Prekindergarten/Primary PK–3

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Test Format and Sample Questions

The Language Arts and Reading subtest contains approximately 50 multiple-choice questions. You will have 70 minutes to complete the subtest.

Each question will contain four response options, and you will indicate your answer by selecting A, B, C, or D.

The table below presents types of questions on the exam and directs you to examples of these formats among the sample items that follow.

Table of Question Formats

Type of Question	Sample Question
Direct Question Choose the response option that best answers the question.	Question 1
Scenario Examine a situation, problem, or case study. Then answer a question, make a diagnosis, or recommend a course of action by selecting the best response option.	Question 2
Sentence Completion Select the response option that best completes the sentence.	Question 4

Sample Questions

The following questions represent both the form and content of questions on the examination. These questions will acquaint you with the general format of the examination; however, these sample questions do not cover all of the competencies and skills that are tested and will only approximate the degree of examination difficulty.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 1—Knowledge of literacy and literacy instruction

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Which of the following is the best demonstration of phonemic segmenting from 1^stfirst-grade students working with the word “jumping”?

Choose an answer

1. jump-ing
2. ju-mp-ing
3. jum-pi-ng
4. j-u-m-p-i-n-g

AnswerEnter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 1—Knowledge of literacy and literacy instruction

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Aaron is a 1^stfirst-grade student who has transferred to a new school. His new teacher discovers that he is weak in the areas of letter and letter-sound recognition. To remedy this deficiency, the best approach would be

Choose an answer

1. literature-based instruction.
2. phonics instruction.
3. process writing.
4. interactive learning.

AnswerEnter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded

Correct Response: B.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 1—Knowledge of literacy and literacy instruction

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Near the end of the year, a 1^stfirst-grade student makes the following errors on a reading assessment.

Excerpt from Reading Assessment

Words as they appear in the text	Student reads the words as
blocks	box
flip	Philip
play	pay

This assessment indicates the student is having difficulty decoding

Choose an answer

1. complex onsets.
2. word-final consonants.
3. consonant digraphs.
4. l-controlled vowels.

AnswerEnter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 1—Knowledge of literacy and literacy instruction

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

The teacher reads aloud to the whole class for 20 minutes each day. This activity promotes

Choose an answer

1. metacognition skills.
2. critical-thinking skills.
3. literacy development.
4. language development.

AnswerEnter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 1—Knowledge of literacy and literacy instruction

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A teacher creates weekly activities that allow students to interact with the classroom word wall, the message board, the daily calendar, posters, and each other. What purpose does the teacher have for creating such an interactive classroom?

Choose an answer

1. setting up a cooperative learning environment for the students
2. teaching the students to work together in a collaborative setting
3. creating a print-rich environment that reflects the makeup of the class
4. developing an awareness of the impact of the environment on learning

AnswerEnter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 1—Knowledge of literacy and literacy instruction

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A teacher asks the students to make a list of the types of stories they enjoy reading. The students share their lists and decide what kinds of stories they would like the teacher to read to the class. Finally, the teacher takes the students to the media center to pick books that match the list they have created.

This type of activity is used to

Choose an answer

1. motivate the students to more frequently read various types of literature.
2. employ collaboration in order to create a finished product.
3. teach research skills that can be useful from the media center.
4. appreciate different literature preferences.

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 1—Knowledge of literacy and literacy instruction

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A student is telling the class about a favorite story that centers around a baby emperor penguin, and the class wants to know more about the family structure and habitat of this penguin group. The teacher encourages the students to use the classroom library to find a science book about these topics.

Which of the following best describes the teacher's interaction with students?

Choose an answer

1. developing appropriate inquiry and presentation skills
2. promoting literacy skills through the use of different genres
3. previewing of the purpose of research and how to conduct it
4. motivating students to engage in academic and personal reading

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 2—Knowledge of literary and informational texts

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

If a student wants to get an overview of an informational text, see the relationships among the various topics, and have an indication if the text is in chronological order or by topic, where should the student look in the text to find this information?

Choose an answer

1. glossary
2. bibliography
3. table of contents
4. chapter sub-headings

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 2—Knowledge of literary and informational texts

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

At what point in the reading of a story would it be most effective for a teacher to develop a story map?

