RICA Literacy Assessment and Diagnosis 2

Question 1

A teacher wants to assess a student's phonemic awareness skills. Which task would be MOST appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Asking the student to segment the word 'cat' into its individual sounds (/k/-/æ/-/t/)

Answer

Phoneme segmentation is a core phonemic awareness skill assessed orally, without print, that directly reveals a student's ability to manipulate sounds.

Question 2

Which assessment data would BEST help a teacher determine if a student's poor comprehension is primarily a decoding problem or a language comprehension problem?

Accepted Answer

Comparing the student's oral reading fluency score with their listening comprehension score

Answer

If a student comprehends text read aloud (listening comprehension) but struggles with the same text read independently, the barrier is likely decoding, not language comprehension.

Question 3

A student reads 65 words per minute with 92% accuracy in a grade 2 passage. Based on typical fluency benchmarks, this student likely:

Accepted Answer

Falls below grade-level expectations and may need additional fluency support

Answer

Grade 2 fluency benchmarks typically expect around 90–100+ words per minute with at least 95% accuracy; 65 wpm with 92% accuracy falls below these benchmarks.

Question 4

What is a 'cloze procedure' and what does it assess?

Accepted Answer

A reading assessment where words are deleted from a text and students supply the missing words, assessing comprehension and contextual language skills

Answer

A cloze procedure removes words at regular intervals from a text; students' ability to supply appropriate words reveals their comprehension and use of context clues.

Question 5

According to RICA assessment principles, what is the difference between 'reliability' and 'validity' in reading assessments?

Accepted Answer

Reliability means the test produces consistent results; validity means it measures what it claims to measure

Answer

Reliability refers to consistency of results across administrations, while validity refers to whether the assessment accurately measures the intended skill.

RICA - Reading Instruction Competence Assessment Practice Test

RICA - Reading Instruction Competence Assessment Practice Test

RICA Literacy Assessment and Diagnosis 2