Praxis Elementary Education Fundamentals: Teaching Reading (8006)
Praxis Elementary Education Fundamentals: Teaching Reading (8006) is a trademark of its owner, which is not affiliated with and does not endorse Test Treasure Publication or TTP Prep.
Praxis Elementary Education Fundamentals: Teaching Reading (8006) is a trademark of its owner, which is not affiliated with and does not endorse Test Treasure Publication or TTP Prep.
10 sample questions for the Praxis Elementary Education Fundamentals: Teaching Reading (8006), with the correct answer and an explanation for each. No account needed. Try each one before you open the answer.
Sections covered on the exam: Foundational Literacy Skills, Fluency and Vocabulary.
Question 1 · Foundational Literacy Skills
Answer: C. Oral blending of onsets and rimes with picture support, before moving to blending individual phonemes
The student has mastered rhyme and syllables but not onset-rime blending, which is the next level on the phonological awareness continuum and a bridge to phoneme blending. Jumping to full phoneme segmentation skips a level the student has not mastered, more rhyme practice repeats a mastered skill, and letter-name drills do not build the oral skill of blending.
Question 2 · Foundational Literacy Skills
A second-grade teacher reviews one student's weekly spelling check. The dictated words and the student's spellings follow. match: mach | pitch: pich | bench: bentch | lunch: luntch | coach: coatch | fetch: fech
Answer: C. Teach that 'tch' follows a single short vowel at the end of a one-syllable word and 'ch' follows a consonant or vowel team
The student uses 'tch' in exactly the wrong places: after consonants and vowel teams (bench, lunch, coach) but not after a single short vowel (match, pitch, fetch). The 'tch' convention, used right after one short vowel letter at the end of a one-syllable word, explains every error. A position-only rule is inaccurate, repeated copying ignores the pattern, and dropping 'tch' would leave the student unable to spell many common words.
Question 3 · Fluency and Vocabulary
A third-grade teacher records the following midyear data for one student, Lena. The grade-level oral reading fluency benchmark at this point is about 100 words correct per minute (WCPM).
| Measure | Lena's result |
|---|---|
| Oral reading fluency | 112 WCPM |
| Oral reading accuracy | 98% |
| Reading comprehension questions | 4 of 10 correct |
| Listening comprehension (same passage read aloud to her) | 4 of 10 correct |
Answer: A. Her word recognition is strong, so the gap likely reflects weak language comprehension, such as limited vocabulary.
In the Simple View of Reading, comprehension is the product of word recognition and language comprehension. Lena reads accurately and fluently, and her listening comprehension is just as low as her reading comprehension, which points to language comprehension (vocabulary, background knowledge) as the weak component. A decoding explanation does not fit 98 percent accuracy, and slowing her down addresses a problem the data do not show.
Question 4 · Fluency and Vocabulary
A fourth-grade teacher asks students to underline the adverb in the following sentence. The tiny frog leaped quickly across the wet log. One student underlines 'wet' and explains: 'It tells more about something, so it is an adverb.'
Answer: D. The student is treating any describing word as an adverb, without checking whether it modifies a noun or a verb.
'Wet' describes the noun 'log', so it is an adjective; 'quickly' describes how the frog leaped, so it is the adverb. The student knows modifiers add detail but has not distinguished what each kind modifies. Adverbs can appear in many positions, and spelling endings do not determine part of speech.
Question 5 · Fluency and Vocabulary
A fifth-grade class is reading this excerpt. I couldn't figure out why Jada wouldn't sit with me at lunch. She'd been my best friend since kindergarten. Maybe she was mad about the science project, or maybe she just wanted new friends. All I knew was that her empty seat felt like a hole in the table.
Answer: C. Because the story is told in first person, readers know only the narrator's thoughts and cannot know Jada's real reasons
The pronouns I and me show first-person narration, so readers are limited to the narrator's guesses about Jada and must read on to learn her real reasons. The excerpt is not third person, a first-person narrator is a character rather than the author, and the simile about the empty seat conveys feeling, not Jada's motive.
Question 6 · Foundational Literacy Skills
Answer: B. Model producing rhymes by keeping the ending of a spoken word and changing its first sound, accepting nonsense words
The student recognizes rhymes but cannot yet produce them, the harder skill. Explicitly modeling how to keep the rime and swap the onset, and accepting nonsense words such as 'zat,' targets production directly. Recognition is already secure, reading printed word families moves to phonics, and abandoning the skill leaves a gap in the continuum.
Question 7 · Foundational Literacy Skills
A fourth-grade teacher listens to a student read aloud from a science article. Text: The water was reheated. Student read: The water was reached. Text: The engineers were unpacking tools. Student read: The engineers were unlocking tools. Text: The material was breakable. Student read: The material was breaking.
Answer: B. Circle the prefix, underline the suffix, read the base word, and then read the word part by part and blend it
The student reads the beginnings of words and then substitutes look-alike words, losing prefixes, suffixes and base words. Marking affixes and reading the base word breaks a long word into familiar, decodable morphemes and supports accurate reading. Guessing from initial letters and context, substituting simpler words, and comparing word shapes all promote inaccurate reading.
Question 8 · Fluency and Vocabulary
A fourth-grade teacher reviews fall data for three students whose reading comprehension scores are below benchmark. The fluency benchmark is about 95 words correct per minute (WCPM).
| Student | WCPM | Accuracy | Vocabulary percentile | Listening comprehension |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Student A | 58 | 90% | 60th | average |
| Student B | 112 | 99% | 12th | low |
| Student C | 104 | 98% | 55th | average |
Answer: A. Student B, who reads accurately and fluently but has a low vocabulary score and low listening comprehension
Student B decodes well but shows weak vocabulary and weak listening comprehension, the profile of a language comprehension problem. Student A's low accuracy and rate point to word recognition as the barrier. Student C has average vocabulary and listening comprehension, so a different factor, such as strategy use or attention, is more likely.
Question 9 · Fluency and Vocabulary
A fourth grader writes the following sentence in a personal narrative. I wanted to play soccer after school, it was raining too hard.
Answer: C. Add 'but' after the comma, because two independent clauses joined with a comma also need a coordinating conjunction.
The sentence is a comma splice: two independent clauses joined only by a comma. Adding a coordinating conjunction ('but') after the comma makes a correct compound sentence that also shows the contrast. Removing the comma creates a run-on, and a comma alone cannot join two complete clauses.
Question 10 · Fluency and Vocabulary
A fourth-grade class is reading this excerpt from a story. The classroom was a beehive the morning of the field trip. Kids buzzed from desk to desk, and Ms. Ortiz's voice floated above the noise like a calm bird. Even Jamal, who never talked before lunch, was bouncing in his seat.
Answer: A. It is a metaphor that compares the classroom directly to a beehive to show how busy and noisy it was
'The classroom was a beehive' states a direct comparison without like or as, which makes it a metaphor. The image suggests constant motion and buzzing noise, which the next sentence extends with 'Kids buzzed.' The simile in the excerpt is the one about Ms. Ortiz's voice, not the first sentence, and the classroom is not given human feelings.
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