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Section 5: RICA Written Examination Subtest 1
Sample Multiple-Choice Questions

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Domain 2—Word Analysis

Competency 3—Understand the role of phonological and phonemic awareness in reading development and how to develop students' phonological and phonemic awareness skills.

1. A kindergarten teacher plays the following game with students. The teacher says, "Guess whose name I'm going to say now?" The teacher then says the initial sound of a student's name (e.g., /m/ for Mariko), and the children try to guess the name. This activity is likely to promote the reading development of students primarily by helping them:

  1. blend separate sounds in words.
  2. recognize that a spoken word is made up of sounds.
  3. understand the principles of phonics.
  4. learn how to spell their own names.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option B is correct.
Competency 3—Understand the role of phonological and phonemic awareness in reading development and how to develop students' phonological and phonemic awareness skills.

2. Which of the following informal assessments would be most appropriate to use to assess an individual student's phonemic awareness?

  1. asking the student to identify the sound at the beginning, middle, or end of a spoken word (e.g., "What sound do you hear at the end of step?")
  2. having the student listen to a tape-recorded story while looking at the book and then answer several simple questions about the story
  3. asking the student to identify the letters in the alphabet that correspond to the initial consonant sounds of several familiar spoken words
  4. having the student listen to the teacher read aloud a set of words with the same beginning sound (e.g., train, trap, trouble) and then repeat the words
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option A is correct.
Competency 3—Understand the role of phonological and phonemic awareness in reading development and how to develop students' phonological and phonemic awareness skills.

3. A kindergarten teacher is preparing a student for a phonemic awareness assessment.

Teacher: What is this a picture of? [The teacher displays a picture of a boat.]

Student: A boat?

Teacher: A boat, that's right. Now, let's say the word boat together very slowly: /b/.../ō/.../t/. [The student pronounces the word with the teacher.]

Teacher: How many sounds do you hear? /b/.../ō/.../t/ . . . [The teacher slowly repeats the word.]

Student: Three?

Teacher: That's right, three. Now, I'd like you to do this for some more words.

This assessment would be an appropriate way to test the student's ability to perform which of the following phonemic awareness tasks?

  1. counting and blending the phonemes in a word
  2. identifying onsets and rimes
  3. recognizing how many phonemes are contained in a word
  4. relating phonemes to letters
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option C is correct.
Competency 3—Understand the role of phonological and phonemic awareness in reading development and how to develop students' phonological and phonemic awareness skills.

4. The use of rhyming texts for kindergarten read-alouds is likely to promote the reading development of kindergarten students primarily by:

  1. fostering their phonological awareness.
  2. increasing their vocabulary knowledge.
  3. enhancing their understanding of story elements.
  4. improving their letter recognition skills.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option A is correct.
Competency 4—Understand the role of concepts about print, letter recognition, and the alphabetic principle in reading development and how to develop students' knowledge and skills in these areas.

5. Which of the following strategies would best help a kindergarten student who is having difficulty visually distinguishing between the letters b and d?

  1. helping the student focus on the directionality of each letter as the student traces it
  2. having the student look for the letters within the text of a favorite picture book
  3. repeating the name of each letter several times as the student points to the letter
  4. encouraging the student to observe closely as the teacher writes the letters
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option A is correct.
Competency 4—Understand the role of concepts about print, letter recognition, and the alphabetic principle in reading development and how to develop students' knowledge and skills in these areas.

6. A first grader can identify the letters of the alphabet and decode a number of simple words. He becomes confused, however, when tracking print in consecutive lines of print. Which of the following strategies is likely to be most effective in helping the student read a short paragraph of simple text?

  1. Help him sound out unfamiliar words included in the text before he attempts to read the entire paragraph.
  2. Have him use his finger or a marker as he reads the text.
  3. Help him increase his reading rate to improve his understanding of the continuity between words and sentences in the paragraph.
  4. Modify the paragraph by using a yellow highlighter to identify natural groupings of words and phrases within the paragraph.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option B is correct.
Competency 4—Understand the role of concepts about print, letter recognition, and the alphabetic principle in reading development and how to develop students' knowledge and skills in these areas.

7. Which of the following instructional practices would be most effective in promoting kindergarten students' understanding of the alphabetic principle?

