Prepare for the Oklahoma OSAT Early Childhood Education exam with these practice questions and answers. This guide covers child development, curriculum design, and effective teaching methods.
Q: According to Piaget’s theory, in what age range do children begin representing things with symbols?
Answer: Between 18 and 24 months
Q: When a young child believes his/her thoughts caused something external to happen, which is the MOST SPECIFIC Piagetian term to describe this phenomenon?
Answer: Magical Thinking
Q: In which of the six stages of art growth and development do children begin to develop a visual schema?
Answer: Preschematic
Q: Which of the following is most typical of the language development of a two-year-old?
Answer: Using at least two pronouns correctly
Q: Which of the following teacher actions in most effective for fostering greater depth of preschoolers’ comprehension of word meanings?
Answer: Giving multiple definitions and examples of new words
Q: What is the most typical age for children to understand common opposites like big/little, hot/cold, etc.?
Answer: Five years old
Q: According to Roger Brown’s (1973) Stage I sentence types, which of these is classified under “Operations of Reference”
Answer: a negation
Q: In Brown’s (1973) Stages of Syntactical and Morphological Development, which of these age ranges is associated with what he designated as Stage I?
Answer: 15-30 months
Q: A child who correctly use irregular past tenses of verbs would be in which of Roger Brown’s stages of Syntactic and Morphological Development?
Answer: Stage III
Q: According to Roger Brown, a child who indicates the regular plural by saying “My toys” is in which of his Stages of Syntactical and Morphological Development?
Answer: Stage II
Q: When characterizing young children, what did Vygotsky mean by the term “private speech” that he coined?
Answer: Speaking aloud to themselves during activities
Q: Among the following auditory disabilities, which one does not involve any part of the hearing mechanism?
Answer: Central auditory processing disorder
Q: To promote young children’s developing abstract thinking, which teacher technique(s) to use during and after shared readings is/are best suited for use with children in the younger, rather than older, ages of early childhood?
Answer: Asking children to identify vocabulary words and describe story details
Q: From birth to the age of 2 years, children typically grow to ______ times their newborn weights
Answer: four
Q: By the time they are two years old, children’s brains typically have grown to ______ of their adult sizes.
Answer: 55%
Q: What is true regarding children’s motor development from infancy to preschool ages?
Answer: Motor skills development involves learning of new physical movements over the course of time
Q: Which of these accurately reflects research findings on gender differences in early childhood motor development?
Answer: Despite certain differences, preschool motor development between genders is more similar than different
Q: For children with a primarily visual learning style, which material would be most effective to give them to help them understand abstract concepts and relationships?
Answer: multicolor graphics
Q: Which of the following correctly reflects Adler’s theory of birth order’s influences on personality devleopment?
Answer: Some “babies” of the family grow to make grandiose plans, which never succeed
Q: In Adler’s psychoanalytic theory, which of these did he believe about male/female siblings in family birth orders?
Answer: Boy siblings of an only girl can behave protectively toward her; she may make extra effort to please the father
Q: According to Murry Bowen’s Family Systems Theory, which of the following accurately reflects what he called the Family Projection Process?
Answer: Parental perception of child problems can become self-fulfilling prophecy in the child’s self-image
Q: Typically, young children eat most of the same foods as adults by the age of_____
Answer: two years old
Q: Which of the following is most accurate about the sleep needs and behaviors of young children?
Answer: Children typically need 10-12 hours of sleep at ages of 2-5 years
Q: Which of the following have research studies found regarding the relative individualism or collectivism of different world cultures?
Answer: Asian and Latin American cultures are both more interdependent
Q: What is true regarding survey findings about family differences among American socioeconomic and racial groups?
Answer: Data have shown more violence in African-American families, then in Latino, then White families
Q: Which of the following reflects an early childhood application of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of development?
Answer: providing safe and sanitary objects for babies mouths
Q: Which of the following is NOT one of Bandura’s conditions required for learning?
Answer: Cognition
Q: According to Carl Rogers, a child who relies primarily on external locus of control demonstrates:
Answer: conditional positive self-regard
Q: Which statement is most accurate about the Montessori Method of education?
Answer: the self-direction and self-correction of children are emphasized
Q: Which of these correctly represents an element of the Bank Street Curriculum approach to early childhood education?
Answer: Children learn at various developmental levels
Q: Which statement accurately reflects Friedrich Froebel’s philosophy of early childhood education?
Answer: Froebel believed that nature is at the heart of all learning
Q: Of the following, which is true of Siegfried Engelmann’s contributions to early childhood education?
Answer: Engelmann demonstrated that Piaget’s conservation of liquid volume did not depend only on a child’s stage
Q: The high/scope curriculum for preschoolers (weikart et al) identifies 58 key developmental experiences for active learning, dividing them into 10 main categories. Which of the following does NOT correctly represent one of the first five of these 10 categories?
Answer: Music, including being able to write musical notation and compositions
Q: Which of these statements accurately reflects principles of emergent literacy theory?
Answer: Young children learn reading and writing concurrently rather than sequentially.
Q: Which of the following is true about the whole language approach to early childhood literacy instruction?
Answer: The whole language approach is based on the philosophy and psychology of constructivism.
Q: What statement correctly represents how the whole language instructional approach addresses young children’s mechanical errors in early literacy learning?
Answer: Children’s overall engagement, comprehension, and appreciation precede correction.
Q: When children construct meaning, they may address new information that does not fit into their existing concepts or schemes by either forming a new scheme or changing an existing one. What is this process called?
Answer: Accommodation
Q: Which statement correctly describes some benefits to young children of the Language Experience Approach (LEA)?
Answer: Children realize they acquire knowledge and understanding from their own experiences.
Q: Which of the following is correct regarding early childhood reading instruction using basal readers?
Answer: Instruction from smaller to larger skills helps student transitions from part to whole
Q: Which best expresses what the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) is intended to accomplish?
Answer: To develop critical reading through teaching group comprehension
Q: Which accurately reflects a contrast between the Directed Reading Activity (DRA) and the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) as methods of reading instruction using basal readers?
Answer: DRA requires convergent thinking whereas DR-TA also requires divergent thinking
Q: How much usable play space at a minimum do experts recommend for indoor and outdoor early childhood learning environments?
Answer: At least 35 sq. ft. indoors and 75 sq. ft. outdoors