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STR Exam Questions and Answers
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Asset-Based Approach ✔✔-An asset-based (or strengths-based) approach to education builds
learning around a student's strengths and existing knowledge, rather than focusing on what they lack.
- the asset-based approach views diversity in thought, culture, and traits as positive assets that should be valued.
- based on the idea that teaching to a student's strengths helps them to feel valued, build their confidence, and reach their full potential. The approach seeks to celebrate differences and eliminate biases that hold back certain student demographics, especially those with disabilities, students of color, and English language learners (ELLs).
deficit-based approach: ✔✔focuses on students' shortcomings.
instructional strategies that work well in an asset-based teaching approach: ✔✔-continually adjusting flexible groupings according to each child's current assessed knowledge and skills
- providing students with freedom of choice and autonomy in their learning
- drawing on prior knowledge that students bring into the classroom
Dyslexia ✔✔-learning disorder that affects a student's ability to read, spell, write, and speak.
- Students identified as having dyslexia typically experience some or all of the following characteristics:
difficulty with phonological awareness (including phonemic awareness)
difficulty reading words in isolation
difficulty decoding unfamiliar words
slow, inaccurate, or labored (without prosody) oral reading
difficulty spelling
limited reading fluency
- As a result, these students often experience difficulties in reading comprehension and/or written expression and limited vocabulary growth due to limited reading experiences.
Early Indicators for dyslexia: ✔✔1. Preschool:
- Delayed speech
- Difficulty with rhyming
- Difficulty pronouncing words
- Poor auditory memory of nursery rhymes and chants
- Difficulty adding new words to vocabulary
- Poor word retrieval skills (or inability to recall the right word)
- Trouble learning and naming letters and numbers
- Dislike of print (e.g. doesn't enjoy following along as a book is read aloud)
- Kinder-1st:
- Difficulty breaking words into smaller parts or syllables
- Difficulty identifying and manipulating sounds
- Difficulty remembering the names of letters and their sounds
- Difficulty decoding single words (reading words in isolation)
-Reading fluency
Accommodation for Dyslexia Students: ✔✔To accommodate students with dyslexia, teachers can
provide students with:
- an opportunity to pre-read texts in small groups before reading aloud
- additional time for class assignments and tests or reduced/shortened assignments (without eliminating concepts)
- an alternative testing location or priority seating with reduced distractions
- oral reading of directions or written materials
- word banks
- audiobooks
- text to speech and/or speech to text
- electronic spellers and/or electronic dictionaries
- adaptive learning tools
The most common co-occurring disorders with dyslexia: ✔✔attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD) and specific developmental language disorders, like dysgraphia.
dysgraphia: ✔✔Difficulty with handwriting, or dysgraphia, is a different language-based disorder
that frequently occurs in children with dyslexia. Those with dysgraphia struggle with the mechanics of writing resulting in impaired or illegible handwriting that interferes with spelling, written expression, or both that is unexpected for the student's age/grade.
Messy handwriting (due to issues such as poor formation of letters, improper size, spacing between letters or words, or slant of words) is the main sign of dysgraphia. Additionally, some of the following characteristics can indicate dysgraphia: -slow or labored written work -poor pencil grip -inadequate pressure during handwriting (too hard or too soft) -excessive erasures -inability to recall accurate orthographic patterns for words -"b" and "d" reversals beyond developmentally appropriate time -inability to copy words accurately -inability of student to read what was previously written -overuse of short familiar words such as "big" -avoidance of written tasks -difficulty with visual-motor integrated sports or activities
Difficulties for students with dysgraphia: ✔✔Difficulty writing can make it harder for students to
learn spelling, thus making children with dysgraphia poor spellers. It also causes students to write slowly, which can affect their ability to express themselves in writing.
Helping Students with Dysgraphia ✔✔providing children with printed copies of the notes, giving
students graph paper to assist with their writing, or allowing students to use an audio recorder in class. Teachers could also offer students assistive technology, ranging from simple pencil grips to
Individual aspects of student learning will determine the best plan for differentiation: ✔✔-Skill-
related background knowledge - What lower-level gaps could be preventing the student from mastering the current skill? -Pacing - Does the student require additional instructional time to master a skill? -Complexity - Can the skill or content be broken down into more simple components? Can it be extended into more complex concepts? -Scaffolding - How does this content relate to the skills and content that have come before and will come after?
differentiation of reading instruction: ✔✔-Different texts depending on skill level and/or student interest For example, young students with little prior literary exposure will be best served by the use of big books, where teachers can guide their attention to various print concepts and elements of text structure. These students will also be best served with books that contain rhyme to improve their phonological awareness. -Variation in length and difficulty of independent practice For example, students who are experiencing difficulty with basic reading skills or have little prior literary exposure should be taught to find meaning in the illustrations in books when practicing independently. These students would specifically need lower-level books, with repetitive and predictable text as well as illustrations to explore during independent practice. -Flexible grouping
For example, flexible grouping provides the opportunity to give lower-level students a collaborative learning environment with others reading at their same level as well as opportunities to create mixed-level groupings when appropriate. -When forming groups for intervention, consider assessment data and group students by similar needs.
