Deck 10: Development in the Academic Domains

Question 1

Which one of the following children provides the best example of emergent literacy?

A) Two-year-old Torina tears several pages out of the family telephone book before her parents realize what she's doing.
B) When four-year-old Jack plays school with his older sisters, he fills a sheet of paper with lines of random letters.
C) Donna is only five years old, and already she can read many storybooks independently.
D) Six-year-old Yasser understands basic rules of phonics but does not yet know how to spell many words that are exceptions to the rules.

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Three of the following teachers are employing strategies to promote phonological awareness in their students. Which teacher is using a strategy that, although potentially beneficial for other reasons, will not necessarily promote phonological awareness?

A) Ms. Leach asks her class, "Who can think of a word that rhymes with boat?"
B) Mr. Gray has his students collect items that begin with the featured letter of the week.
C) Mr. Schofield plays a game with his students called "Making the Word." A sample question is "What letter do we add to it to make sit?"
D) Ms. Noble has the words to, too, and two posted on her wall. When students use those words in their speech, she asks them to point to the one they are using.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Which one of the following students is definitely demonstrating automatization in word recognition?

A) When Roland reads, he has to sound out most of the words.
B) When Samantha reads aloud, her voice lacks expression.
C) When Kristen reads, she recognizes words by sight and recalls their meanings immediately.
D) When Werner listens to someone say a new word, he closes his eyes and tries to imagine how it might be spelled.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Mr. Simon is curious about the experiences the children in his preschool class have had with printed materials. Three of the following behaviors will give Mr. Simon useful information about the children's emergent literacy skills. Which behavior is least likely to yield useful information?

A) Ability to handle books correctly
B) Willingness to share books with peers
C) Frequency of looking at books independently
D) Degree of attentiveness as an adult reads a storybook

Question 5

Many children from low-income homes have considerable exposure to books and other printed matter long before they begin school. Some, however, do not, and so they come to school with few of the "basics" (knowledge of alphabet letters, familiarity with common storylines, etc.) upon which to build as they learn to read. As these children progress through the school grades, they are most likely to:

A) Catch up to their peers by second grade
B) Catch up to their peers by fifth grade
C) Catch up to their peers by fifth grade if their teachers regularly praise them for their progress in reading
D) Fall further and further behind their peers in reading ability

Question 6

Charlize has excellent phonological awareness and word recognition skills, but she often struggles to understand and remember what she reads. Three of the following strategies are consistent with recommendations for promoting reading comprehension. Which one is not recommended?

A) Ask Charlize to stop occasionally and imagine what is happening in a story, almost as if she were watching a movie in her head.
B) Draw comparisons between events in a story and Charlize's personal experiences.
C) Ask Charlize to summarize a short textbook passage.
D) Ask Charlize to read at a slower pace than she usually does-ideally, no more than two words per second.

Question 7

Ms. Trinh is about to begin a unit on sharks in her fifth-grade class. Some of her students have a strong interest in sharks and know a lot about them. Others know very little about sharks. When Ms. Trinh gives a reading assignment about sharks, she should expect that:

A) Students who know a lot about sharks will understand the reading material more readily than their classmates.
B) Students' reading comprehension will depend almost entirely on their word recognition skills; their prior knowledge won't make much of a difference.
C) Students who know a lot about sharks are less likely to monitor their comprehension and so may misunderstand parts of the assigned reading material.
D) Students with little knowledge about sharks may be reluctant to read about an unfamiliar topic, so motivating them to learn during the unit will be a challenge.

Question 8

Four-year-old Rosemary picks up a picture book and pretends to read it to one of her preschool classmates. "Once upon a time," she says, "there was a fairy princess. She was very beautiful. A handsome prince asked her to marry him. They lived happily ever after. The end." Which one of the following is the most reasonable interpretation of Rosemary's behavior?

A) She has acquired a story schema for fairytales.
B) She has a good working sight vocabulary.
C) She is engaging in knowledge transforming.
D) Her lack of attention to the words on the page suggests possible dyslexia.