Choose an answer

1. before beginning to read, so students will be prepared and not be distracted as the story progresses
2. as the teacher initially begins to describe the story and activity with the students while they follow along
3. after a prereading activity, using students’ observations and text evidence to assure accuracy and completeness
4. after the final read, so students can fully develop characters which will allow for discussion of their importance to the plot

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 2—Knowledge of literary and informational texts

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A 2^ndsecond-grade teacher wanted a whole-class activity to use with students that would stimulate interest in a story the class had previewed, as well as give students confidence in understanding what they were about to read. Additionaly, the teacher wanted a way to preview vocabulary from the story so that the students would know what the words meant while reading. Finally, it was important that the activity call upon background knowledge of the students to help them relate to the story, along with being a graphic representation for the students to refer to while reading.

What instructional strategy did the teacher use to accomplish these goals?

Choose an answer

1. story map
2. peer reading
3. Venn diagram
4. cloze procedure

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 2—Knowledge of literary and informational texts

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Which of the following best describes the critical-thinking strategy of mapping?

Choose an answer

1. an alternative way of critically analyzing a social studies lesson about foreign countries' borders
2. a graphic organizer that requires the students to identify the main idea and supporting details of a selection
3. a way of helping students learn more about how to identify and record significant details
4. a strategy of extending sentence completion skills by graphically outlining the sentence parts

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: B.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 2—Knowledge of literary and informational texts

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A class of second graders is surveying the rest of the 2^ndsecond-grade classes to see what foods are the most favorite among the students. Once the surveys are completed, the teacher wants the students to create charts and graphs which will represent the percentage of students who like which foods best. Which of the following strategies is the teacher using to develop knowledge of the uses and purposes of multiple representations?

Choose an answer

1. developing a connection with the students in other 2^ndsecond-grade classrooms
2. preparing a recommendation to the cafeteria manager about preferred foods
3. creating knowledge of how to create a survey that will collect the most pertinent data
4. providing opportunities for students to create different ways of displaying information

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 2—Knowledge of literary and informational texts

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A 2^ndsecond-grade teacher would like students to compare the life spans of a number of animals discussed in an informational text. Which of the following visual representations would be most appropriate for students to create to help them address this goal?

Choose an answer

1. semantic web
2. flowchart
3. bar graph
4. timeline

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 2—Knowledge of literary and informational texts

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Students are provided a vocabulary list that contains examples and nonexamples of words found in the reading. The teacher provides a brief introduction to the reading and instructs students to determine which words they would likely encounter in the text. This activity is called exclusion brainstorming and is used in what stage of a reading process?

Choose an answer

1. following the second read
2. before beginning the first read
3. between the first and second read
4. after both the first and second read

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: B.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 2—Knowledge of literary and informational texts

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A 2^ndsecond-grade teacher wants to expand students’ knowledge of a topic by providing them various types of literature in the classroom library, including biographies, essays, and realistic fiction books. The teacher is showing examples of

Choose an answer

1. informational literacy.
2. various publications.
3. literary genres.
4. book talks.

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

In order to prepare students to read about city government, the teacher organized a field trip to city hall and arranged a presentation by the city manager for the class. The teacher is developing

Choose an answer

1. background information, interest, and purpose.
2. interest, textual characteristics, and motivation.
3. oral language skills, schema, and automaticity.
4. background information, phonics skills, and purpose.

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A student has limited knowledge of letters, reads words from memory, and has no working knowledge of the alphabetic system. At which stage of word recognition is the student functioning?

Choose an answer

1. pre-alphabetic
2. partial alphabetic
3. limited alphabetic
4. pro-alphabetic

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A teacher gives the students the word unrestricted and asks them to define it using the familiar and meaningful parts in the word. The teacher is using a cueing strategy for decoding word meanings called morphemic analysis. Which of the following is also a cueing strategy for decoding word meanings?

Choose an answer

1. letter features
2. phonograms
3. word configurations
4. semantics

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A 2^ndsecond-grade teacher helps students sort a written list of words that share a common sound into sets of words that use the same letter combination to represent that sound. For example, make and same are sorted into the "a_e" set; play and say are sorted into the "ay" set. This activity fosters both encoding and decoding skills in students primarily by

Choose an answer

1. increasing their sensitivity to the morphological structure of words.
2. enhancing their familiarity with conventional spelling patterns.
3. developing their ability to recognize regular words automatically.
4. providing them with a spelling reference for reading and writing activities.

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: B.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A 4-year-old child sees a sign for a popular fast-food franchise. The child points to the sign and names the restaurant. This is an example of which of the following phases of word recognition?

Choose an answer

1. consolidated-alphabetic
2. full-alphabetic
3. partial-alphabetic
4. pre-alphabetic

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Which activity would be most beneficial for improving a student's structural analysis skills?

