Master the Praxis 5205: Teaching Reading Test Prep Course

This is the introduction to the Praxis 5205: Teaching Reading Elementary teacher certification exam. It includes the types of questions, the skills needed to pass, the test blueprint, and test-taking strategies.

I.A. Understands instructional methods for teaching phonological awareness (recognition of rhyme and alliteration; segmenting, blending, manipulation of syllables, as well as onset and rime)

Understands instructional methods for teaching phonemic awareness, both basic (e.g., segmenting and blending) and advanced (e.g., deletion, substitution)

Knows ways to develop students' expressive and receptive language skills.

Knows instructional methods to teach beginning readers the concepts about print such as directionality, return sweep, parts of a book, and the form and function of print.

Understands instructional strategies to help emergent readers fluently identify upper- and lowercase letters in various fonts.

Understands how to teach phoneme-grapheme correspondence.

Understands methods for teaching phonics systematically, explicitly, and recursively.

Knows instructional methods for teaching common phonics patterns and rules (consonant diagraphs, blends, diphthongs, schwa sound, syllable types, word families, etc.).

Knows how to teach morphological analysis (i.e., affixes, roots, and base words).

Knows how to teach syllable types in decoding multisyllabic words.

Is familiar with multisensory approaches for supporting student recognition of nondecodable/irregularly spelled words (i.e., was, listen, though, the, once).

Understands ways to build, expand, and use expressive and receptive vocabulary.

Understands methods for teaching vocabulary systematically, explicitly, and repeatedly in multiple contexts.

Knows how to match an instructional method to word complexity.

Knows multiple approaches to teaching word solving, including the use of context clues and structural analysis.

Knows how to guide students to understand a wide variety of words (common, contextual, content-specific) through direct instruction and independent vocabulary learning.

Understands instructional methods to foster students' automaticity through accuracy, appropriate rate, and prosody.

Knows methods of supporting fluent reading behaviors at the phoneme, word, and passage level.

Knows how fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension are interrelated.

Understands how to support students' listening comprehension and its relationship to reading comprehension.

Knows how to support students' speaking and listening skills as they discuss texts.

Understands how to activate and build all students' background knowledge to increase comprehension.

Is familiar with methods for teaching comprehension systematically and explicitly to all learners.

Knows how metacognition guides students' development of monitoring their own comprehension and analysis of different types of texts.

Is familiar with strategies to guide students' self selection of appropriate texts to increase motivation and engagement.

Knows how to differentiate instruction, tasks, and materials, (print and digital) that are appropriate and culturally responsive to all learners.

Understands how to teach the use of graphic and semantic organizers to support comprehension.

Knows how to teach genres (i.e., poetry, prose, drama), structures (i.e., story elements), and features of literary texts.

Knows how to teach literary devices (i.e., figurative language, nuance of words, and alliteration).

Understands strategies sor supporting readers as they construct literal and inferential meaning, including author's use of language.

Understands how to teach the types (i.e., biography, how-to), structures (i.e., description, cause/effect, sequence), and features of informational texts.

Knows how to use technology to support students' ability to critically examine online resources and foster digital literacy, to personalize learning experiences for students of different needs, and to support active learning across content areas.

Understands how to teach writing as a recursive process tat supports self-evaluation and expression.

Knows systematic, explicit methods to teach the steps of the writing process to all learners.

Knows strategies for integrating reading and writing (i.e., summarizing, annotation).

Knows methods to use digital tools for communication, writing, collaboration, and publishing.

Is familiar with the defining characteristics and appropriate instructional methods for teaching the various types of writing: informational/expository, argument/persuasive/opinion, and narrative.

Knows methods to connect the teaching of decoding and encoding as reciprocal skills.

Knows how to take a systematic, explicit, multisensory, and recursive approach to spelling development.

Understands methods for teaching the structure of written language, including the rules of grammar and mechanics.

Items for Constructed Response: Developing emergent literacy learners (phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, and decoding/encoding.

Items for Constructed Response: supporting independent literacy learners (fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, writing).

Items for Constructed Response: responding to diverse learners (gifted, English learners, struggling readers and writers, and students with learning disabilities).

Types of assessment included in all categories of the exam: flexible grouping, formative assessment, summative assessment, accommodation and modification.