Mindful Continuing Education

1. While the major emphasis for working with English learners used to be teaching beginning reading according to evidence-based practice, new innovative methods are now focusing on teaching both academic vocabulary and content material across the curriculum in regular classroom instruction.

2. Which of the following is NOT one of the four recommendations to emphasize language and literacy so that English learners will be successful in school?

3. In order to integrate oral and written English language instruction into content-area teaching, experts recommend explicitly teaching the content-specific academic vocabulary, as well as the general academic vocabulary that supports it, during content-area instruction.

4. When designing small-group instruction, teachers should target students' identified needs and provide additional instruction in small groups consisting of two to three students per group.

5. In order to receive a strong rating, evidence must demonstrate that strategies, programs, or practices improve student outcomes for a diverse population of students, and there is strong causal and __________ evidence.

6. While general academic vocabulary words are those used in writing across many academic disciplines, domain-specific academic vocabulary words are unique to a particular academic discipline.

7. Which of the following is NOT recommended when choosing an engaging piece of informational text for intensive academic vocabulary instruction?

8. The panel suggests choosing a small set of words, perhaps eight to twelve words from the selected text, for instruction over the course of several lessons, as choosing over twelve words is likely to be counterproductive.

9. When choosing words to teach, it is important to pick those that are central to understanding the text, frequently used in the text, appear in other content areas, have cross-language potential, and:

10. Words that can be altered by adding prefixes and/or suffixes are beneficial because they allow teachers and students to attend to how word parts change a root word's meaning or grammatical form.

11. Students' lack of familiarity with words is not always a sufficient reason for selecting words for in-depth instruction, but rather the goal is to choose unfamiliar words that are central to understanding the passage and/or meet the other criteria for selecting words.

12. Rather than memorizing definitions or learning about word meanings in an insignificant way, the goal of instruction is for students to understand how the word is typically used, which is known as:

13. To help students gain a deeper understanding of the target words, it is important to provide student-friendly definitions of the target academic words and apply these definitions to the context of the text.

14. Creating a word map is a way to reinforce the word's meaning using concrete representation, and it should include definition, synonyms, antonyms, and:

15. Students should be required to use target academic words in their writing activities, preferably by responding to a prompt that is at least one paragraph long, as research indicates that practice with shorter writing activities does not translate into academic words becoming a part of the students' writing vocabulary.

16. Which of the following is NOT one of the strategies that Ms. Hunter uses to teach academic words in depth?

17. Selecting content-rich informational texts to teach academic vocabulary words aligns with the Common Core State Standards that require the use of complex literary nonfiction, historical, scientific, and technical texts in both elementary and middle grades, and should be supported by administration.

18. With the adoption of Common Core State Standards, students are expected to read, comprehend, and articulate the meaning of increasingly complex informational texts, write opinion pieces justifying their arguments and conclusions by citing evidence from these texts, and:

19. To anchor instruction and help students make sense of content, the use of visuals such as pictures, experiments, demonstrations, and 3-D models as well as short video clips are recommended.

20. Video clips that are between 10-15 minutes long generally recommended to provide necessary background knowledge and raise issues and/or articulate themes to be pursued in the lesson.

21. . A Venn diagram is a graphic organizer that is used to illustrate the results (effects) of an event or chain of events (cause).

22. When students are initially learning how to use a graphic organizer, it is recommended that teachers complete parts of the graphic organizer in advance and have students finish these partially filled organizers based on the material they have read or viewed.

23. To ensure that new words become part of students' listening, speaking, reading, and writing vocabularies, new and previously learned words should be reviewed on a cumulative basis.

24. When determining which words should be taught to students explicitly and in depth each of the following should be considered EXCEPT:

25. Students often turn to dictionaries and glossaries that may be well beyond their reading level when they don't know the meaning of the word, which actually helps them increase their proficiency level by improving their comprehension skills.

26. As students are working on learning new content, they should be paired or grouped based on _____________ levels of language proficiency.

27. Opportunities for students to discuss content with their peers should:

28. Activities such as having students read and discuss short text passages, role-play a word or concept's meaning, or complete a Think-Pair-Share activity, are also very useful for both processing content and practicing language.

29. For discussion activities to be productive and successful, teachers must structure and actively monitor the student groups, and provide guidance to facilitate a focused and targeted discussion, while at the same time allowing students to facilitate the discussion whenever possible.

30. Since there is not sufficient time to teach all of the content in detail, instructional focus should be on teaching key concepts for understanding the lesson's content, and not on every piece of information contained in the lessons.

31. The Common Core State Standards ask that teachers move away from primarily assigning writing projects that rely largely on students':

32. In order to promote development of language skills, writing assignments should have specific objectives related to developing specific English language skills and/or learning target academic vocabulary.

33. Consistent use of _______________ that support students as they generate and organize their ideas in preparation for the writing task will help guide them through the entire writing process.

34. While native English speakers are generally able to work on their writing assignments using the conventions of academic language, English learners often struggle in this area.

35. Sentence starters such as, 'The character I most identify with is...', 'I really got into the story when...', and 'I can relate to this author because...' are used to form interpretations in analytical writing.

36. Depending on the instructional emphasis, student collaboration and dialogue can focus on many aspects of written language development, including each of the following EXCEPT:

37. Formative assessments can provide insight into the challenges that are common to many children, and regular use of such assessments may be an excellent way to understand how to best support organization and richness of writing.

38. As with effective early reading instruction, corrective feedback that is specific, ___________, and followed by further opportunities for practice is likely to foster students' writing development.

39. English learners often make errors in many different aspects of writing, and in order to truly help them, feedback needs to be provided on every aspect of a problematic writing sample, although the feedback doesn't have to be provided all at once.

40. Small-group instructional interventions for early intervention to support English learners may include instruction in phonemic awareness and decoding skills, listening and reading comprehension, as well as on sophisticated writing and speaking skills.

41. Standardized tests, district benchmark tests, or English language assessments should be used to screen and identify students in need of additional instructional support.

42. Each of the following is an accurate statement about the profiles of struggling English language (EL) learners EXCEPT:

43. While small, heterogeneous groups are useful when focusing on foundational skills such as phonemic awareness, decoding, fluent reading of connected text, when providing instruction in the areas of writing and oral language, or on listening or reading comprehension tasks, teachers should consider effective ways to group students homogeneously.

44. Planning instructional activities to address both literacy and language needs simultaneously helps make more productive use of instructional time.

45. Small-group instructional interventions need to emphasize vocabulary from the perspective of building vocabulary and to develop students' English language skills, although it is not necessary to teach words in depth when the focus is on understanding the text's content rather than on improving vocabulary.

46. Writing prompts that require students to respond in a way that will require them to use the English language help determine whether they understand the meaning of the words and also provide an opportunity to build students' ________ language skills.

47. Breaking a task down into smaller parts may be most essential when teaching complex tasks, such as interpreting textual evidence and connecting ideas.

48. Think-alouds may be used to depict how to complete each instructional task, with teachers initially making their thinking processes visible and then gradually providing opportunities to help students perform the same tasks on their own.

49. During small-group time, students should have a chance to think about content, practice what they have learned, and ____________ before working with the whole class, as these opportunities will increase their confidence when they share their responses with the larger group.

50. The Common Core State Standards provide precise specifications for how students are to acquire foundational reading skills, so teachers will be required to provide time and instruction so these skills can be learned and mastered.