Praxis Principles of Learning and Teaching: Instructional Process

1.A third-grade objective says, "Students will understand maps." Which revision can a teacher actually check?

2.A teacher writes, "Students will list three reasons the character changed her mind." Which domain is the main demand?

3.The unit goal is "explain how a community gets water." The first lesson objective is "name two local water sources." How do the two statements relate?

4.A grade-level standard says students compare two texts on the same topic. A teacher plans a week of copying definitions instead. What is off?

5.A teacher is unsure which state standard covers third-grade fractions. Where should she look first?

6.Scope in a curriculum map is best described as what?

7.A map teaches place value in September, addition with regrouping in October, and multi-digit subtraction in November. Which word names that order?

8.Students can add within 20, but the next lesson starts with two-digit regrouping and no bridge. Several students freeze. What should change?

9.Before a lesson on magnets, the teacher asks what students already believe magnets pick up. Why start there?

10.A teacher models how to find the main idea, then students try one paragraph with her prompts, then they try one alone. What is the middle step?

11.A science lesson is a lecture, a worked example on the board, and a short drill of the same steps. Which model dominates?

12.Students are given a rotting-log question and must decide what evidence to collect. The teacher does not show the answer first. Which model is this?

13.A teacher wants students to follow a lab safety routine exactly, the first time they use heat. Which choice fits that goal?

14.Students sort pictures of living and nonliving things and build the category themselves. No definition is given first. This activity mainly supports what?

15.A reading group finishes early every day and gets another page of the same questions. The rest of the class is still on the first page. What do the early finishers need?

16.After a check, six students still cannot tell a main idea from a detail. The class moves on tomorrow. What belongs in tomorrow for those six?

17.A teacher plans a week on rivers that includes a map, a short text, a measurement of the playground "river," and a writing piece. What kind of plan is this?

18.The art teacher and the classroom teacher both use a mural project. One teaches color mixing. The other teaches a history of the neighborhood. What is this collaboration?

19.Who is the best partner when a teacher needs books at several reading levels for tomorrow's science topic?

20.A student's plan says he needs sentences read aloud and a scribe for long writing. Who should the teacher plan that support with?

21.A paraeducator is in the room during math. What is an appropriate use of that adult?

22.Students watch a short video of erosion, then the teacher asks them to point to where the soil moved. Why use the video?

23.A guest who checks local bridges describes one load limit. The objective is "explain why engineers test bridges." What must the teacher still do?

24.Students practice a dialogue in pairs, then switch partners and try it again. Which support for memory is this?

25.A teacher gives seven new vocabulary words, their definitions, and an example, all in one uninterrupted talk. Many students recall only the last word. Why?

26.During a plant lesson a student asks why the class plant leaned toward the window. The teacher had planned to water next. What is the useful move?

27.Halfway through a lesson, most thumbs show "lost" on the meaning of remainder. What should the teacher do?

28.A teacher notes that her think-pair-share produced one student talking and three waiting. She changes the share so each partner has a card to complete. Why change it?

29.Students are grouped by current reading level for a phonics lesson, and mixed by level for a discussion of a read-aloud. Why use both?

30.A cooperative group has four roles, and each role must initial its part of the chart. Why require the initials?

31.A teacher asks a question and calls on the first hand. She then answers it herself. What questioning habit is missing?

32.A student gives a wrong cause for the puddle. The teacher says, "You noticed the low spot. What else had to happen?" What is she doing?

33.Most questions in a lesson are "What year?" and "What is the name?" The objective is to explain a cause. What should change?

34.Before a discussion, the teacher states that disagreeing with an idea is allowed and mocking a person is not. Why say this?

35.A teacher restates a student's point as, "You are saying the bridge failed at the joint," and the student nods. What did the restatement do?

36.The teacher asks, "What is one reason someone might disagree with that cause?" What kind of thinking is she pushing?

37.During a discussion the teacher stands with her arms folded, sighs at a wrong guess, and calls only on three students. Participation drops. What most needs to change?