Choose an answer

1. learning common affixes
2. memorizing syllabication rules
3. learning to use a dictionary
4. analyzing spelling patterns

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

After students read about how environment influences career choices, the teacher asks a comprehension question regarding a particular career. What would be an effective procedure for an incorrect student response to the question?

Choose an answer

1. ask another student to clarify or paraphrase the provided response.
2. accept the correct answer that was called out by another student.
3. ask for a choral response from the group and move on to the next question.
4. ask the student to reread the specific paragraph where the answer is located.

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Before a teacher reads a content area text, which instructional approach for reading comprehension should occur?

Choose an answer

1. activating prior knowledge
2. examining the author’s craft
3. discussing text-based questions
4. looking at the headings and subheadings

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

What instructional strategy is characterized by a teacher helping students comprehend texts by using surrounding words and sentences to define new words?

Choose an answer

1. connecting prior knowledge
2. determining text structure
3. making text connections
4. using context clues

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A teacher uses text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections to help students

Choose an answer

1. identify main ideas found throughout various texts.
2. provide opportunities to analyze text features.
3. comprehend texts and make comparisons.
4. create associations between texts.

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Which of the following instructional strategies would increase a student’s metacognition when evaluating reading comprehension?

Choose an answer

1. visualizing
2. inferencing
3. scaffolding
4. summarizing

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A teacher uses echo reading with a student who has difficultly reading fluently. This strategy is

Choose an answer

1. appropriate because it encourages exact pronunciation of words during reading.
2. appropriate because the teacher will serve as a model for fluent reading.
3. inappropriate because the emphasis is not on reading comprehension.
4. inappropriate because oral reading is emphasized over silent reading.

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: B.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Students needing to improve their reading fluency should read from

Choose an answer

1. grade-level books.
2. high-interest books.
3. self-selected books.
4. independent-level books.

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 3—Knowledge of foundational reading skills

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Which of the following is an example of an appropriate strategy for teaching comprehension of complex literature and informational texts?

Choose an answer

1. summarizing
2. defining
3. conferencing
4. analyzing

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 4—Knowledge of language elements used for effective oral and written communication

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A 2^ndsecond-grade student brainstorms a list of ideas and then identifies the topic the student is most interested in writing about. The student defines the purpose for writing, the audience, and what form the writing will take. The student's practices represent what stage of the writing process?

Choose an answer

1. editing
2. drafting
3. prewriting
4. publishing

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 4—Knowledge of language elements used for effective oral and written communication

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Strategies for facilitating the audience's comprehension include coming to discussions prepared, staying on topic, maintaining eye-contact, and

Choose an answer

1. exuding an air of confidence.
2. speaking slowly with emphatic pauses.
3. using verbose language with frequency.
4. choosing a topic based on background knowledge.

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 4—Knowledge of language elements used for effective oral and written communication

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Which type of writing activity would be developmentally appropriate for most 5-year-old children?

Choose an answer

1. independent
2. guided
3. individualized
4. cooperative

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: B.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 4—Knowledge of language elements used for effective oral and written communication

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

Which of the following actions should a teacher take to help students improve report writing?

Choose an answer

1. allowing students to select a topic
2. requiring students to create a rubric
3. ensuring students know the purpose
4. teaching students the 5-step paragraph

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 4—Knowledge of language elements used for effective oral and written communication

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A student would like to make an oral presentation on popular American foods to a group of foreign exchange students who are visiting the class. About which of the following aspects of the culture of the guests would be most important for the student to know in order to deliver an appropriate and successful oral presentation?

Choose an answer

1. what the average income is
2. what is considered lucky and unlucky
3. what direct eye contact represents
4. what a typical meal involves

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 5—Knowledge of assessments to inform literacy instruction

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A 2^nd second -grade teacher has been using a number of anecdotal records compiled over several weeks about an individual student. From the information, the teacher notes that the student is having trouble with subject-verb agreement and develops a set of remediation activities for that student. Which of the following responses is an example of another qualitative measure the teacher might use?

Choose an answer

1. summative assessments
2. screening assessments
3. diagnostic assessments
4. portfolio assessments

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.

---

Language Arts and Reading Subtest

Competency 5—Knowledge of assessments to inform literacy instruction

DIRECTIONS: Read the question and select the best response.

A teacher keeps samples of each student’s work during the school year to document progress. Which of the following is the most appropriate type of assessment for the teacher to use to display the student's work?

Choose an answer

1. anecdotal record
2. individual portfolio
3. observation checklist
4. summative instrument

Answer Enter to expand or collapse answer. Answer expanded

Correct Response: B.

---

Copyright © 2023 by the State of Florida, Department of State