New Hampshire Foundations of Reading Practice Test

A teacher uses sentences featuring homographs. What skill is best promoted through this activity?

1. Identify and decode common homographs.

2. Use structural clues to identify the meaning of words.

3. Cluster new vocabulary together into meaningful groups.

4. Find and use synonyms for common words.

The correct answer is: Identify and decode common homographs.

Employing sentences featuring homographs primarily promotes the skill of identifying and decoding common homographs. Homographs are words that are spelled the same but have different meanings and often different pronunciations, depending on the context in which they are used. By presenting these words within sentences, the teacher encourages students to recognize and distinguish these words based on contextual clues. This activity facilitates comprehension and prompts students to think critically about how the same spelling can lead to varying meanings in different contexts. Understanding homographs requires not only knowing their definitions but also being able to decode them in reading passages effectively, thus enhancing their overall reading proficiency and vocabulary acquisition. Students learn to identify which meaning is appropriate based on the sentence structure and surrounding vocabulary, fostering deeper engagement with the text.