NYSTCE Students With Disabilities Practice Test

What is the best instructional approach for helping Willow improve her ability to blend and segment phonemes?

1. Vocabulary study guides

2. Graphic organizers

3. Activities for phonemic awareness

4. Oral reading exercises

The correct answer is: Activities for phonemic awareness

The best instructional approach for helping Willow improve her ability to blend and segment phonemes is focused on activities that specifically target phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the skill that involves recognizing and manipulating the individual sounds, or phonemes, in spoken words. By engaging in activities designed for phonemic awareness, Willow can practice blending sounds to form words as well as segmenting words into their constituent sounds. Activities for phonemic awareness often include exercises such as listening games, sound matching, and segmenting exercises where students practice identifying the first, middle, and last sounds in words. These targeted practices are critical for the development of reading skills, as they lay the foundation for understanding how sounds in spoken language correlate to letters in written language. In contrast, the other options do not directly address the specific auditory discrimination and manipulation skills necessary for blending and segmenting phonemes. Vocabulary study guides focus more on word meanings and usage rather than the sounds that make up words. Graphic organizers can be beneficial for organizing information, but they typically deal with visual representation of ideas rather than auditory skills. Oral reading exercises might help with fluency and comprehension, but without a specific focus on phonemic manipulation, they do not provide the same targeted practice essential for developing blending and segmentation skills