Prepare for the Praxis 5017 Elementary Education test with this practice exam and answers. This guide covers content knowledge and instructional strategies for elementary teachers.
Q: Erikson’s psychosocial development (first four)
Answer: Trust vs. Mistrust: Early Childhood (2 to 3 years) Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt Preschool (3 to 5 years) Initiative vs. Guilt: School Age (6 to 11 years)Industry vs. Inferiority: School Age (6 to 11 years)
Q: Misconceptions
Answer: Invalid concepts that students construct using their experiences, expectations, beliefs, and emotions.
Q: How to teach concepts of print
Answer: Example:Shared book experienceUse pointer (such as button pointer) to point to the text in big books, pocket charts and any charts you create in your classroom to develop and reinforce concepts of print.
Q: Strategies to develop students’ phonological awareness skills
Answer: Finger spelling, clapping syllables, picture sorting
Q: Decoding
Answer: The ability to apply your knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words.
Q: The Shared Book Experience
Answer: Teachers use big books. includes introduction (prereading) ask predictive questions. read story with dramatic punch and point to text (tracking of print). Have discussion, reread on subsequent days with the whole group
Q: Concepts of Print
Answer: Left to right progression (words on the page are read from left to right)One-to-one correspondence (spoken words match print)Return sweep (you return to the left after reaching the end of a line of print)Spaces between wordsTop to bottom (words on a page are read from top to bottom)Beginning and end (where to start and stop reading a word, sentence, or book)
Q: Strategies to develop phonic and word-analysis skills to support decoding
Answer: Morphology, syllabication, word building, wor/letter sorts, high-frequency words)
Q: Strategies to develop fluency to support comprehension
Answer: Selecting appropriate text which are at instructional level, modeling fluent reading, paired reading, echo reading, readers theater, repeated reading
Q: Strategies to for teaching students to ask and answer questions about text (predictions)
Answer: Use evidence from text, schema, and pictures, to make a prediction about what might happen next in a text
Q: Strategies for teaching students to find and organize key details and main ideas and themes in a text
Answer: Plays, think-alouds, graphic organizers
Q: How to develop student’s understanding of point of view and how it influences meaning of text
Answer: First Person: “I” and “Me” standpoint. Personal perspective.Third Person: Narrator is not a character, but sees the world through only ONE character’s eyes and thoughtsTheir Person Omniscient: The narrator is not a character in the story but knows what all of the characters are thinking along with the events that happenThird Person Objective: The narrator is an outsider who can report only what he or she sees and hears. This narrator can tell us what is happening, but he can’t tell us the thoughts of the characters.
Q: How to develop students’ ability to distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgement
Answer: Fact: Something that can be proven trueOpinion: Something that someone thinks or feels about somethingReasoned Judgement: Decision that requires time and effort and results from careful information gathering, generation of alternatives, and evaluation of alternatives
Q: Signal words
Answer: Words that indicate that a list, contrast, or connection is about to be made.Examples:Cause/Effect (because, since, consequently, this led to…so, if…then)Compare/Contrast (different from, same as, although, however)Description (for example, such as, first, second,)Problem/Solution (the question is, one answer is)Sequence/Chronological Order (next, then before, after)
Q: Scaffolding strategies to support students’ progress toward independent proficient reading
Answer: provide access to grade-level texts, purposeful grouping, close reading
Q: Primary sources
Answer: Eyewitness accounts of history. They include letters, diaries, speeches, and interviews.
Q: Secondary sources
Answer: Commentaries, summaries, reviews, or interpretation of primary sources to provide new insights or historical perspectives
Q: Strategies to help students distinguish between primary and secondary sources, reliable and unreliable sources, and paraphrasing and plagiarizing
Answer: Example for Web: Keep it REAL – Read the URL, Examine the Content, Ask about the Author, Look at the links.
Q: Strategies to develop students’ ability to determine word meaning and develop vocabularies
Answer: Example: In this activity, students use their knowledge of prefixes and suffixes to create new words based on the root words provided. Each worksheet has a total of three new roots with a word bank for prefixes and suffixes. Students create new words using a prefix, root, and suffix and then come up with what they think is the correct defintion. Once this part is completed, students look up the words they have created and write down the correct dictionary definition and judge how close they came.