Texas PreKindergarten Guidelines - Reading: ✔✔-The Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines offer
detailed descriptions of expected behaviors that should be observed in children aged 4-5 from the beginning to the end of their prekindergarten experience. -The Emergent Literacy: Reading Domain guidelines detail children's developmental stages of reading. According to the guidelines, literary experiences during prekindergarten "...help form the basis for learning to read, particularly when teachers emphasize the key predictors of early literacy: oral language, alphabetic code (letter knowledge, phonological awareness), and print knowledge and concepts."
Motivation to Read Skills - Pre-K: ✔✔During this stage, it's important that classroom activities
and environments create an association between reading and feelings of pleasure. Children should engage in pre-reading and reading-related activities, such as selecting books, turning pages, repeating parts of predictable stories, acting out stories, etc. At this age, a child should recognize that print has meaning. Teachers can assist students with this development by reading books with simple storylines or repetitive parts, modeling using information obtained from reading, and encouraging children to ask questions.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills - Reading: ✔✔-The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills
(TEKS) are the state standards for Texas. They detail what students are expected to learn in each grade and each subject. -Texas also uses the TELPAS Reading Exam to identify the reading level of ELL students.
Kindergarten Reading TEKS: ✔✔Identifies and produces rhyming words
Identifies upper-case and lower-case letters Identifies and matches the common sounds that letters represent Recognizes that new words are created when letters are changed, added, or deleted Identifies, spells, and reads at least 25 high-frequency words Understands print directionality Demonstrates basic comprehension skills of texts read aloud (e.g. Identifies main characters, makes predictions and inferences, synthesizes information, evaluates details, etc.)
1st Grade Reading TEKS ✔✔Sounds out new words
Identifies, spells, and reads at least 100 high-frequency words Demonstrates basic comprehension skills (e.g. makes connections, establishes purpose for reading, etc.) Recognizes organizational pattern/structure of texts (e.g. chronological order)
2nd Grade Reading TEKS: ✔✔Decodes words with silent letters, short and long vowels,
multisyllabic words, compound words, etc. Fixes mistakes while reading
Uses context to determine the meaning of a word Reads grade-level text independently with fluency and comprehension Identifies plot, main idea, and characters Synthesizes information to create new understanding Recognizes characteristics and structures of informational and persuasive texts, narratives, and simple poetry Understands the use of descriptive, literal, and figurative language
3rd Grade Reading TEKS ✔✔Understands roots, suffixes, and prefixes
Decodes multiple-syllabic words with multiple sound-spelling patterns Predicts what will happen next Uses context within and beyond a sentence to determine the meaning of a word Analyzes basic plot elements, infers more advanced themes, compares and contrasts stories, explains relationships among characters, and understands the influence of setting on plot Recognizes characteristics of argumentative texts Understands literary techniques including similes, onomatopoeia, and hyperboles
4th Grade Reading TEKS: ✔✔Decodes words with specific rules
Understands homophones Follows written directions Uses references and prior knowledge to learn new words Paraphrases Analyzes more advanced plot elements (e.g. rising and falling action)
Intrinsically motivated: ✔✔students draw their motivation from the learning process. They find
joy in the activity itself and learn for the sake of learning. This is the most desired motivation for students because these students continue the learning process outside the classroom and without any incentive given by the teacher.
Extrinsically Motivated: ✔✔Students who do not have intrinsic or internal motivation need to be
externally motivated. Extrinsic motivation (or External motivation) means that the motive for the activity comes from outside the individual. Finding the best external motivation for different students can be difficult. External rewards can decrease intrinsic motivation. Factors that negatively affect students' motivation: -They feel they cannot grasp or understand the material. -They are not sure what they are supposed to be doing/accomplishing in school or with an instructional unit. -They feel their education or what they are learning will not benefit them in the future. -They view the work as mundane or boring. -They do not have support or feel they do not have support within their family and/or the school. -They feel the work is beneath them. -They are not given an opportunity to demonstrate their content knowledge.
Autonomy ✔✔is the ability to govern oneself. A successful classroom will provide students with
a sense of autonomy; while they may not be able to decide what they do every minute of every day, some self-governing should be present in lessons and units. This becomes more important during middle and high school.