38.A student from a culture where children do not contradict adults stays silent when asked to disagree with the teacher. What adjustment respects that and still invites thinking?

39.The teacher points to the diagram while she explains, then asks a student to point to the part he means. What is the pointing doing?

40.A teacher says, "You are behind," in a tone the student hears as disgust. The words were meant as a fact about the page. What should she consider?

41.Two students talk at once. The teacher turns toward the one who has not spoken, waits, and says, "I want to hear your idea next." What listening move is this?

42.A transition from the rug to desks takes four minutes and two reminders, and several students miss the first direction. What should the teacher plan?

43.The lesson ends when the bell rings, mid-sentence. Students leave without knowing what the experiment showed. What was missing?

44.An objective says students will measure to the nearest centimeter. The activity is coloring a worksheet about rulers. What is the mismatch?

45.A teacher models a summary, students write one with a checklist, and she reviews two samples before they write a second. Where is the coaching?

46.Some students need the directions in three icon steps. Others read the paragraph of directions easily. What is the fair plan?

47.A student sets a goal to finish the first two steps before recess and checks it off. The teacher taught that routine. What skill is she building?

48.Students compare two accounts of the same storm and underline what each leaves out. Which process is central?

49.The teacher shows how she talks herself through a word problem, then asks students to say their steps softly as they work. What is she teaching?

50.A lesson on fractions uses only symbols. Students who were accurate with fraction strips yesterday are now guessing. What adjustment fits?

51.Students brainstorm ways to reduce lunch trash, then pick one plan and say why it could work. Which pair of processes is that?

52.A teacher wants to know, in the middle of a read-aloud, whether students can say the problem in the story. Which check fits without ending the lesson?

53.Inductive reasoning in a classroom is best illustrated by which task?

54.The teacher states, "All even numbers are divisible by 2," then asks whether 48 fits. Which kind of reasoning is the question asking for?

55.Students read two advertisements for the same cereal and mark words that try to make them feel rather than inform. What skill is that?

56.A student finishes a learning-center card, checks it against an answer folder, and chooses the next card from two that match his goal. What model is this closest to?

57.Students role-play a store clerk and a customer to practice polite requests in a new language. Which model is the role-play?

58.The class simulates a town council deciding where a path should go. Students must use a map and a budget. What is the main instructional gain?

59.Students interview a cafeteria worker about how food is kept cold, using three questions they wrote. Which strategy is the interview?

60.A debate asks whether the class garden should use mulch. Students must cite one observation from the garden. Why require the observation?

61.After reading, students build a concept map linking "erosion," "water," and "slope." What is the map for?

62.A cloze passage leaves out structure words such as "because" and "after." Students supply them. What can this show?

63.The teacher puts a partially worked problem on the board and asks, "What did I do here, and what is still missing?" What is she checking?

64.A homogeneous group is used for a 15-minute phonics lesson. What is a reasonable reason to group that way?

65.For a discussion of a story, the teacher mixes students who are strong explainers with students who are still learning to say a reason. Why mix them?

66.A teacher groups girls with girls and boys with boys for a science investigation so "they work better that way." What is the problem?

67.A multi-age reading group includes a younger student who is ready for the same text as older students. What is a fair reason to include her?

68.Whole-class time is used to launch the question. Small groups then gather evidence. Students write a conclusion alone. Why this order?

69.A one-on-one conference focuses on the one place a student's lead sentence does not match the paragraph. Why keep the conference that narrow?

70.Pair-share is used before a whole-class answer. Several students who rarely speak then volunteer. Why did the pair come first?

71.The teacher asks a question, waits, and only then names a student. Why not name the student before the question?

72.A student answers softly and the teacher says, "Say a bit more about the joint you mentioned." What is the purpose of that follow-up?

73.The teacher asks, "Which of these two graphs would better show change over a week, and why?" What is the question doing?