Q: Develop active listening skills
Answer: Looks like: Eyes on speaker; Still bodies and hands on lap or table; Appropriate expressionsRaising your hand to speakSounds like: One voice at a time; Appropriate comments and questions; Quiet bodies; Inside voices; Waiting to be called n to speak
Q: Developing oral presentation skills
Answer: …
Q: Formative assessment
Answer: Assessing a student’s understanding as you teach a unit (e.g. through homework, observation, in-class activities, journal writing, etc.).
Q: Summative assessment
Answer: Evaluation at the conclusion of a unit (multiple choice, true/false, constructed response)
Q: Properties of operations
Answer: Rules that help us add, subtract, multiply and divide effectively and efficiently
Q: Scientific method
Answer: A series of steps followed to solve problems including collecting data, formulating a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, and stating conclusions.
Q: Informal and/or authentic science assessment
Answer: Teacher observation and questioning; journals and/or logs; interviews and conferences; group and peer assessment; self-assessment; performance-based samples such as portfolios, project learning, and student work; comparing and contrasting
Q: Overall purpose of teaching Social Studies
Answer: Students first learn about themselves, then their families, their communities, their territory or province, their country, and eventually the world
Q: Overall purpose of teaching Science
Answer: Helping students discover that a major influence on the culture of society is the discovery and innovation of science and technology.
Q: Teaching Math in Real-World Contexts
Answer: Helpful to motivate students and access prior knowledge; Should not be elevated to a general principal; some math must be taught for math’s sake alone; students should be able to say “this learning will help me do this”
Q: Albert Bandura
Answer: Social-congnitive; personality comes from observing others and modeling ourselves after them.
Q: Jacob Kounin’s classroom management theory
Answer: Believed teachers have the ability to affect student’s behavior through instructional management. Having good classroom management skills and well-paced lessons are both teacher behaviors tgat demonstarte “with-it-ness”he found 4 characteristics that a teacher needs1. With-it-ness: means that you have eyes all over you…that you see things…you pick up on what’s going on in your classrooma. Pick up on body languageb. Know what is going to happen before it happensd. This can be developed with practice2. Over-lapping activities: not everybody has to be doing the same thinga. Managing different things at the same time3. Maintenance of Group Focus: making sure that all of your groups/students are engaged in and focused on learning4. Movement management: having unused timeb. Transitions; any times you have movement or change…it is a great opportunity to misbehave1) Warn your students ahead of time
Q: Physical Education Concepts
Answer: Exercise, physical fitness, game and sport kills, safety, locomotor patterns, body management, social discipline, healthy lifestyles
Q: Elements of Music
Answer: Texture, harmony, melody, rhythm
Q: Purpose for teaching art
Answer: The goal of art education is today’s elementary schools is to help children acquire a better understanding of art as a way of learning about themselves and theworld around them.
Q: Purpose for teaching music
Answer: Music is considered a fundamental component of human culture and behavior. It touches on all learning domains, including the psychomotor domain (the development of skills), the cognitive domain (the acquisition of knowledge), and, in particular and significant ways, the affective domain (the learner’s willingness to receive, internalize, and share what is learned), including music appreciation and sensitivity.
Q: Purpose for teaching physical education
Answer: To develop the skills, knowledge, and confidence necessary to lead a physically active lifestyle. A high-quality physical education program promotes an active lifestyle, improved health, motor skill development, and better cognitive performance. A student who becomes skilled and knowledgeable in physical education is more likely to become a healthy adult who is motivated to remain healthy and physically active throughout his or her life. Promotes lifelong physical activity and attitudes and behaviors that reduce health risks.
Q: Psychomotor Domain
Answer: Includes abilities related to physical prowess ranging from reflexes through basic motions such as catching and throwing a ball, to skilled motions such as playing tennis, or playing the piano.
Q: Teaching art, music, and physical education
Answer: Students in schools who have art, music, and physical education taught by specialists may do better on state standardized tests.