Question 9

Five-year-old Chip writes "I WN TU B FIRMN WEN I GRO UPP". When you ask him to read what he has written, he says: "I want to be a fireman when I grow up." You can reasonably conclude that Chip:

A) Is probably going to need the assistance of a specialist to help him learn to read and write
B) Is showing only preliminary signs of emergent literacy
C) Has acquired considerable phonological awareness
D) Has little or no phonological awareness

Question 10

Five-year-old Harry is blind. Which one of the following aspects of literacy is Harry likely to have the least knowledge about?

A) Irregular verb forms
B) Letter-sound relationships
C) The left-to-right progression of words in print
D) Common English idioms and expressions (e.g., "neat as a pin")

Question 11

Phonological awareness can best be described as:

A) A child's ability to hear the individual sounds within a spoken word
B) A child's ability to distinguish between words that sound similar but have different meanings
C) A child's knowledge that people who speak different dialects may pronounce the same word differently
D) A child's ability to describe what letters typically represent different sounds in words and to apply them in sounding out written words

Question 12

Imagine that you are a high school teacher. Which one of the following assumptions should you make about your students' reading abilities?

A) Many will continue to need guidance about how to read effectively.
B) The great majority have mastered the process of reading, but perhaps 10%-15% of them will need your assistance in reading tasks.
C) Those students who have ineffective reading strategies will be obvious to you within the first two or three weeks of the school year.
D) Those students who struggle to understand their textbooks probably need intensive interaction by a reading specialist.

Question 13

Three of the following adolescents are using metacognitive strategies that should enhance their reading comprehension. Which one is not necessarily using a metacognitive strategy that might improve his or her comprehension?

A) Before he begins reading a chapter in his geography textbook, Darren looks at the headings to get a sense of how the chapter is organized.
B) Keiko occasionally rereads a paragraph when she doesn't understand it the first time.
C) Josie prefers to read out loud so she can hear what the words sound like.
D) As Pablo reads his science textbook, he tries to think of new examples of the concepts he's reading about.

Question 14

Research indicates that a major advantage of giving children multiple experiences with books during the preschool years is that they:

A) Develop greater awareness of syllables than they would otherwise
B) Usually learn to read on their own before they reach school age
C) Develop more advanced visual-spatial skills
D) Learn to read more easily once they begin school

Question 15

Imagine that you are a second-grade teacher. If you were looking for signs of possible dyslexia in one or more of your students, which one of the following would you be most likely to look for?

A) Unusual difficulty hearing individual sounds in spoken words
B) Grammatically incorrect speech (e.g., "She goed to the store")
C) A tendency to read words backwards (e.g., reading ball as "lab")
D) Mispronunciations of everyday words (e.g., pronouncing school as "schtool")

Question 16

As 9-year-old Chad encounters the word tall in his reading, he tells his teacher, "I know that word is tall because the last two letters go way up high." Which one of the following is the most accurate interpretation of what Chad has just said?

A) Chad appears to have developed a large sight vocabulary.
B) Chad's strategy is a bit worrisome, because it's more commonly seen in 5-year-olds.
C) Chad probably has greater reading comprehension ability than most of his classmates.
D) Chad is showing remarkable creativity in his word recognition skills and a potential for considerable creativity in writing later on.

Question 17

Six-year-old Gisela was born deaf, but she was fortunate to have parents and an older brother who used American Sign Language (ASL) regularly around the house. Now that Gisela is in elementary school, she is learning to read. Given that ASL rather than English is her native language, she may have difficulty with three of the following as she learns to read. With which one is she least likely to have difficulty?

A) Distinguishing between similar-looking letters (e.g., b vs. d)
B) Understanding common idioms (e.g., "I have money to burn")
C) Knowing irregular verb forms (e.g., went is the past tense of go)
D) Learning letter-sound relationships (e.g., b makes a "buh" sound)

Question 18

Three of the following strategies are consistent with recommendations for teaching reading skills. Which one is generally not recommended?

A) Encourage students to meet in small groups to discuss a novel they are all reading.
B) Give students frequent opportunities to choose what they read. Students use better reading strategies when they are interested in the material.
C) Give students in the early elementary grades lots of practice with isolated reading skills before asking them to apply the skills in an actual reading assignment.
D) Use games such as "Twenty Questions" to enhance phonological awareness and other basic reading skills.

Question 19

Which one of the following alternatives most accurately describes ethnic and cultural differences in children's reading development?