  1. routinely saying the sounds in words when writing the words on the board
  2. creating a writing center in the classroom, stocked with paper and writing implements
  3. labeling key objects in the classroom such as the clock and tables
  4. stopping frequently during read-alouds to carefully pronounce and define important words
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option A is correct.
Competency 4—Understand the role of concepts about print, letter recognition, and the alphabetic principle in reading development and how to develop students' knowledge and skills in these areas.

8. An emergent reader frequently reverses some letters and numbers during writing tasks. Which of the following strategies would be most effective in helping this student develop more accurate letter formation skills?

  1. providing the student with supplemental practice writing lists of words that are spelled with the target letters
  2. having the student practice tracing the target letter shapes with a finger while saying aloud the sequence of steps to form each letter
  3. providing the student with a supplemental handwriting workbook that describes the formation of the target letters in a series of steps
  4. encouraging the student to vocalize words when writing, especially when the words contain the target letters
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option B is correct.
Competency 5—Understand important terminology and concepts involved in phonics instruction and recognize the role of phonics and sight words in reading development.

9. In the word chimpanzee, which of the following pairs of letters is a consonant digraph?

  1. ch
  2. mp
  3. an
  4. ee
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option A is correct.
Competency 5—Understand important terminology and concepts involved in phonics instruction and recognize the role of phonics and sight words in reading development.

10. A kindergarten student has demonstrated the ability to write words phonetically, but she is reluctant to write because she is worried about misspelling words. The teacher could best promote the student's reading and writing development by:

  1. reassuring her that it is okay for now to express herself in writing by spelling words as they sound.
  2. giving her a spelling list of high-frequency sight words to copy and learn each day.
  3. helping her make a list of words that she already knows how to spell correctly.
  4. suggesting that she spend time copying some of the words found in her favorite stories.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option A is correct.
Competency 5—Understand important terminology and concepts involved in phonics instruction and recognize the role of phonics and sight words in reading development.

11. During which of the following stages of spelling development do students typically begin to show an understanding of the correspondence between letters and sounds?

  1. precommunicative
  2. semiphonetic
  3. phonetic
  4. transitional
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option B is correct.
Competency 5—Understand important terminology and concepts involved in phonics instruction and recognize the role of phonics and sight words in reading development.

12. Function words such as to, the, and of are most appropriately taught in the context of which of the following areas of reading instruction?

  1. phonics skills practice
  2. structural analysis skills
  3. academic-language development
  4. sight-word vocabulary
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option D is correct.
Competency 6—Understand how to develop students' phonics knowledge and skills and recognition of sight words to promote accurate word analysis that leads to automaticity in word recognition and contributes to spelling development.

13. A first-grade teacher provides students with explicit, systematic phonics instruction to promote their reading development. When designing activities to teach letter-sound correspondences, the teacher should:

  1. provide reading opportunities for students to practice sounds in context after studying the sounds in isolation.
  2. make certain that students have mastered vowel sounds before focusing on consonants.
  3. ensure that students master the spelling of practice words using the target sound before teaching a new sound.
  4. include instruction in related consonant blends when introducing individual consonants.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option A is correct.
Competency 6—Understand how to develop students' phonics knowledge and skills and recognition of sight words to promote accurate word analysis that leads to automaticity in word recognition and contributes to spelling development.

14. Early in the school year, a first-grade teacher wants to conduct an assessment of students' ability to read grade-appropriate words, including phonetically regular words and high-frequency irregular sight words. Which of the following informal assessments would be most appropriate and effective for this purpose?

  1. The teacher pairs each student with a partner for shared oral reading of simple texts and makes anecdotal notes on their performance.
  2. The teacher meets individually with students and asks each student to write a list of words the student knows how to read.
  3. The teacher allows each student to select a grade-appropriate text from the classroom library and asks each student to try reading the text aloud.
  4. The teacher prepares a list of grade-appropriate words, asks each student to try reading the words aloud, and records the results.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option D is correct.
Competency 6—Understand how to develop students' phonics knowledge and skills and recognition of sight words to promote accurate word analysis that leads to automaticity in word recognition and contributes to spelling development.

