When looking to take the Praxis II exam for a specific subject, be sure to choose the subject that you are most interested in teaching, as you must pass for the subject that you will teach. The North Carolina Foundations of Reading Test is one of the required tests that make up the certification process to become a teacher in the state of North Carolina. The exam measures a candidates knowledge and understanding of how to effectively teach and promote literacy in their students. Usually, you’ll need to include your core academic skills scores with your teaching program application, so you’ll need to take the test before you apply.
But, thus far, DPI has not publicly released a plan for school-based coaches in high-need schools, nor has the General Assembly given indication for funding one. “These are essential, non-negotiable methods of teaching literacy that sets a level of quality for instruction,” Kristi Day told educators during a DPI webinar last summer. LETRS for Early Childhood Educators professional learning provides deep knowledge of literacy instruction for the youngest learners. The more children know about language and literacy before they begin kindergarten and first grade, the better equipped they are to succeed in literacy learning and beyond.
This 090 exam is designed to test your content knowledge in order to ensure that you are prepared to teach reading to students. The exam will test you on reading development, reading comprehension, and reading assessment and instruction. It will also determine whether you are able to integrate knowledge when working with texts. This section tests your knowledge of the ability to assess students’ reading proficiency. It will include information about formal and informal assessments and text leveling. As a teacher, you will need to instruct and support both struggling and proficient readers and provide them with data-driven goals and strategies.

Qualitative measurement involves making connections and “reading beyond” the text to analyze and compare outside ideas and experiences. When a teacher leads the entire class, this means that students are “on the same page” in terms of expectations and that they receive the same academic guidance. The drawback of this model is that it does not allow for much differentiation.
Readers who have achieved this level of comprehension respond emotionally and intellectually to the text. They express opinions about the text and compare what they read to their own experiences. Readers at this level are also able to show how authors use textual evidence to support ideas.
The SAT and ACT both count toward the core academic skills requirement. North Carolina Reading tutors using Wyzant are professional subject experts who set their own price based on their demand and skill. Learn about and prepare for your licensure exams using the tools below.
It will also assess how well you are able to determine the literacy of individual students. During this section, you will also be asked questions about teaching fluency. Jen taps into her years as a classroom teacher, reading coach, college instructor, staff developer and over a dozen successful years in Foundations of Reading test preparation to support workshop participants. Her goal is to help each participant pass so that they can move forward in their careers with a strong understanding of reading development as they work with children. Last summer, DPI’s contract for LETRS was delayed because the agency wanted to include existing elementary instructional coaches (as well as English Language Learner and Exceptional Children teachers) in the training.
Most Elementary and Special Education – General Curriculum candidates at UNC Charlotte choose this option. The Pearson General Curriculum Mathematics subtest assesses the mathematics content knowledge that teachers know. The General Curriculum test for North Carolina assesses proficiency in and depth of understanding of each of the elementary subject matters required for an elementary teaching license in North Carolina. It is a test of general content knowledge including language arts, history and social science, science and technology/engineering, and mathematics. The science of reading through LETRS training has transformed the reading program at Freedom Trail Elementary.
Some programs only require you to be scheduled to take the test when you apply. In October 2021, SBE approved a set of literacy instruction standards. These are different from the state standard course of study — which communicate expectations of what students must learn.
Both skills are crucial for literacy; students who are proficient in English can both read and write. After all, that’s what reading is – breaking the code of letters and their patterns. When you think of encoding, you know that it refers to the skill of writing.
The time it takes to complete the exams varies from 1 hour to 4 hours, and questions may come in a variety of formats. Depending on the test, selected-response and constructed-response questions may be present. As always, it’s important to set a schedule and make sure that you have ample time to study for the test.

Foundations of Reading

In this case, there is no synonym to help the reader determine the meaning of “horrible.” However, students can use the other information in the text to infer that the “horrible” dog is bad. Once students reach fluency, they move beyond labored decoding and are able to think more deeply about the meaning of the text. It is after achieving fluency that students really begin to enjoy reading. At this point, reading is automatic and no longer a complicated chore.
Options are available for military personnel to utilize military base test centers with proper identification and authorization. After you schedule your test appointment, Pearson VUE will send you a confirmation email listing your test date, your testing time, the address and phone number of the test center, and directions to the test center.
If a student can break a word into syllables, this can help her to sound the word out. If you have difficulty with a question, flag it, and move on to one that you can answer more easily. If you are 15 minutes late (or more) for your exam, you will not be admitted. Once you enter the testing center and take your seat, you are not allowed to talk to any other test taker.
For starters, children see environmental print frequently and before they begin looking at worksheets or the pages of a book. Furthermore, environmental print has a built-in “cheat sheet” of context clues. Phonemic awareness is a sub-skill that falls under phonological awareness. One example of promoting phonemic awareness is to provide students with a list of words and ask which word does not belong. Your results are based on the number of correct answers plus the score you received for the open-response questions.

Other topics addressed in this section include the identification of fiction genres, figurative language, and point of view. This section tests your knowledge of teaching students to read print words and to understand the relationship between print words and spoken words. In order to do well on this section of the exam, you must be able to identify ways to teach students to recognize letters and their corresponding sounds.
At the independent reading level, the reader has adequate background knowledge for the topic and can interpret the text very quickly, while making few errors. As the name implies, this is the highest level a child can read independently. Running records assess a student’s reading progress through the evaluation of the individual’s oral reading and the identification of error patterns. This type of graphic organizer can also help you to track a student’s growth over time.

Reading Foundations Support

It can also be used by Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) instructors to guide them in the content that should be included in their courses to better prepare their students for the test. This degree will help graduates be more competitive in the job market and increase their earning potential. The program also delivers an avenue for staying up-to-date with trends and best practices, as well as providing access to a rich community of educational professionals. MAED Reading program candidates and faculty participate in a variety of literacy-related scholarship activities. They create and present their work at conferences through poster presentations and conference sessions.

Student Resources

You will also need to draw upon your knowledge of morphemes, homographs, and root words. It is also important that you are able to identify context clues so that you can direct students to infer the meanings of unfamiliar words. A reader who has achieved automaticity is able to automatically interpret a word. Automaticity is developed the same way that most skills are developed – practice, practice, practice!
This test satisfies the homeschool standardized testing requirement in NC. The Foundations of Reading test aims to measure the examinee’s understanding of in-depth, research-based reading and writing development. There are four tests, the Foundations of Reading, Multi-subjects Subtest, Mathematics subtest, and the General Curriculum Multi-subjects & Math subtests, that can be taken. These tests are taken by those interested in teaching Elementary and Special Education.
If you’re testing from home, try setting up your exam space the way it will look on test day, and use it to take practice tests! If you’re studying in your test environment, it can help you recall information when it’s time to take the test for real. These are created by teachers and document the literacy interventions for each individual student, as well as set goals and plans for progress monitoring. The literacy intervention plans are created by districts and meant to document the interventions used, include protocols for Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) alignment, and communicate summer reading camp programming.