Study Guide

Field 298: General Middle Grades 
Sample Multiple-Choice Questions

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Each multiple-choice question has four answer choices. Read each question and its answer choices carefully and choose the ONE best answer.

During the test you should try to answer all questions. Even if you are unsure of an answer, it is better to guess than not to answer a question at all. You will NOT be penalized for choosing an incorrect response.

Objective 0001 
Understand young adolescent development and behavior.

1. Cultural differences among middle grades students are likely to have the greatest effect on the development of which of the following language skills?

  1. setting a purpose before reading a disciplinary text
  2. understanding the meaning of idiomatic expressions
  3. learning academic vocabulary in a particular discipline
  4. using context clues to determine word meaning
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
An idiom is a set phrase of two or more words that means something different from the literal meaning of those individual words. Idioms and culture are closely connected, and idioms express cultural realities and experiences. For example, the Arabic language includes the idiom "come back with Hunyan's shoes" to mean someone who has tried to do something and failed. This idiom is based on Arabic folklore and would not be familiar or easily understood by someone from a non-Arabic culture.

Objective 0001 
Understand young adolescent development and behavior.

2. A sixth-grade physical education teacher is planning a lesson in which students will go through a timed fitness course that involves running, jumping, crawling, and climbing. Which of the following issues is most important for the teacher to consider when planning this lesson?

  1. Many young adolescents resist participating in complex physical activities due to self-consciousness about physical changes they are experiencing.
  2. Young adolescents' accelerated and uneven growth often leads to coordination difficulties that can affect their overall performance in physical activities.
  3. Compared with other types of activities, young adolescents tend to become more competitive and aggressive when participating in physical activities.
  4. Young adolescents tend to perform better on physical activities when they understand the physics of the movements they will use.
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
The changes that occur during the middle grades include rapid and uneven spurts of physical growth. These growth spurts frequently result in periods of awkwardness in physical mobility and coordination. A sudden increase in height affects the body's ability to control established motor skills such as walking because motor control behavior is organized on the body's dimensions. Following a growth spurt, the body needs time to adjust to its new dimensions.

Objective 0002 
Understand learning processes, responsive learning environments, and diversity in the middle grades.

3. Throughout the school year, a teacher uses the "I Do, We Do, You Do" approach to instruction. The teacher models a skill the students are learning and then has the students practice the skill together before assigning students to work on the skill individually. This teaching method is likely to be most effective in helping the teacher achieve which of the following goals?

  1. gradually releasing the responsibility for learning to students
  2. differentiating learning for students with diverse characteristics
  3. continuously communicating high expectations for learning
  4. building a supportive learning community
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Gradual release of responsibility is a recognized approach for moving classroom instruction from teacher-centered delivery to student-centered collaboration and independent practice. At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher has a prominent role in the delivery of content. But as students acquire new information and skills, the responsibility of learning shifts from teacher-directed instruction to student processing activities. The teacher continues to model, question, prompt, and cue students until students move to the phase in which they rely more on themselves and less on the teacher.

Objective 0002 
Understand learning processes, responsive learning environments, and diversity in the middle grades.

4. Which of the following strategies is likely to be most effective in creating a classroom culture of high expectations?

  1. offering various incentives for accurate completion of work
  2. developing instructional plans that facilitate bell-to-bell learning
  3. implementing a "Student of the Week" program
  4. assigning reading or projects over school breaks
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
One of the goals of bell-to-bell teaching is to communicate to students high expectations for engagement and learning. Bell-to-bell teaching engages students in meaningful activities throughout a given class period and conveys to students the expectation that they are capable of achieving challenging learning goals, and the assurance that they will receive the support they need to achieve them.

Objective 0003 
Understand research-supported curriculum and instructional practices for students in the middle grades.

5. Which of the following statements provides the best rationale for using an interdisciplinary approach to instruction in the middle grades?

  1. Though young adolescents are gaining the ability to think abstractly, they still have a relatively short attention span.
  2. A young adolescent's achievement level in a particular discipline is directly related to the amount of engaged time the student spends on that discipline.
  3. The young adolescent's brain looks for patterns, connections, and coherence when processing information.
  4. Providing young adolescents with opportunities to participate in planning and evaluating their own learning creates an optimal learning experience.
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
The cognitive development of young adolescents is characterized by the emerging ability to think abstractly. Human brain research indicates that information learned in isolation tends to remain in isolation and appears to be more difficult for students to process and recall. Brain research suggests that the young adolescent's brain constructs meaning better when it finds patterns that are provided by interdisciplinary studies. Interdisciplinary studies are especially meaningful for young adolescents because they may be better able to detect patterns due to their growing knowledge base.

