RICA - Reading Instruction Competence Assessment

Why?

I think it's because the state wants to know if an aspiring teacher knows how to teach reading. Reading is a skill, in contrast with listening and speaking, it's not organic to learn it, as a contrast to crawling, standing up, and walking. Yet eventually most people learn how to read and write. Reading has to be taught explicitly as well as implicitly and the methods vary by culture and age level of the students.

The RICA is nothing like CBEST (California Basic Educational Skills Test) or CSET (California Subject Examinations for Teachers), because it doesn't ask questions that would yield definite, hard-fact answers. For example, You know that there is a specific and definite answer to the question, "What do you call a note whose length is typically equal to four beats?", the answer is a whole note. Now a RICA question could be something like this: A boy is reading at a second grade level. What do you do if you are his fifth grade teacher? That is of course on top of my head and not a RICA question but you can imagine that there are several ways to answer this and there might be times when all of the four possible answers, when properly implemented, might help a student reach the desired reading level.

What would be helpful is to think about what kind of answers are expected. One's answers should be conservative and balanced. You, as the aspiring teacher, are expected to know that reading instruction depends on both the teacher and the student. Like, you give 50 percent and the kid gives his half. You already know how to give your half, the trick is to persuade the students to put effort in learning to read. There may be times when you feel strongly about a certain way of teaching, but please reserve it for when you get your own classroom and a set of borrowed children ;-)

The RICA tests in five domains:

1.      Assessment

2.      Phonemic Awareness

3.      Fluency

4.      Vocabulary

5.      Comprehension

These five domains are what you would need to focus on. I suggest you forget the whole thing about the content areas, because they are under these domains anyway and on the test results these are what they focus on.

IF- Then

Remember that the format of the questions is always If-Then. IF the child is like this, THEN I will do this. In this review session I will go by domains starting with Domain 2, Phonemic Awareness. I will try to discuss the activities that promote each domain. The format will be as follows:

·         Definition of Domain focus

·         Tasks

·         Assessment

·         Instruction

o   Teach Explicitly

o   Teach Implicitly

·         Notes

 

Please comment and let me know what you think of this type of review. I would really like to know if this is helpful or not.