A) In the Western hemisphere, virtually all cultural groups actively encourage children to learn how to read.
B) Young people respond more favorably to literature that reflects their cultural customs.
C) Considerable cultural diversity exists in attitudes toward reading, but these are not related to young children's reading development.
D) If young children have consistently been encouraged to learn to read, any differences in ethnic and cultural background have little or no impact on their ability to read.

Question 20

A faculty committee is revising the goals for the school district's reading curriculum. Three of the following goals are developmentally appropriate. Which one is not?

A) By the end of second grade, students should be able to count the number of syllables in words.
B) By the end of fourth grade, students should be able to identify symbolism in a novel.
C) By the end of tenth grade, students should use several strategies to help them monitor their comprehension as they read.
D) By the end of twelfth grade, students should be able to critically examine an author's point of view.

Question 21

Which one of the following statements best describes the invented spellings often seen in kindergartners and first graders?

A) They are often interpretable even though they frequently omit important phonemes in words.
B) They interfere with a child's acquisition of correct word spellings and should be discouraged.
C) They reveal an endearing attempt to communicate but bear no resemblance to actual words.
D) Although they are not completely accurate, they do contain all of the phonemes of the words they are meant to represent.

Question 22

Fourteen-year-old Ruth mistakenly believes that the number 0.349 is larger than the number 0.80. Which one of the following explanations of her error is most likely?

A) Ruth has not yet mastered the part-whole principle.
B) Ruth has acquired few if any metacognitive strategies for learning and remembering mathematics.
C) Ruth is misapplying a principle of whole numbers.
D) Consistent with Piaget's theory of cognitive development, most 14-year-olds are not yet capable of proportional reasoning.

Question 23

Which one of the following metacognitive skills related to writing poses the greatest challenge for adolescents?

A) Writing about a single topic in depth
B) Identifying problems in their own writing
C) Taking the audience into account when writing
D) Writing complex sentences with one or more dependent clauses

Question 24

Which one of the following statements is most accurate about a typical 5-year-old child's understanding of numbers and/or counting?

A) Most 5-year-olds can neither add nor subtract because they have not yet been taught addition and subtraction in school.
B) Most 5-year-olds have already had enough experience adding and subtracting objects in their own lives that further work with concrete objects isn't necessary.
C) Most 5-year-olds do not yet know that a group of objects has the same number of objects regardless of the order in which the objects are counted.
D) Most 5-year-olds know that when you count a group of objects, you should count each object in the group once and only once.

Question 25

Which one of the following writing assignments for young writers is most likely to promote an awareness of one's audience?

A) Write about a time you were really surprised.
B) Write about your favorite animal and its habitat.
C) Write a story that takes place in an imaginary land.
D) Write a description of snow for someone who has never seen it.

Question 26

Robbie Case's theory that children acquire a central conceptual structure for numbers can best help you explain which one of the following?

A) Why 6-month-old Frederika is surprised when an experimenter shows her a display of three objects, covers the display and seemingly removes an object, and then reveals that the display still has three objects
B) Why 8-year-old Eldon cannot answer the question, "Which is more, the difference between 2 and 6 or the difference between 7 and 9?"
C) Why 12-year-old Heidi has difficulty understanding percentages
D) Why 16-year-old Garrett has difficulty with proofs in his geometry class

Question 27

Which one of the following alternatives best characterizes a central conceptual structure view of children's mathematical development?

A) Children don't acquire a true understanding of the nature of numbers until they learn how to add and subtract.
B) Even in infancy, children's understanding of quantity has a somewhat abstract quality to it.
C) Children acquire a multidimensional understanding of numbers that integrates earlier, separate understandings of quantity, numerals, and counting.
D) Children have a biologically built-in mechanism that enables them to recognize quantity even in infancy; at around puberty, the rise in certain hormones activates new mathematical capabilities in this mechanism.

