Final

Question 1

Name the syllable types. How does knowing syllable types help students with reading and spelling?

Question 2

What is phonological awareness? How is that different from phonemic awareness? Describe at least one example of an instructional activity that would help develop a child’s phonological awareness? What about an activity to increase phonemic awareness?

Question 3

Define fluency and describe why it is an important component of literacy instruction. How can you assess fluency and what instructional activities can you use to improve a child’s fluency? Discuss at least two.

Question 4

What are the three components of reading fluency and what role does each one play in becoming a fluent reader? How is are the components of fluency assessed?

Question 5

What is the difference between benchmark assessments and progress monitoring? Give an example of how you would use each of these in your future classroom.

Question 6

Why is teaching handwriting important? What should be included in handwriting instruction? When should keyboarding skills be introduced?

Question 7

What is one of the stages of handwriting development? What is the typical age range and key characteristics for this stage? What skills should you focus on teaching during this stage?

Question 8

Name and describe at least three (of the five) stages of spelling development.

Question 9

What is the difference between morphology, syllables, and phonemes? Provide examples of each.

Question 10

What is orthographic knowledge? How do we assess this knowledge in students?

Question 11

What are the two ways children learn vocabulary? Describe each. Why are both important? (follow-up question may be to describe what good vocabulary instruction includes…)

Question 12

When pre-teaching vocabulary from a text or passage, what kind of vocabulary words should be the focus of instruction? Explain. How do you select the vocabulary to teach?

Question 13

Define comprehension. How can teachers guide students in improving comprehension?

Question 14

What is explicit instruction? How is this related to scope and sequence? Name the steps that should be included in an explicit lesson.

Question 15

Why should we teach students how to locate or generate main idea sentences and summarize a text? How can we scaffold this instruction? What should students be able to do before we ask them to summarize a text?

Question 16

Define syntax and semantics. What is the difference between these terms? Why do students need to understand both to comprehend while reading? As an additional comment, discuss how understanding promotes improved writing as well!

Question 17

Evidence-based writing instruction is an important part of literacy development. Define the meaning of effect size and how this helps us to determine what writing instructional practices are best to use. Name one evidence-based writing practice (as summarized by Graham et al.) that a teacher could use in a classroom setting? As an additional comment, you could also discuss meta-analysis and why this type of research is conducted in our field.

Question 18

Describe the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough’s Reading Rope. Why are these theoretical models important to understand when teaching reading?

Question 19

Teaching children how to comprehend a text should include explicit instruction using various strategies. Define strategies and then name the four main types of strategies we can use to improve students’ comprehension? Then provide two examples in one of these categories.

Question 20

What is the writing process? Name the five steps as outlined in Hougan and Smartt. Select two of the components of the writing process and describe them in detail including instructional activities that you may use to teach students these steps.

Question 21

Define language and literacy (as we have defined it in our class). Describe how language development is directly linked to literacy.

Question 22

What are standards? What are the benefits of having educational standards?

Question 23

What is the science of reading? What is balanced literacy? Which approach should guide our instruction? Why?

Question 24

Define language and literacy (as we have defined it in class). Describe how language development is directly linked to literacy.

Question 25

We have discussed how five major theoretical approaches (behaviorism, cognitivism, socio-culturalism, socio-cognitivism, and the simple view of reading) have influenced instructional practices in language and literacy. Select two of these theoretical approaches and describe their framework, similarities and differences, and examples of practices that demonstrate these theories in action.

Question 26

What is the science of reading? What is balanced literacy? Which approach should guide our instruction? Why?

Question 27

What are the benefits of a dialogic & interactive read-aloud? What are some before, during, and after reading instructional activities, and what should you consider when selecting a book for a read-aloud?

Question 28

What does it mean when we refer to a child developing the “concept of print”? How is that different from demonstrating the “concept of word”. Share examples of each.

Question 29

What is emergent literacy? What are some ways teachers and parents can foster emergent literacy in their students/children? Why is it important to have this environment in the home as well instead of just at school?

Question 30

Why is it important to foster infant, toddler, and preschool language development? What are some milestones that parents can watch for that indicate healthy language development (preschoolers)? What activities can parents do to promote strong language development? Hint…look at the Early Learning Guidelines

Question 31

A Kindergarten student starts school in the Fall having had very minimal literacy experiences compared to his classmates. What are some of the early signs that the child is not making proper and typical progress? How can his teacher intervene in order to make sure he does not get further “behind”? (pg.401)

Question 32

Is it better to teach all major consonant correspondences before introducing vowels? Why or why not? Describe an appropriate sequence for phonics instruction. What are CVC words?

Question 33

Describe the differences between phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics. Why is phonemic awareness instruction an important part of learning to read? Describe two instructional activities that teach students these skills.

Question 34

Thinking about your evaluation of speech and oral language assignment and observation, discuss at least three things you watched for that helped you to make evaluations about the children’s language development. How were these related to the developmental indicators? How do you know if the children are “on track”?

Question 35

What do we mean when we say explicit and systematic instruction? Describe the components in an explicit lesson plan.

Question 36

What are standards? What are the benefits of having educational standards?

Question 37

Name & describe the components of oral language. What are some strategies we could use to promote oral language development?

Question 38

Describe the phonological awareness continuum. What is the most difficult skill that falls within phonological awareness?

Question 39

What phonics skills should be taught? How should we teach these skills? Include a discussion of scope & sequence.

Question 40

What are the 6 syllable types and how do students benefit from knowing them? Give one example of each syllable type.