OAE Reading Flashcards
As students begin to read, the ability to blend phonemes orally contributes to their reading
development primarily because it prepares students to:
A. recognize high-frequency words in a text automatically.
B. combine letter-sounds to decode words.
C. guess the meaning of unfamiliar words from their context.
D. divide written words into onsets and rimes.
Correct Response: B. Phonemic blending is the ability to combine a sequence of speech
sounds (phonemes) together to form a word.
A teacher is selecting words to use to assess students’ ability to segment the individual
phonemes in spoken words. Which of the following words would require the highest level
of skill with regard to orally segmenting phonemes?
A. stamp
B. catch
C. fudge
D. chase
Correct Response: A. Option A is correct because the word stamp is more challenging to
segment than the words catch, fudge, and chase. The word stamp contains five phonemes,
including blends in both syllable-initial and syllable-final positions. In particular, the two phonemes
/m/ and /p/ in the final nasal blend -mp can be challenging for students to perceive and segment.
Which of the following tasks requires the most advanced level of skill along the
phonological awareness continuum?
A. orally segmenting the phonemes in the word chimp and then substituting /ŏ/ for /ĭ/ to
make a new word, chomp
B. orally segmenting the word wonderful into won/der/ful and then tapping the number of
syllables in the word
C. listening to the words place and pluck and then orally segmenting each word into its
onset and rime
D. listening to the words fiddle and fresh and then determining that both words begin with
the same phoneme, /f/
Correct Response: A. Phonological and phonemic awareness skills develop along a continuum
from basic to more complex skills. Phonemic awareness is a more advanced type of phonological
awareness that involves the ability to distinguish and manipulate the individual phonemes in
spoken words. Segmenting all the phonemes in a four-phoneme word (chimp) and then
substituting the phoneme /ŏ/ for /ĭ/ to make a new word (chomp) are both tasks that involve
complex skills at the higher end of the phonological awareness continuum
A kindergarten teacher engages a small group of children in the following Say It and Move
It activity.
* The teacher says a two-phoneme word slowly (e.g., ape, bee, day, eat, go,
she, toe).
* The children slowly repeat the word.
* The children move a plain wooden block as they say each phoneme, lining up
the two blocks from left to right.
Once the children demonstrate mastery of this activity, which of the following strategies
would be most appropriate for the teacher to use next to build the children’s phonemic
awareness?
A. writing pairs of words on the board that differ by one phoneme (e.g., ape, cape) and
pointing out to the children that the second word contains more phonemes than the
first
B. exchanging the plain blocks for alphabet letter blocks and then helping the children do
the Say It and Move It activity with relevant letter blocks, using pairs of words that have
two and three phonemes (e.g., go, goat)
C. saying a pair of words that differ by one phoneme (e.g., bee, beach) and encouraging
the children to generate pairs of words that rhyme with the target words (e.g., tea,
teach)
D. displaying pictures for a pair of two- and three-phoneme words that differ by a single
phoneme (e.g., toe, toad) and having the children complete the Say It and Move It
activity for each word in the pair
Correct Response: D. Option D is correct because the strategy aligns with the evidence-based
practice of increasing the complexity of an instructional task incrementally.
Table:
1. Through number speech 2
2. Best number speech 3
3. Fresh number speech 5
4. Scratch number speech 6
In which line in the table is a word accurately matched to the number of phonemes the
word contains?
A. Line 1
B. Line 2
C. Line 3
D. Line 4
Correct Response: A. Option A is correct because the word though is made up of two speech
sounds: /th/ (spelled th) and /ō/ (spelled ough), so Line 1 of the chart is correct
A prekindergarten teacher asks a small group of children to listen to and repeat what the
teacher says. First, the teacher says the word mop and then pronounces it as /m/ and [ŏp].
Next, the teacher says the word take and then pronounces it as /t/ and [āk]. This activity is
likely to promote the children’s phonological awareness primarily by:
A. modeling how to separate the syllables in spoken words.
B. showing them how to segment words into onsets and rimes.
C. promoting their awareness of each phoneme in a spoken word.
D. teaching them how to distinguish between consonants and vowels.
Correct Response: B. In the activity described, the teacher provides direct instruction in
segmenting single-syllable words into onset and rime—that is, into the initial consonant sounds of
the word (the onset) and the rest of the word (the rime).