Objective 0003 
Understand research-supported curriculum and instructional practices for students in the middle grades.

6. Early in the school year, a middle grades teacher would be most justified in making significant adjustments to the planned curriculum if the teacher discovered that:

  1. the school has obtained new resources to support students' acquisition of disciplinary knowledge and skills.
  2. a large number of students have little or no interest in learning due to negative prior school experiences.
  3. colleagues are striving to implement a standardized instructional approach across multiple disciplines.
  4. many students have not yet acquired the prerequisite skills needed to benefit fully from instruction.
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Prerequisite skills are the foundational knowledge and skills needed to progress through a curriculum. These skills enable students to link new learning to what they already know and can do. Gaps in prerequisite skills are a barrier to ongoing learning and mastery of new content. If a teacher is aware that gaps exist, adjusting the curriculum to address the gaps will help ensure that students will be successful and make progress in their learning.

Objective 0004 
Understand research-supported assessment practices in the middle grades.

7. A seventh-grade teacher makes a practice of analyzing students' performance on classroom assessments. In these analyses, the teacher looks for error patterns in overall class performance. The most important benefit of this type of analysis is:

  1. helping the teacher identify areas or topics on which to focus professional development.
  2. facilitating the teacher's ability to identify instructional strategies or techniques that are and are not effective.
  3. enabling the teacher to target concepts and skills that need to be reinforced or retaught.
  4. alerting the teacher to specific students who may have undiagnosed learning disabilities or cognitive delays.
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
In an error analysis, a teacher categorizes the items students miss on an assessment and seeks to answer questions such as Were there particular questions that a number of students missed? Were student errors on missed questions similar? and Do student errors represent an apparent misunderstanding of specific content or process? By considering questions such as these, the teacher will be able to focus subsequent instruction in a way that provides appropriate practice and reinforcement or reteaching of content and skills using a different approach.

Objective 0004 
Understand research-supported assessment practices in the middle grades.

8. Which of the following statements describes an important consideration regarding assessment accommodations for students with disabilities on statewide assessments?

  1. Assessment accommodations for a student should be aligned with what occurs and is provided during classroom instruction and testing.
  2. The provision of assessment accommodations should depend on the disability and the setting in which a student receives instruction.
  3. Additional time should be allotted prior to beginning the assessment to familiarize a student with the accommodations.
  4. The primary purpose of assessment accommodations is to provide a student with an educational advantage to compensate for a disability.
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
The provision of assessment accommodations on statewide assessments that are aligned with a student's current accommodations in classroom contexts is an important step in ensuring continuity of services. The introduction of new or different accommodations can be disorienting or distracting to the student. The consistency of this approach enables the student to focus his or her attention more fully on the content of the assessment.

Objective 0005 
Understand disciplinary literacy foundations, curriculum, and materials.

9. In the continuum of language development, most students in the middle grades are beginning to demonstrate which of the following abilities?

  1. adjusting the choice of words and/or language sophistication to suit the context
  2. using context to comprehend words with multiple meanings
  3. expanding vocabulary to include academic language in addition to functional language
  4. using reading as a tool to gain information about topics of interest
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Most students in the middle grades have developed perspective-taking skills that enable them to consider information and situations from others' points of view. It is this ability that supports careful selection of language for different contexts and/or audiences. For example, a sixth-grade student is better able to adjust the way in which information is communicated (e.g., vocabulary, sentence structure) to be comprehensible to different groups (e.g., a group of first-grade students, a group of peers, parents/guardians) than would a much younger student.

Objective 0005 
Understand disciplinary literacy foundations, curriculum, and materials.

10. A seventh-grade teacher makes a practice of having students use various types of graphic organizers to display meaning-based connections between words or phrases in the texts they read. This approach is likely to be most effective in helping students gain proficiency in which of the following aspects of language?

  1. pragmatics
  2. syntax
  3. morphology
  4. semantics
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Semantics is the aspect of language that deals with the meaning of words and phrases. Graphic organizers, one form of which is a semantic map, display meaning-based connections between a word or phrase and a set of related words or concepts. Graphic organizers help students identify, understand, and recall the meanings of words and build conceptual knowledge of words.

Objective 0006 
Understand research-based instructional approaches for promoting disciplinary reading comprehension skills in the middle grades.

11. Students in an eighth-grade art class are researching specific periods of art. The students will create a presentation and an original piece of artwork reflective of the period they are researching. At the beginning of the project, the teacher has students develop an outline of their topic and provides students with colored note cards to use when gathering information. The students will use a different-colored card for each source. The teacher demonstrates for students how to notate their cards with the relevant section of their topic outlines (e.g.,  roman numeral 1 .A,  roman numeral 2 .D). Periodically, the teacher guides students in organizing their note cards according to the topic outline to check for information gaps or conflicting information. This technique is likely to be most effective in helping students develop which of the following skills?