Q: What are three factors that help create a positive learning environment?
Answer: Consistency, Structure, and Discipline
Q: What are Thorndike’s three laws?
Answer: Law of effect, law of readiness, law of exercise.
Q: Bloom’s Taxonomy
Answer: A system for categorizing levels of abstraction of questions that commonly occur in educational settings. Includes the following competencies: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Q: Phonemic Awareness
Answer: ability to hear and manipulate individual phonemes. Includes the ability to hear and manipulate larger units of sound such as onsets and rimes and syllables
Q: Alphabetic Principle
Answer: the understanding that words are made of letters and letters represent sounds
Q: Orthography
Answer: the art of writing words with the proper letters. The conventional spelling system of a language
Q: morphology
Answer: the study of the structure of words
Q: onset and rime
Answer: onset is the initial sound unit of any word and the rime is the stream of letters that follow
Q: prosody
Answer: the patterns of stress and intonation in a language
Q: structural analysis
Answer: the process of using familiar word parts to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words
Q: receptive vocabulary
Answer: comprehension vocabulary used by a person in silent reading and learning
Q: expressive vocabulary
Answer: total range of language which can be produced by a person
Q: semantics
Answer: the meaning of a word, phrase, sentence, or text
Q: stages of writing development scribbling
Answer: letter-like symbols, string of letters, beginning sounds emerge, consonants represent words, initial middle and final sounds, transitional phases, standard spelling
Q: Elkonin boxes
Answer: a strategy for segmenting sounds in a word that involves drawing a box to represent each sound in a word.
Q: word families
Answer: A collection of words that share common orthographic rimes, such as HIKE, BIKE, LIKE, etc.
Q: systematic instruction
Answer: teaching a set of useful sound/spelling relationships in a clearly defined, carefully selected, logical instructional sequence
Q: literature circles
Answer: a student centered reading activity in which each member of the group is assigned a role as the group discusses what they have read
Q: Constructivist theory of language acquisition
Answer: Piaget’s view of cognitive development, in which children discover, or construct, virtually all knowledge about their world through their own activity.
Q: Sociolinguistic
Answer: How language and its use is shaped by a society or culture.
Q: psycholinguistic
Answer: The study of how language is acquired, perceived, understood, and produced.
Q: miscue analysis
Answer: A way of acquiring insight into children’s reading strategies by studying the mistakes (miscues) they make when reading aloud.
Q: Bloom’s Taxonomy (detailed description of levels)
Answer: Knowledge: Remember: recall appropriate infoComprehension: Understand: grasp the meaning of infoApply: use material in new and concrete situationsAnalyze: break down material into new and component parts so that its organizational structure may be understoodEvaluate: make judgments based on criteria and standardsSynthesize: Create: put elements together to form a coherent or functional whole
Q: Life Science
Answer: characteristics of organisms, life cycles of organisms, organisms and environment
Q: Earth and Space Science
Answer: interrelationships in Earth systems and space systems; Earth patterns, cycles, and change
Q: Geology
Answer: Study of the Earth
Q: hydrology
Answer: The scientific study of the properties, distribution and effects of water on the earth’s surface, in the soil and underlying rocks and in the atmosphere.
Q: meteorology
Answer: Study of Earth’s atmosphere and weather
Q: physical science
Answer: Physical and chemical changes; temperature and heat; sound; light; electricity and magnetism; force, motion, and energy; matter; astronomy
Q: Materials, equipment, texts, and technology – social studies
Answer: Use of manipulatives and developmentally appropriate materials, equipment, texts, and technology in social studies, such as physical, topographic, political, and weather maps; globes, aerial imagery, satellite images, graphs, tables, diagrams, graphic organizers, pictures, real-word resources, and trade books, including multicultural tests and narrative tests as well as information from various sources, software, and the Internet
Q: Health
Answer: Healthy living, growth, nutrition, safety and well-being, communicable diseases, substance abuse, common diseases
Q: Informal and/or authentic social studies assessment
Answer: Teacher observation and questioning; interviews and conferences; group and peer assessment; self-assessment; performance- based samples such as portfolios, project learning, oral reports, and student work; comparing and contrasting; organizing data; problem solving; critical thinking; model building; planning, forecasting, and decision making
Q: Geography
Answer: locations, places, and human movement; environment and society; places and regions; human and physical systems; states, regions, United States, and the world.