15. Several first graders have mastered sounding out and blending words that follow simple short-vowel phonics patterns. Their teacher would like to help them begin to develop whole-word reading (i.e., automatic word recognition) of words that follow these patterns. Which of the following instructional approaches would be most effective for this purpose?

  1. using teacher read-alouds followed by echo reading and then choral rereading of the students' favorite texts that include some simple words
  2. scheduling frequent silent independent reading practice of word lists based on the students' oral language vocabulary
  3. providing modeling and guided student practice sounding out simple, regular words subvocally and then reading them aloud normally
  4. exposing students to common environmental print to provide frequent exposures to everyday words and phrases
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option C is correct.
Competency 6—Understand how to develop students' phonics knowledge and skills and recognition of sight words to promote accurate word analysis that leads to automaticity in word recognition and contributes to spelling development.

16. When reading aloud texts, a second-grade English Learner often makes errors in pronunciation that are unrelated to her ability to accurately decode the words. The teacher's best response would be to:

  1. write down words the student mispronounces and include them on a list for her to practice reading aloud.
  2. analyze the student's pronunciation patterns and plan an intervention to address difficulties that may affect her reading comprehension.
  3. encourage other students in the class to help the student work on improving her accuracy in pronunciation.
  4. help the student avoid having pronunciation errors count as reading miscues by stopping her and having her correct her own errors.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option B is correct.
Competency 6—Understand how to develop students' phonics knowledge and skills and recognition of sight words to promote accurate word analysis that leads to automaticity in word recognition and contributes to spelling development.

17. Which of the following approaches would be most effective in helping first-grade students who have the prerequisite decoding skills learn to decode words that end in the inflectional morpheme -ing?

  1. explicitly teaching the students to read the unit -ing in isolation before teaching them to decode familiar words that end in the inflection
  2. using think-aloud during a guided reading to model how to use contextual analysis as a strategy for recognizing words ending in -ing
  3. having students practice reading word lists that include words ending in both the more familiar rime -ing as well as the inflection -ing
  4. teaching the inflectional ending -ing in the context of an instructional unit on identifying open and closed syllables in multisyllabic words
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option A is correct.
Competency 7—Understand the role of syllabic and structural analysis and orthographic knowledge in reading development and how to develop students' knowledge and skills in these areas to promote accurate word analysis that leads to automaticity in word recognition and contributes to spelling development.

18. An eighth-grade teacher wants to help students improve their spelling of scientific vocabulary, including the terms listed below.

barometer
centimeter
dehydrate
hydrogen
microscope
telescope
thermal
thermometer

Which of the following instructional strategies is likely to be most effective for this purpose?

  1. showing students how to divide scientific terms into syllables to facilitate accurate spelling
  2. conducting practice drills to help students memorize the irregular spelling patterns of the words
  3. familiarizing students with the spelling and meaning of Greek morphemes in scientific terms
  4. helping students determine correct spellings by dividing the words into onsets and rimes
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option C is correct.
Competency 7—Understand the role of syllabic and structural analysis and orthographic knowledge in reading development and how to develop students' knowledge and skills in these areas to promote accurate word analysis that leads to automaticity in word recognition and contributes to spelling development.

19. A sixth-grade teacher observes that several students have misspelled the word pasteurize. After writing pasteurize and Louis Pasteur on the board, the teacher explains how Pasteur invented the process of pasteurization. Students then discuss how the word Pasteur relates to the word pasteurize. This instructional activity fosters students' reading and writing development primarily by:

  1. helping them learn to use etymology to improve spelling and decoding of multisyllabic words.
  2. helping them improve their ability to distinguish between similarly spelled words.
  3. motivating them to use orthographic patterns to expand their vocabulary knowledge.
  4. motivating them to improve their spelling and decoding through the use of systematic study skills.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option A is correct.
Competency 7—Understand the role of syllabic and structural analysis and orthographic knowledge in reading development and how to develop students' knowledge and skills in these areas to promote accurate word analysis that leads to automaticity in word recognition and contributes to spelling development.

20. A third-grade student who is an advanced learner has already demonstrated mastery of the derivational suffixes -ness and -ment, which will be the focus of an upcoming whole-class decoding and spelling lesson. Which of the following strategies for differentiating instruction for this lesson would be most appropriate for this student?