Relatedness ✔✔Students who have a sense of relatedness feel valued in their environment. When
they enjoy their environment and feel as though they belong and are wanted, they are intrinsically motivated to perform well. Creating connections with your students as well as a safe, welcoming environment will help improve relatedness and student motivation.
Competence: ✔✔refers to how a student perceives his own understanding and mastery of a topic.
Students who have a higher perceived competence will want to demonstrate this mastery. They may volunteer answers more frequently or participate in discussions. Students with a lower competence or who feel the topic is beyond their mastery may shut down or refuse to participate because they feel they cannot master the content. Allowing students to display mastery in a variety of ways and praising students for demonstrating knowledge anyway they can will encourage student participation and motivation.
Reading fluency ✔✔measured by accuracy, prosody, and speed.
Response To Intervention(RTI) ✔✔a research-based instructional intervention process used in
general education classrooms to monitor and measure student progress. The goal of RtI is to preemptively identify struggling students and give them the support that they need. It is a systematic process for students who are experiencing learning and behavior difficulties and may not meet the grade-level achievement standards.
Mentor Text: ✔✔Books or other pieces of literature that are revisited throughout the school year
for different purposes in literacy instruction
Orthography: ✔✔Spelling patterns of language
Genres ✔✔Various forms of texts including short stories, essays, folktales, fairy tales, poetry,
historical fiction, biographies and autobiographies, memoirs, comedies and tragedies.
Syntax: ✔✔Rules that govern the construction of words in order to make phrases, clauses, and
sentences.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) ✔✔A label applied to individuals who have
great difficulty concentrating on what they are doing AND are extremely active, impulsive, distractible, and excitable
Alphabetic Principle ✔✔The understanding that there is a logical/systematic relationship between the sounds of spoken English and the letters and letter-patterns of written English.
Accuracy (when reading) ✔✔the reader's ability to correctly pronounce words
Guided Reading: ✔✔Reading done by students with teacher support. This reading will be done
within the framework of a lesson and often in a small group setting with the teacher.
Prosody ✔✔the reader's ability to convey expression, including using correct emphasis,
punctuation, and tone, while reading aloud
Literature Circles ✔✔A strategy in which a teacher organizes students into small groups to discuss a common text.
Morphology ✔✔The study of forms of words, including affixes, roots, stems, and parts of speech.
Validity ✔✔Assessments should measures what they intend to measure. Students should be
assessed over what they have been taught. They should also be assessed at the same level in which they were taught.
Congruence ✔✔Assessment congruence is associated with validity. Instruction is congruent when
teachers assure that learning objectives outlined at the beginning of an instructional unit align with how students will be assessed.
Reliability ✔✔Assessments should produce consistent results that can be replicated. When given
a reliable test, students should produce the same score when given the same test in similar conditions.
Reading Assessment ✔✔Reading assessment should be curriculum-based and will likely cover
such reading skills as: -word analysis -fluency -comprehension -vocabulary -background knowledge or schema -academic language The teacher should frequently assess student progress on these skills without overusing formal assessments. Informal assessments can provide useful information without unnecessary interruptions of instruction, allowing the teacher to gain more frequent insight into student learning. Both formal and informal assessments should take into consideration the ways a student's schema can impact their performance on a reading assessment.
Informal assessments ✔✔more flexible than formal assessments and can be adjusted to fit the
situation and the particular needs of the student being tested. These might involve such methods as simply observing student interest and facial expression during a lesson or group activity or listening to a student read aloud. Informal assessments may be graded or ungraded, but the information gleaned can be used to guide teacher instruction. Common ways a teacher will informally assess students in a reading classroom include: -class or small group discussions -oral retellings -listening to students who have volunteered to read aloud or share a response
formal assessments ✔✔usually involve the use of a standardized rubric or scoring guide based on
several criteria rather than on a single numerical score. These require more planning and will typically occur at predetermined points within a school year. Common formal assessments in a reading class include: -reading-error analyses -phonics surveys -spelling surveys -oral reading fluency measures
Entry-level assessment (pre-assessment) ✔✔his type of assessment occurs at the beginning of
instruction. It is used to determine students' current skill levels and allows the teacher to plan instruction accordingly. Using a pre-assessment will help guide instruction and allow the teacher to differentiate instruction as necessary.
Diagnostic assessment ✔✔This assessment is used to "diagnose" a specific difficulty a student is having. For example, if a student is struggling to read a grade-level passage, the teacher could perform a diagnostic assessment to determine what is causing the student's difficulty.
Ongoing curriculum-based assessment ✔✔This type of assessment is used to track student
progress throughout instruction. It can be used to identify a lack of progress that would lead to a change in the instruction plan or demonstrate that the current plan is working. This might include administering a pre-test, informal assessments throughout, and a post-test once a unit is completed.
