Bodmer in 1833. Image credit:
Q.2. Why did the Sioux live in structures like those depicted in the image?
Ans: Many types of Sioux people lived in teepees because they suited their lifestyle and the environment they lived in. The teepee was uniquely suited to a semi-nomadic existence on the American Great Plains. Teepees could be taken down and set up very quickly.
conception of the city of Cahokia, near modern-day St. Louis. At its peak around 1100 CE, Cahokia had 20,000 residents. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
Q. 3. How were Mississippian people similar to other Native American groups in the pre-contact era?
Ans: The environment in which they lived influenced their societies and economies. They were largely nomadic, depending on horses to follow herds of animals. They had no religious practices or beliefs.
Q.4. "Three Sisters" farming was an agricultural system of companion planting innovated by the Iroquois-speaking peoples of the Northeast; farmers planted corn, beans, and squash together. The beans used the cornstalks as a trellis to grow on, but how did beans benefit the other two plants in the system?
Ans: Bacteria on the roots of beans ‘fix’ nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil, fertilizing the earth for the benefit of the corn and squash
Q.5. "Around 7,000 years ago, agriculture emerged in Mesoamerica, including the domestication of maize, beans, and squash, causing major changes in the plants that people cultivated. Three sisters' agriculture had spread across Mexico by 3,500 years ago, though they originated at different times."
-Source: Amanda J. Landon, anthropologist, "The 'How' of the Three Sisters," 2008
Why was this method of planting important?
Ans: These three crops mutually supported each other's growth, a system that spread from present-day Mexico northward into the present-day American Southwest.
The sharing of this valuable agricultural information sustained communities in present-day Mexico and the present-day American Southwest for centuries before the arrival of Europeans.
African societies and the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade:
Africans organized their societies around the family unit, and gold supply often dictated which society held the most power—until the start of the Atlantic slave trade.
The beginning of the Atlantic slave trade in the late 1400s disrupted African societal structure as Europeans infiltrated the West African coastline, drawing people from the center of the continent to be sold into slavery.
New sugar and tobacco plantations in the Americas and Caribbean heightened the demand for enslaved people, ultimately forcing a total of 12.5 million Africans across the Atlantic and into slavery.
Early West African society:
West Africa stretches from modern-day Mauritania to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It encompasses lush rainforests along the equator, savannas on either side of the forest, and much drier land to the north. Until about 600 CE, most Africans living in this area were hunter-gatherers. In the driest areas, herders maintained sheep, goats, cattle, or camels. In the more heavily wooded area near the equator, farmers raised yams, palm products, or plantains. The savanna areas yielded crops including rice, millet, and sorghum.
Although there were large trading centers along the rivers—the Senegal, Gambia, Niger, Volta, and Congo—most West Africans lived in small villages and identified primarily with their extended family or clan, rather than an ethnic or national identity. Wives, children, and dependents were a sign of wealth; men frequently practiced polygyny, or the custom of having more than one wife. In times of need, West Africans relied on relatives from near and far for support. Hundreds of separate dialects emerged from different west African clans; in modern Nigeria, nearly 500 languages are still spoken.
African societies practiced human bondage long before the Atlantic slave trade began. Famine or fear of stronger enemies might force one tribe to ask another for help and give themselves in bondage in exchange for assistance. Similar to the European serf system, those seeking protection or relief from starvation would become the servants of those who provided relief. Debt might also be worked off through some form of servitude. Furthermore, prisoners of war between different African societies oftentimes became enslaved.
Typically, these servants became a part of the extended tribal family. There is some evidence of chattel slavery, in which people were treated as personal property, in the Nile Valley. It appears there was a slave-trade route through the Sahara that brought sub-Saharan Africans to Rome, a global center of slavery.
West Africans were transported to the coast to be sold into slavery.
Religion and the African empire:
The religious movement helped shape the African societal structure. Following the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632 CE, Islam spread quickly across North Africa, bringing not only a unifying faith but a political and legal structure as well. Only those who had converted to Islam could rule or be engaged in trade.
The first major empire to emerge in West Africa was the Ghana Empire. By 750, the Soninke farmers of the region had become wealthy by taxing traders who traversed their area. For instance, the Niger River basin supplied gold to the Amazigh (Berber) and Arab traders from west of the Nile Valley, who brought cloth, weapons, and manufactured goods into the African interior. Since Ghana’s king controlled the gold supply, he was able to maintain price controls and afford a strong military.
Soon, however, a new kingdom emerged. By 1200 CE, under the leadership of Sundiata Keita, Mali replaced Ghana as the leading state in West Africa. After Sundiata’s rule, the court converted to Islam, and Muslim scribes played a large part in administration and government. Miners then discovered huge new deposits of gold east of the Niger River. By the 14th century, the empire was so wealthy that while on a hajj, or pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, Mali’s ruler Mansa Musa gave away enough gold to create serious price inflation in the cities along his route. Timbuktu, the capital city, became a leading Islamic center for education, commerce, and the slave trade.
The vast and glorious civilization of Timbuktu.
Q. 6. Monk’s Mound in Cahokia is an enormous earthwork very near to the Mississippi River. What do archaeologists believe it was used for?
Ans: It’s believed to have been a temple or chief’s residence
Since Mississippian society revolved around the mound network, archeologists believe that the central, largest mound would have belonged to a societal leader.
Q.7. Chaco Canyon, in modern-day New Mexico, is almost 600 miles from the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean. What does the presence of California seashells in archaeological digs tell us about the people who lived in Chaco Canyon 1000 years ago?
Ans: They had elaborate trade routes with societies that lived on the coast
With over 400 miles of roads connecting the Chacoan people, they traded away turquoise and other goods in exchange for sea shells from the West, and minerals from the north.
Q.8. Where’s the Bering Strait, and what does it have to do with the history of the North American continent?
Ans: It's a waterway that separates present-day Siberia from present-day Alaska. Historians theorize that humans made their way across a now vanished bridge from Asia to North America.