MKAS Early Literacy Development & Phonological Awareness 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which assessment tool is specifically designed to screen for early phonological awareness skills in K-3 students?
- Running record
- DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) (Correct answer)
- Informal reading inventory
- Anecdotal observation checklist
Correct answer: DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills)
DIBELS includes subtests such as Phoneme Segmentation Fluency that directly measure phonological awareness in K-3 students.
Question 2: A child who understands that spoken words are made up of syllables but cannot yet manipulate individual phonemes is operating at which level of phonological awareness?
- Phoneme level
- Syllable level (Correct answer)
- Sub-syllabic (onset-rime) level
- Word level
Correct answer: Syllable level
Awareness of syllables as units within words represents the syllable level of phonological awareness.
Question 3: Which instructional approach is most supported by research for teaching phonological awareness to struggling readers?
- Embedded incidental exposure only
- Systematic and explicit instruction with cumulative review (Correct answer)
- Whole-language immersion in authentic texts
- Student-led discovery activities without teacher modeling
Correct answer: Systematic and explicit instruction with cumulative review
Research consistently shows that systematic, explicit phonological awareness instruction with review is most effective for struggling readers.
Question 4: When segmenting the word 'blend,' a student correctly identifies five phonemes: /b/ /l/ /e/ /n/ /d/. This demonstrates understanding that:
- Consonant clusters represent a single phoneme
- Each consonant in a cluster is its own phoneme (Correct answer)
- Blends are always two phonemes
- The word 'blend' has only three phonemes
Correct answer: Each consonant in a cluster is its own phoneme
Consonant clusters like 'bl' and 'nd' consist of individual phonemes that can each be isolated.
Question 5: Which scenario best illustrates a student using phonological awareness to self-correct during reading?
- A student uses picture clues to guess an unknown word
- A student rereads a sentence for better fluency
- A student notices a word doesn't rhyme with a pattern word and tries a new sound (Correct answer)
- A student asks the teacher for help with an unknown word
Correct answer: A student notices a word doesn't rhyme with a pattern word and tries a new sound
Using rhyme pattern knowledge to self-correct shows the student is applying phonological awareness while reading.
Question 6: A K-3 teacher wants to informally assess phoneme segmentation. Which prompt should she use?
- 'Does 'cat' rhyme with 'hat'?'
- 'What is the first sound you hear in 'fish'?'
- 'Tell me every sound you hear in the word 'jump.'' (Correct answer)
- 'How many syllables does 'apple' have?'
Correct answer: 'Tell me every sound you hear in the word 'jump.''
Asking a student to produce all individual sounds in a word is a phoneme segmentation task.
Question 7: Which of the following words contains a consonant digraph that represents a single phoneme?
- blend
- street
- phone (Correct answer)
- crisp
Correct answer: phone
'Phone' contains the digraph 'ph,' which represents the single phoneme /f/.
MKAS Early Literacy Development & Phonological Awareness 5
Which assessment tool is specifically designed to screen for early phonological awareness skills in K-3 students?