  1. having the student work on inflectional suffixes
  2. teaching the student the content planned for the following lesson
  3. encouraging the student to engage in independent silent reading
  4. introducing the student to higher-level derivational suffixes
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option D is correct.
Competency 7—Understand the role of syllabic and structural analysis and orthographic knowledge in reading development and how to develop students' knowledge and skills in these areas to promote accurate word analysis that leads to automaticity in word recognition and contributes to spelling development.

21. Which of the following word pairs are homophones?

  1. answer and reply
  2. playful and replay
  3. table and stable
  4. sight and site
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option D is correct.

Domain 3—Fluency

Competency 8—Understand the role of fluency in reading development and factors that affect students' development of fluency.

22. A second-grade teacher would like to include independent silent reading as one of several approaches used to promote students' fluency development. When planning differentiated fluency instruction for individual students in the class, the teacher should keep in mind that using independent silent reading to promote fluency:

  1. is most critical for students whose sight-word knowledge is below grade level.
  2. should be limited to narrative texts in the early elementary grades
  3. is most effective when students select texts at or above their instructional reading level.
  4. should be limited to students who have already acquired automaticity.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option D is correct.
Competency 8—Understand the role of fluency in reading development and factors that affect students' development of fluency.

23. A fourth-grade student who reads grade-level narrative texts with fluency and excellent comprehension is struggling to read aloud a grade-level content-area passage about a topic with which the student is familiar. The student reads the passage hesitantly, frequently stopping to reread clauses or entire sentences. Afterward, the student demonstrates limited comprehension of what was read. Which of the following factors is most likely disrupting the student's fluent reading of this text?

  1. insufficient background knowledge to support basic comprehension of the text
  2. lack of experience with the academic-language structures used in the text
  3. insufficient monitoring of comprehension while reading the text
  4. lack of grade-level word analysis skills for accurate decoding of the words in the text
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option B is correct.
Competency 9—Understand how to promote students' fluency development.

24. Which of the following instructional activities would best help upper-elementary English Learners develop intonations and rhythms of the English language to support fluent reading?

  1. leading a class discussion on an age-appropriate topic, then having each student read aloud a section of a text that is written about the same topic
  2. having the students record their own oral reading of a passage and then listen to the recording while silently rereading the passage
  3. giving an expressive oral reading of a short text, then having the students echo read the text as the teacher reads it aloud again
  4. encouraging the students to practice reading aloud a text in which stressed words and punctuation marks are highlighted
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option C is correct.
Competency 9—Understand how to promote students' fluency development.

25. A second-grade teacher would like to plan an activity to improve the reading rate of two students who read at about the same rate and level and are both automatic readers. Which of the following activities would best address the students' needs?

  1. a cooperative silent reading activity, in which the students read the same passage together silently, stopping periodically to share their understanding of the text
  2. a repeated reading activity, in which each student takes several turns reading aloud a decodable passage to the other student while the other student follows along silently
  3. a paired reading activity, in which the students sit side by side and read a shared text aloud in unison, gradually increasing their pace as they proceed through the text
  4. a timed partner-reading activity, in which the students take turns silently reading a shared text for one minute while the other student keeps time and says when to stop
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option A is correct.
Competency 9—Understand how to promote students' fluency development.

26. A second grader has demonstrated the ability to decode individual words accurately, but she reads very slowly and laboriously. When the teacher tries to engage the student in oral reading activities, she says she feels "embarrassed" and would rather read silently. Which of the following modifications to instruction would be most appropriate and effective for helping this student improve her reading fluency?

  1. encouraging her to serve as an "audience" for other students' oral reading until she demonstrates willingness to read aloud herself
  2. having her reread a text several times using whisper reading to build her fluency and confidence with respect to the text
  3. teaching her how to use self-monitoring as she reads to improve her literal comprehension and ability to read with prosody
  4. providing her with explicit phonics instruction to improve her word identification skills before requiring her to read aloud
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option B is correct.

Multiple-Domain Passage

Use the information below to answer the two questions that follow.

