STR Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield STR facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. Which of the following BEST supports students in understanding compare/contrast text structure? → Venn diagram or T-chart
2. Which of the following words has the most phonemes? → Strength (6 phonemes)
3. Decodable texts are primarily designed to: → Contain words that primarily use phonics patterns students have already been taught
4. A teacher asks students to listen to two words and decide if they rhyme: 'cat' and 'bat.' This activity develops which component of phonological awareness? → Rhyme recognition
5. According to the Simple View of Reading, reading comprehension is the product of: → Decoding × Language comprehension
6. In the context of assessment, what does 'benchmarking' refer to? → Measuring all students against grade-level expectations at set points in the year
7. Dynamic assessment differs from static assessment in that it: → Includes mediated learning to assess a student's response to instruction
8. Syntactic complexity in academic texts refers to: → Long, complex sentence structures with multiple clauses
9. Which type of vocabulary instruction has the strongest research support for improving reading comprehension? → Explicit, rich instruction in a small number of high-utility words with multiple exposures
10. Which instructional strategy uses a skilled reader and a student reading aloud simultaneously to build fluency? → Neurological Impress Method
11. Which assessment metric indicates how a student's performance compares to a predetermined level of expected skill? → Criterion-referenced score
12. How does spelling instruction support reading development? → It reinforces phoneme-grapheme correspondences used in decoding
13. Which approach to teaching phonics most directly involves teacher modeling and immediate corrective feedback? → Explicit systematic phonics instruction with a defined scope and sequence
14. Which text structure signals are associated with compare/contrast organization? → Similarly, however, on the other hand
15. Which type of text structure is most commonly found in informational texts in science? → Cause-effect and compare-contrast
16. An Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) establishes a student's independent level as the level at which the student reads with: → 95–100% accuracy
17. R-controlled vowels are sometimes called 'bossy r' because: → The letter 'r' modifies and changes the preceding vowel to a unique sound
18. The multisensory approach used in Structured Literacy instruction simultaneously engages which pathways? → Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile pathways
19. A student says the word 'flap' has three sounds rather than four. What error is the student likely making? → Treating the consonant blend /fl/ as a single phoneme instead of two
20. How does reading aloud to children help with vocabulary development? → It exposes them to new words and models correct pronunciation
21. Which activity best develops phoneme substitution skills? → Telling students to say 'bat' but change /b/ to /s/
22. Which statement best describes the Vowel-Consonant-e (VCe) syllable type? → The first vowel is long because the final e signals it across the intervening consonant
23. Which of the following skills is NOT part of phonological awareness? → Identifying letter names and sounds
24. Isabel Beck's Tier 2 words are best described as: → High-frequency academic words useful across many contexts, such as analyze and fortunate
25. Inferencing in reading comprehension requires students to: → Use text clues and prior knowledge to draw conclusions
26. Which text structure presents events in the order they occurred? → Chronological/sequence
27. How does phonemic awareness differ from phonics? → Phonemic awareness involves spoken sounds only; phonics connects sounds to written letters
28. Which writing process stage involves generating ideas before drafting? → Prewriting
29. Phonological awareness assessments should be administered: → As universal screeners at the beginning of the year and progress-monitored throughout
30. Reader's Theater supports fluency PRIMARILY because it: → Motivates repeated reading of a text with a purpose