  1. formulating an appropriately focused question to guide the information-gathering process
  2. determining the credibility of information gathered from various sources
  3. conducting a comparative analysis and synthesis of information from multiple sources
  4. distinguishing between factual information and statements of opinion
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
The teacher's strategy provides students with a visual technique to support their research process. The color-coded note cards provide a quick reference with regard to the extent of information gathered from each source and helps students synthesize information from different sources. The outline notations facilitate students' ability to identify gaps in the information needed to complete their research, a key analytical task in an effective research process.

Objective 0007 
Understand research-based instructional approaches for promoting disciplinary writing skills in the middle grades.

12. A middle grades teacher has reviewed students' first draft of an essay on a self-selected health topic. The teacher made brief notes on each student's paper. Examples of the teacher's feedback are shown below.

The most significant problem with the teacher's feedback is that it:

  1. lacks adequate specificity to guide students in the revision process.
  2. targets for revision only one aspect of students' writing.
  3. fails to provide students with a timeline for making requested revisions.
  4. communicates little desire to support students in revising their work.
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
Though the examples of teacher feedback provided offer some direction to students with regard to aspects of their work that require improvement, the feedback is insubstantial. Without concrete suggestions, students may or may not have a sense of how to go about revising their work. For example, the feedback directing a student to "add more information" should be expanded to identify where to add information and what type of information should be added to the essay so that the student can make effective revisions to the essay.

Objective 0007 
Understand research-based instructional approaches for promoting disciplinary writing skills in the middle grades.

13. A middle grades teacher is preparing students to develop an essay in which they make an evidence-supported argument. Before beginning the writing assignment, the teacher engages students in a "philosophical chairs" debate. The teacher poses a question that presents an opportunity for different positions. The teacher then supplies students with a few articles related to both sides of the question. Students then engage in a debate, citing evidence from the articles to support their position. Which of the following closing activities to this lesson would best support students in developing a successful, evidence-based essay?

  1. Students work in pairs to complete a Venn diagram on which they list reasons for each side of the question.
  2. Students transfer their thoughts from the debate to a written paragraph in which they state a point of view plus three reasons to support that point of view.
  3. Students examine a model essay on the question and highlight text references that support the stated position.
  4. Students participate in another discussion in which they consider a second question about the same topic.
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Philosophical chairs is a text-based debate strategy that requires students to gather information from one or more texts to form an opinion and to use information from the texts to support their opinion. This verbal activity serves as preparation for an upcoming written assignment. The most logical closure to this lesson is to further prepare students for the written assignment by having them develop a brief synopsis of what they have discussed.

Objective 0008 
Understand research-based instructional approaches for promoting speaking, listening, and disciplinary vocabulary skills in the middle grades.

14. For a lesson on the elements of photographs, an art teacher plans to provide students with instruction on the words composition and perspective. This decision best demonstrates the teacher's understanding of how to:

  1. support students' use of a wide range of vocabulary.
  2. identify academic vocabulary for a specific instructional purpose.
  3. differentiate vocabulary instruction to meet students' diverse learning needs.
  4. pre-assess students' knowledge of content vocabulary.
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.
Academic vocabulary represents the language of the discipline that students need to learn and use to participate and engage meaningfully in the content area. Though the words composition and perspective may be familiar to students in some contexts, they have specific meanings and use in the field of art. The teacher's decision to provide instruction on these words demonstrates the understanding that students need to know the words as they relate to photography.

Objective 0008 
Understand research-based instructional approaches for promoting speaking, listening, and disciplinary vocabulary skills in the middle grades.

15. Which of the following statements describes the most important benefit of providing students in the middle grades with instruction in structural analysis of words?

  1. Students are better able to understand word meanings in a given context by breaking unfamiliar words into phonetic segments.
  2. Structural analysis enables students to decode unfamiliar words with greater fluency.
  3. Students are able to become more efficient readers when they examine familiar word parts to gain insight into word meanings.
  4. Structural analysis supports students' ability to use newly learned words in an appropriate context.
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
Structural analysis is the process of breaking words down into their basic parts (prefixes, root words, suffixes) to determine word meaning. Knowledge of a few word parts can give clues to the meanings of a large number of words. For example, the word bicyclist can be broken down as follows: bi—prefix meaning two; cycle—root meaning wheel; and ist—a noun suffix meaning "a person who." Therefore, structural analysis suggests that a bicyclist is a person on two wheels—a meaning that is close to the word’s formal definition.

