The Teaching Reading: Elementary test focuses on the knowledge and skills a beginning teacher must have to support reading and writing development in kindergarten through sixth-grade students. The test specifications are based on the Standards for the Preparation of Literacy Professionals from the International Literacy Association (2017) and the standards from the International Dyslexia Association.

Built to assess the science of reading, the test is structured around the five essential components of effective reading instruction as identified by the National Reading Panel: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. The test also assesses the relationship between reading skills and writing instruction, since receptive and productive literacy are interrelated. Questions about assessment will be included throughout.

The test as a whole acknowledges multiple approaches to pedagogy used in tandem with content. This includes but is not limited to integrating skills and embedding student instruction within context, as well as looking at concepts in isolation in order to build upon them.

Test questions call on the individual’s knowledge of research-based reading instruction and the science of teaching reading, covering language, foundational skills and comprehension. Test takers must be able to apply that knowledge to specific instructional scenarios, including showing an understanding of how to differentiate instruction for diverse students. The test taker will be required to analyze and respond to situations involving both entire classes and individual students at grade levels from kindergarten through grade six, including English learners and students with diverse needs and backgrounds.

The test includes texts from a wide range of genres and requires the candidate to be familiar with strategies for handling multiple text types with students, including print, digital, and image-based prompts.

In addition to selected-response questions, the test contains three constructed-response questions designed to allow the test taker to show understanding in the areas of developing emergent literacy learners, supporting independent literacy learners, and responding to diverse learners. These questions are intended to be authentic teaching tasks that require instructional decision making about such things as choosing instructional strategies and materials based on assessment information.

This test may contain some questions that will not count toward your score.