74.Students must sequence four pictures of a seed becoming a plant and say what clue they used. Which process is required besides ordering?

75.Before writing, students list what they already know about bridges and what they still wonder. How does this help the lesson?

76.A student writes a summary that copies three sentences and adds nothing. The teacher asks him to say the point in his own ten words. Why?

77.The text never says the character is nervous, but her hands shake and she rereads the note. The teacher asks, "What can you conclude?" What skill is that?

78.After three experiments in which plants with light grew and plants in a closet did not, students write one sentence that covers all three. What are they practicing?

79.Students read a short article and a data table, then write a paragraph that uses both. Which process is the paragraph demanding?

80.A lesson plan lists a video, a worksheet, and a game, but no objective. What is the first repair?

81.An affective objective is needed for a lesson on sharing materials. Which sentence fits that domain?

82.A psychomotor objective for a first-grade art lesson should look like which sentence?

83.The teacher notices students slump when a worksheet appears and lean in when a problem is posed as a mystery from the playground. What planning lesson is that?

84.Students use a class computer to graph temperatures they recorded, then describe the shape. What is the technology doing?

85.A teacher stands very close to a student who then stops talking. The student later says the closeness felt wrong. What should the teacher change?

86.While a student explains, the teacher nods, keeps her eyes on him, and does not interrupt. His explanation gets longer and clearer. What supported that?

87.The class is learning to distinguish fact from opinion in a news article for children. Which task matches?

88.Students predict what will happen if the ramp is steeper, then test it and compare the result to the prediction. What cycle is that?

89.The teacher gives students two possible solutions to a playground dispute and asks which one they would try and what might go wrong. What is practiced?

90.A teacher plans enrichment by pulling puzzles from a bin labeled "early finishers" that do not match the lesson. What is weak about that plan?

91.Remediation materials for a phonics gap are storybooks far above the students' decoding. What is the better match?

92.A teacher films herself asking questions and notices she answers half of them. She sets a goal to wait three seconds. What kind of professional move is the film?

93.Students are asked to categorize rocks as they wish, then the teacher has them compare category rules. One group used color and another used texture. What can the comparison teach?

94.A student keeps applying yesterday's addition method to a subtraction problem. The teacher puts one of each side by side and asks, "What is different in the question?" Why?

95.The objective is a written explanation. A student who can explain aloud clearly is still learning to write sentences. What adjustment keeps the objective honest?

96.A teacher introduces a game before students know the skill the game is supposed to practice. The period is spent on the rules. What was out of order?

97.During group work the teacher circulates with a checklist: "each member pointed to evidence at least once." What is the checklist for?

98.The teacher ends by asking, "What did we figure out about the ramp, and what will we try tomorrow?" Students answer in one sentence. What does this ending do?

99.A teacher plans to cold-call only students who look confident. Others stop preparing. What call-on plan better matches the goal that everyone thinks?

100.Students use sentence frames: "I think ___ because ___." A student who rarely finishes a thought completes two of them. What did the frame supply?

101.A lesson includes a model, guided practice, and then independent work that is much harder than the guided examples. Many fail the last part. What is the likely flaw?

102.The teacher asks students to write the objective in their own words before starting: "We are learning to ___." Why do this?

103.Two students argue about a measurement. The teacher says, "Measure it again together and tell me what you both get." What instructional purpose does that serve?

104.A teacher uses the same three-part exit: "one thing I learned, one thing that is still fuzzy." She reads them before the next lesson. How should she use a pile of "fuzzy" notes on the same point?

105.Students work a problem in a group, but the write-up each person turns in must show his own diagram. Why require the individual diagram?

106.A teacher asks, "What would make this explanation stronger?" after a student gives a reason with no example. What is she teaching in that moment?

107.The pacing guide says to start division on Monday. Friday's exit slips show many students still misidentify a remainder. What is the responsible use of the guide?

108.At the end of a unit, students look back at their first explanation and their latest one and name one change in their thinking. What is that comparison for?