Question 28

A developmental researcher creates a special apparatus that makes it appear to 4-month-old Violet that two different objects are in exactly the same spot at exactly the same time. Violet seems to be quite surprised by what she sees. Given what you have learned about children's early knowledge of scientific phenomena, you would be most likely to conclude that Violet's reaction is:

A) Quite typical for her age-group
B) A bit unusual, as children are usually at least 15 months old before they understand that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time
C) Quite unusual, as children are usually at least 5 years old before they understand that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time
D) Probably a fluke, as most 4-month-olds have poor visual perception

Question 29

Imagine that you are a high school counselor. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson meet with you to express their concern that their 15-year-old son Jeremy has poor handwriting. "His writing used to be neat and easy to read," Mr. Johnson says. "Now he writes so quickly that we often don't know what he's written." "Sometimes even he can't read what he wrote," Mrs. Johnson adds. Based on what the Johnsons have told you, what might you most reasonably suspect?

A) Jeremy is intentionally trying to cover up errors in his spelling.
B) Deterioration in handwriting is rare in adolescents and suggests possible depression or other mental illness.
C) Jeremy has automatized his handwriting skills and may have improved his effectiveness in writing.
D) Jeremy is showing signs of a possible writing disability, but you need more information before you can determine this for sure.

Question 30

Which one of the following statements most accurately describes the nature of knowledge transforming in a child's writing?

A) It is an intentional effort to evoke visual imagery in the reader.
B) It reflects a child's ability to engage in abstract thinking and scientific reasoning.
C) It reveals a child's attempt to help the reader truly understand the ideas that the child is trying to communicate.
D) It reveals a youngster's ability to form opinions based on factual information, rather than just to recall undisputed facts.

Question 31

Three of the following teachers are using recommended strategies for promoting youngsters' writing development. Which teacher is not using a recommended strategy?

A) Ms. Pratt gives her students numerous opportunities to write for real audiences other than herself.
B) Mr. MacAfee doesn't worry about how well students write in his science class; students shouldn't have to worry about both science and writing at the same time.
C) Mr. Hendrix occasionally has students work together in pairs to write short stories.
D) Ms. Tharp gives her students instruction on how to use a word processing program and encourages them to use a computer whenever they write.

Question 32

Imagine that you give 5-year-old Richard a simple arithmetic problem. "I have two toy soldiers in my hand," you tell him and show him the soldiers you are holding. "But there are also three toy soldiers over there on the table," you say and point to additional soldiers across the room. "If I put all of the toy soldiers in a basket, how many would I have altogether?" How is Richard most likely to respond to the problem?

A) He is likely to use his fingers to try to solve the problem.
B) He is likely to pause for a few seconds and then say, "Five."
C) He is likely to conclude that the larger number of soldiers-in this case, three-is the correct answer.
D) He is likely to give you a puzzled expression, as 5-year-olds have virtually no understanding of the process of addition.

Question 33

Researchers who make cross-cultural comparisons of youngsters' mathematical abilities have found that:

A) Cultural differences exist and seem to be the result of genetic differences among various groups.
B) Cultural differences exist and seem to be related to children's involvement in family businesses.
C) Cultural differences exist and may be partially the result of how numbers are represented in language.
D) A basic understanding of number (including, at a minimum, numbers 1 through 10) is universal across all cultures.

Question 34

Three of the following statements are consistent with commonly observed sources of diversity in children's and adolescents' writing. Which statement is false?

A) On average, girls tend to be better writers than boys.
B) On average, children with higher IQ scores are better writers.
C) Some children from Asian cultures prefer not to put their thoughts on paper unless they know that their ideas are factually correct.
D) Children who have significant writing disabilities tend to focus more on clearly communicating their ideas than on using correct spelling and grammar.

Question 35

Eight-year-old Gregory says that the light inside a light bulb is "really shiny stuff that's kind of slimy and clings to the wires in the bulb." Gregory's description of light reflects his use of _______, which is quite common in children and adolescents.

A) confirmation bias
B) a substance schema
C) the part-whole principle
D) knowledge transforming

Question 36

Young children sometimes pretend to write "grocery lists," restaurant "menus," and doctors' "prescriptions" in their sociodramatic play. Parents and preschool teachers are apt to see three of the following characteristics in such pseudowriting. Which one are they least likely to see?