Q: History
Answer: Society, democracy, chronological thinking, relationships between past and present, US history from founding to 20th century, 20th century developments and transformations in the US, and classical civilizations: Egypt, Greece, Rome, and China
Q: Market
Answer: economy An economic system in which people choose freely what to buy and sell
Q: Global marketplace
Answer: trading and working with other countries
Q: Federal government
Answer: A form of government in which powers are divided between a central government and several local governments
Q: Branches of government
Answer: Legislative: creates lawsJudicial: interprets laws and administrates justiceExecutive: implement, support, and enforce the laws
Q: Number sense
Answer: the ability to understand numbers and their relationships
Q: pre-number concepts
Answer: matching, sorting, comparing, ordering
Q: Teaching fractions
Answer: Pie plate fraction strategy
Q: number concepts
Answer: words, symbols, quantity, counting patterns,
Q: rational numbers
Answer: Any number that can be written as a fraction
Q: number theory
Answer: the study of numbers and the relationships between them
Q: additive inverse
Answer: 0 = -11 + 11
Q: multiplicative inverse
Answer: A number times its multiplicative inverse is equal to 1; also called reciprocal
Q: equalities
Answer: use two different units to describe the same measured amount
Q: inequalities
Answer: a mathematical sentence involving <, >, or = plus < or >
Q: quantitative change
Answer: Change in number or amount, such as in height, weight, or size of vocabulary
Q: qualitative change
Answer: Change in kind, structure, or organization, such as the change from nonverbal to verbal communication
Q: dimension
Answer: A measurable extent, such as the three principal dimensions of an object of width, height, and depth.
Q: coordinate geometry
Answer: a mix of geometry and algebra; in this field of mathematics, geometric figures are placed on the coordinate plane, and then studied using algebra.
Q: informal geometry
Answer: provides students with the concepts and skills necessary for: finding the perimeter, area, surface area and volume of common geometric figures graphing equations on the coordinate system and deriving the equation for the third line from a pair of points: using the Pythagorean Theorem to solve problems involving right triangles; determining if triangles are similar and finding an unknown side in similar triangles; and determining unknown angles in figures by calculating the sum of the interior angles.
Q: metric units
Answer: A measurement system that measures length in millimeters, centimeters, meters, and kilometers; capacity in liters and milliliters; mass in grams and kilograms; and temperature in degrees Celsius
Q: standard units of measurement
Answer: a system of measurement for linear, mass, and liquid (ft, yd, lb, oz, cup, gallon)
Q: area
Answer: Length x Width
Q: volume
Answer: Amount of space occupied by an object
Q: rates
Answer: a comparison of two quantities with different units
Q: spread
Answer: A program that allows you to use rows and columns of data to manage, predict, and present information.
Q: Materials, equipment, texts, and technology – math
Answer: Use of manipulatives and developmentally appropriate materials, equipment, texts, and technology in mathematics instruction such as spinners, number cubes, balls in a jar, software, the Internet, handheld calculators, and spreadsheets
Q: Math problem-solving
Answer: Investigating and understanding content, formulating problems from everyday situations, verifying and interpreting results, identifying and solving problems that are developmentally appropriate
Q: What are Maslow’s Deficiency Needs?
Answer: Physiological needs – food, sleep, clothing etc., Safety needs – freedom from harm or danger, Belongingness and love needs – acceptance and love from others, Esteem needs – approval and accomplishment.
Q: What are Maslow’s Growth Needs?
Answer: Cognitive needs – knowledge and understanding, Aesthetic needs – appreciation of beauty and order, Self-actualization needs – fulfillment of one’s potential.
Q: Teaching methods
Answer: Activating learning, projects, guided discovery, problem solving, exposition and direct instruction, games, situations and recreations, investigations