In an oral fluency assessment at the beginning of the school year, a third-grade student reads aloud an unfamiliar passage selected by the teacher while the teacher records the student's reading performance on a separate copy of the text, noting the student's reading time and then calculating the student's oral reading fluency score. The teacher's annotated copy of the passage appears below.

annotated passage

Key: A circle around a word represents omission. A single vertical line represents a short pause. A left-point arrow represents repetition. A small C inside a circle represents self-correction. An upward facing triangular point represents an insertion. A double vertical line represents a long pause. One word written above another represents substitution. First sentence. Tanya climbed out of bed and looked out the window. W I N, short pause symbol and self-correction symbol are written above window. Next sentence. Her uncle’s moving van was parked close to the back door. M O with a macron above the O, short pause symbol and self-correction symbol are written above moving. Next sentence. Tanya could hear the clatter of dishes in the kitchen. K I T, short pause symbol, C H E N, and self-correction symbol are written above kitchen. Next sentence. She went to see what was happening. H A P, short pause symbol, H A P P E N, and self-correction symbol are written above happening. Next sentence. Her mother was busy packing pots and pans into boxes. Next sentence. Pages of newspaper were scattered all over the floor. N E W S, short pause symbol, P A P E R, long pause symbol, and self-correction symbol are written above newspaper. S C A T, short pause symbol, T E R, and short pause symbol are written above scattered. The word all is circled. Next sentence. “Good morning, Sunshine!” Tanya’s mother called out. S U N, short pause symbol, H I with a macron above the I, long pause symbol, and self-correction symbol are written above Sunshine. Next sentence. “Are you ready for breakfast? I made pancakes.” B R E A K, short pause symbol, F A S T, short pause symbol, and self-correction symbol are written above breakfast. P A N, short pause symbol, C A K E S, and self-correction symbol are written above pancakes. Next sentence. “I’m not very hungry, Mom,” answered Tanya gloomily. H U N, short pause symbol, and self-correction symbol are written above hungry. G L O O M, short pause symbol, L Y, long pause symbol, and self-correction symbol are written above gloomily. Next sentence. “I’ll be in my room packing.” Next sentence. This was the last weekend Tanya would spend in the home where she had grown up. W E E K, short pause symbol, E N D, and self-correction symbol are written above weekend. Next sentence. She had never lived anywhere else. A N Y, short pause symbol, W H E R E, and self-correction symbol are written above anywhere. Next sentence. Tanya loved this old place—her bright bedroom, the long hallway with her childhood drawings still taped to the walls, her street, her school, her town. B E D, short pause symbol, R O O M, and self-correction symbol are written above bedroom. H A L L, short pause symbol, W A Y, and self-correction symbol are written above hallway. C H I L D, short pause symbol, H O O D, long pause symbol, and self-correction symbol are written above childhood. D R A W and self-correction symbol are written above drawings. Next sentence. Most of her friends were only a bike ride away. The word only is circled. Next sentence. She couldn’t imagine leaving all this behind. I M A G I N with a breve over the first i, a macron over the a, and a macron over the second i is written above imagine. B E, short pause symbol, H I N D with a breve over the i, long pause symbol, and self-correction symbol are written over behind. Time: 155 seconds. Oral Reading Fluency (ORF): 57 words correct per minute, 98 percent accuracy. Notes: Fall 50th percentile benchmark is 71 wcpm (words correct per minute).

Competency 9—Understand how to promote students' fluency development.

27. Based on the student's reading performance on this assessment, instruction to increase the student's reading fluency should focus primarily on:

  1. enhancing the student's contextual analysis skills.
  2. promoting the student's automatic word recognition.
  3. improving the student's academic-language skills.
  4. expanding the student's oral vocabulary knowledge.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option B is correct.
Competency 7—Understand the role of syllabic and structural analysis and orthographic knowledge in reading development and how to develop students' knowledge and skills in these areas to promote accurate word analysis that leads to automaticity in word recognition and contributes to spelling development.

28. When reading the last sentence of the passage, the student pronounces the word imagine as im may gin, with the syllable may emphasized. Evidence from this assessment best supports which of the following interpretations of this word-reading error?

  1. The student recognizes the base word but is unaware of phonological shifts that apply to the derived form.
  2. The student is unfamiliar with syllabication rules governing medial consonants.
  3. The student does not apply the appropriate phonics generalizations to the last two syllables of the word.
  4. The student applies syllabication and phonics rules correctly but does not recognize the word.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Option D is correct.
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