A) Small spaces between individual letters
B) Periods or commas at the ends of "sentences"
C) A few alphabet letters mixed in with other letterlike shapes
D) Left-to-right orientation of letters on the page

Question 37

When 10-year-old Meg tackles a word problem that requires her to add the numbers 29 and 56, she arrives at the solution "715." Based on her error, you might reasonably guess that Meg:

A) Has not yet acquired proportional reasoning ability
B) Does not engage in metacognitive oversight of her problem solving
C) Has not yet learned basic addition and subtraction facts
D) Is thinking abstractly about a situation that does not call for abstract thought

Question 38

Which one of the following teaching strategies is consistent with the textbook's discussion of children's mathematical development?

A) Making sure that children have acquired most of the characteristics of Piaget's formal operations stage before they begin to solve problems
B) Teaching tricks such as "When you see the word less in a problem, you should subtract"
C) Having children practice procedures in isolation before applying them to real-life situations
D) Making sure that children know why procedures work as well as how to use them

Question 39

If you were to convene a group of high school seniors who have very high mathematical ability, you would be apt to have more boys than girls in your group. Which one of the following is least likely to explain the prevalence of boys in the group?

A) On average, boys have higher verbal ability than girls.
B) More boys have very high mathematical ability than girls.
C) On average, boys have greater visual-spatial ability than girls.
D) The students' parents have encouraged sons more than daughters to pursue mathematics as a discipline.

Question 40

Three of the following strategies are recommended for helping children acquire mathematical concepts and skills. Which one is not recommended?

A) Illustrate abstract procedures with concrete objects.
B) Encourage children to do problems entirely in their heads whenever possible.
C) Encourage children to use their fingers if they find that their fingers help them.
D) Encourage children to invent some of their own strategies for solving problems.

Question 41

If you consider both (1) the age at which children begin to appreciate music and (2) the existence of amusia in certain children, you could reasonably draw which one of the following conclusions?

A) The ability to appreciate music has a biological basis.
B) Ages 2 and 3 are a sensitive period for music development.
C) The ability to appreciate music is largely a culture-specific phenomenon.
D) Children's musical development is largely the result of instruction in music.

Question 42

In three paragraphs, explain how youngsters' metacognitive development plays a role in three of the following content areas:
Reading
Writing
Learning mathematics
Learning science

Question 43

With the textbook's discussion of geography development in mind, choose the alternative that is most likely to give children in the lower elementary grades difficulty when they try to interpret maps.

A) They haven't traveled enough to be able to imagine different topographies and climates.
B) They don't completely understand that a map is a symbolic representation.
C) They have insufficient awareness of diverse cultures.
D) They confuse the symbols for roads versus rivers.

Question 44

When asked to draw a picture of another child, Lee draws a large circle with two dots for eyes and a horizontal line for a mouth. Four lines emanate outward from the circle; these lines, Lee says, are "arms" and "legs." Based on this information, you would guess that Lee is:

A) No more than 2¹/₂ years old
B) Perhaps about 3¹/₂ or 4 years old
C) Probably a boy, as girls rarely draw people this way
D) Almost certainly from a Western culture, as children from Eastern cultures (e.g., China and Japan) depict people very differently than Western children do even in the preschool years

Question 45

Choose a content area that you may eventually teach to one or more children or adolescents. Also choose a particular age-group with whom you might work. Then:
a. Identify at least two different abilities or inabilities that your students are likely to have relative to the subject matter.
b. Describe at least two different teaching strategies you would use that takes these abilities and/or inabilities into account.

Question 46

Three of the following teachers are providing scaffolding for students who are conducting science experiments. Which one is not necessarily providing scaffolding?

A) Mr. Kron makes sure that his students have identified all their variables and know how they will control each one before they begin.
B) Ms. Archer helps her students reason about whether their results support, disconfirm, or are irrelevant to their hypotheses.
C) Ms. Hyde encourages students to generate at least two different hypotheses before beginning an experiment.
D) Mr. Carlisle requires his students to write their lab reports within 24 hours of conducting their experiments.

Question 47

When do most youngsters begin to understand historical time and attach meaning to historical dates?