Objective 0009 
Understand middle grades education philosophy and organization.

16. The emergence of the middle grades educational philosophy was a response to the concern that traditional junior high school programs:

  1. interrupted the natural transition from childhood to adolescence.
  2. led to a steep decline in achievement levels, hindering later academic success.
  3. replicated high school programs, but on a smaller scale.
  4. included curricula that overlapped with elementary and high school programs.
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.
Despite initial successes of junior high schools, these schools tended to adopt the curricula, grading systems, schedules, and regimentation of high schools. Fifty years after junior high schools were established, educators began to call for middle schools with a different grade organization and developmentally responsive program to provide a more gradual and appropriate transition from elementary school to high school. Rather than departmentalization, teacher specialization, and tracking, middle schools would feature interdisciplinary teaming and small learning communities more suited to a growing understanding of the unique developmental needs of young adolescents.

Objective 0009 
Understand middle grades education philosophy and organization.

17. A middle school is implementing Friday afternoon exploratory classes. The classes, which last for six weeks, are interest-based and cross grade levels. Planned classes include coding, culinary arts, film studies, yoga, and robotics. Classes will be taught by teachers and outside content experts. Some parents/guardians are questioning the value of using school time for these classes. Which of the following teacher actions represents the most appropriate response to this concern?

  1. proposing to parents/guardians that students who participate in the exploratory classes must have passing grades in their other classes or attend a study hall
  2. distributing to parents/guardians a packet of research supporting the use of exploratory curricula in the middle grades
  3. offering to form a committee of parents/guardians who will oversee the exploratory classes to ensure relevance to the school's goals
  4. holding a meeting for parents/guardians to explain how exploratory curricula contribute to the learning and development of middle grades students
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
When a school implements any new program, the best way to secure stakeholder support is to make sure that affected groups have full information about the program, its goals, and intended outcomes. Directly providing parents/guardians with information about how the planned exploratory program is responsive to the developmental needs of young adolescents and how it can be expected to support their learning in a broader way is the most effective way to make sure that parents/guardians have the appropriate information. This action will go a long way toward alleviating concerns about use of school time.

Objective 0009 
Understand middle grades education philosophy and organization.

18. Competency in which of the following areas is most important in successfully advocating for middle grades programs?

  1. interacting socially with potential allies to acquire helpful financial support and topic-specific resources
  2. utilizing modern technologies to locate and manage information about the progress of classroom interventions
  3. conducting collaborative action research to provide an evidence base for instructional decisions
  4. using effective oral and written communication skills to deliver presentations tailored to various audiences
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Effective advocacy messages take into account what will work with a given audience to build support. Audiences respond better to messages that are tailored to them. Whether conveying advocacy messages orally or in writing, it is important to use effective and appropriate communication skills. These skills include use of language, complexity of vocabulary, and length of message. Different audiences or stakeholder groups perceive issues from different perspectives and knowledge bases. Communications that may be appropriate and effective with a group of educators are likely to be different from communications that will be appropriate and effective with school board members, legislators, parents/guardians, or community members.

Objective 0010 
Understand the professional roles and responsibilities of the middle grades teacher.

19. A middle grades teacher is a representative on a school improvement team that is developing strategies for enhancing the overall learning environment in the school. Other members of the committee include the principal, a parent/guardian representative, and the school counselor. The teacher can best support the committee in achieving its goal by providing input on which of the following topics?

  1. current research about external influences on the attitudes of young adolescents
  2. typical interests and extracurricular activities of the student population
  3. specific issues, such as disability or language learning, present in the student population
  4. cognitive processes and developmental needs of young adolescents
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.
Each member of the school improvement team described brings a different perspective to the issues discussed. As a member of a school improvement team, a middle grades teacher brings to the table the most direct experience with young adolescents and knowledge of how they learn and develop. This expertise enables the teacher to provide the team with valuable insights into the feasibility and likely effectiveness of proposed strategies for improvement.

Objective 0010 
Understand the professional roles and responsibilities of the middle grades teacher.

20. A fifth-grade music teacher uses the school database to e-mail students' parents/guardians about the teacher's availability on weekends and after school to teach violin and piano to students at a reasonable hourly rate. The teacher's actions raise ethical concerns about:

  1. utilizing school resources to profit financially.
  2. suggesting to families that some children are less capable than others.
  3. giving unfair educational advantage to a few students.
  4. offering extracurricular activities without administrative approval.
Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.
A school database is considered a school resource and generally contains directory information about students and their families. Because the teacher earns additional income from lessons provided outside of school, the use of the school database information to further financial gain would be an inappropriate and unethical use of a school resource