A) Usually by kindergarten or first grade
B) About second grade
C) About fifth grade
D) About ninth grade

Question 48

As educators define the term, content area standards are general statements regarding:

A) Which instructional methods teachers should use
B) How tests of students' achievement should be administered
C) Why some topics should be included in the curriculum and others should not
D) What knowledge and skills youngsters should acquire at different grade levels

Question 49

As a result of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, all 50 states now have standards for reading, mathematics, and science. First, consider which content areas, if any, should be subject to state standards. In your answer, address not only reading, math, and science, but also the other content areas discussed in Chapter 10. Should new standards be developed, or current standards dropped? Then, consider whether there should be national standards for any or all of these content areas. In several paragraphs, justify your decision with evidence from Chapter 10. Be sure to discuss the evidence relative to the specific content areas.
Developmental Trends Table
The table below describes the behaviors of children and adolescents at five different age levels, identifies later knowledge and skills that might build on their behaviors, and offers implications for adults working with each age group. Apply what you've learned about development in the content domains to fill in the empty cells in the table.
Identifying Building Blocks for Later Acquisitions in the Academic Domains

Question 50

Youngsters' artistic development in adolescence is largely the result of:

A) Inherited talent
B) Continuing instruction and practice
C) Hormonal changes that accompany puberty
D) Acquisition of abstract thinking capabilities

Question 51

One of 6-year-old Dana's favorite songs is "My Country 'Tis of Thee" If you ask, Dana can sing a note that's the exact pitch of the first note in the song. Chances are that Dana:

A) Has amusia
B) Is a girl rather than a boy
C) Has absolute pitch
D) Had little exposure to music before age 4

Question 52

Three of the following epistemological beliefs about science are likely to lead to development of good study habits in science. Which one is least likely to have this effect?

A) Learning science involves learning how different scientific ideas relate to one another.
B) Learning science involves learning to apply scientific principles to real world problems.
C) Learning science involves remembering that scientific theories are likely to change over time.
D) Learning science involves remembering specific facts that are important to each of the major scientific disciplines.

Question 53

Which one of the following teachers is engaging students in a developmentally appropriate science activity?

A) Mr. Kirk's kindergartners are hypothesizing about why the sun appears to rise and set in the sky.
B) Ms. Hannigan's third-grade class is studying water molecules as part of a unit on the water cycle.
C) In his high school astronomy class, Mr. Brulet limits his unit on the solar system to characteristics of each of the nine planets.
D) Ms. Polumbo's tenth-grade biology class is engaged in cataloguing the different kinds of grass that grow in the softball field.

Question 54

Three of the following statements reflect common sources of diversity in science development. Which statement is false?

A) Children from some cultures think of plants as having "minds" of some sort.
B) Children's religious backgrounds affect their beliefs about the causes of natural events.
C) Girls tend to like science more than boys like science.
D) Children with visual impairments have less knowledge about everyday scientific phenomena than sighted children do.

Question 55

Niesha is able to sing a recognizable tune. You can reasonably guess that Niesha is at least:

A) Five years old
B) Eight years old
C) Nine years old
D) Twelve years old

Question 56

Regarding content area standards, the textbook authors raise the concern that existing standards:

A) Are too vague and general to be of any use
B) Focus more on socio-emotional development than on cognitive development
C) Have been developed only for academic domains addressed in the No Child Left Behind legislation
D) Are often based on what topics are typically addressed in schools rather than on what knowledge and skills are developmentally appropriate for various age-groups

Question 57

In a middle school science lab activity, students are looking at how much water objects of varying sizes and weights displace. Lab partners Jack and Jennifer have just put two equal-size balls-one made of plastic and one made of lead-into separate beakers of water and measured how high the water rose in each one. They've observed that the water rose the same amount in the two beakers. Jack says, "That can't be right. The lead ball should push the water up more because it's heavier." Jennifer responds, "We must have measured wrong. Let's try the experiment again." The two students' reasoning reflects:

A) confirmation bias
B) a substance schema
C) poor visual-spatial ability
D) a nativist view of science development

Question 58

Three of the following high school teachers are using strategies consistent with the textbook's recommendations for teaching history. Which strategy is least likely to be beneficial?

A) Mr. Douglas's class is role-playing significant events in history.
B) Ms. Bigley is having her students read novels set in various historical periods.
C) Mr. Rice is having his students memorize famous speeches and recite them with as much expression as possible.
D) Ms. Walsh's class is reading journals and letters written by soldiers during the American Civil War and comparing them to newspaper accounts of the time.