Praxis PLT: Grades 7-12 Practice Questions

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Are you hoping to become a 7-12th grade teacher? Once you’re familiar with the PLT portion of the Praxis, try your hand at these Praxis PLT practice questions!

Question 1
Which approach to math instruction is best tailored to help the teacher engage a kinesthetic learner?
A. The use of manipulatives such as blocks and geoboards to teach and reinforce mathematical concepts
B. The use of colorful visual models and vivid animated displays to illustrate new mathematical concepts
C. The use of engaging lectures and Socratic class discussions in which students summarize key information
D. The use of complex logical problems to draw students into new math concepts and illustrate math’s practical importance


A: Kinesthetic learners respond to movement and hands-on activities. The correct answer is (A), because the student is able to manipulate objects to learn math principles. Colorful visual models and displays (B) will attract visual learners. Lectures and discussions (C) meet the needs of students who respond to verbal activities. Choice (D) relies on abstract reasoning and providing intrinsic motivation for that reasoning, and it is not particularly suited to kinesthetic learners.


Question 2
Based on the following scenario, which of the following statements best describes Ms. Benzi’s legal obligations?
Ms. Benzi has noticed that one of her seventh-grade students has been coming to class with suspicious bruises on his face and arms. On two occasions several days apart, when she asked the student for an explanation, he said, “I fell down.” Ms. Benzi does not believe that the boy’s pattern of injuries is consistent with a fall. She lives in a state in which teachers are mandatory reporters to Child Protective Services in cases of “suspicion based on facts that could cause a reasonable person in a like position, drawing on his or her training and experience, to suspect child abuse or neglect.”
A. She is permitted to make a report to Child Protective Services, provided that she has first alerted the student’s parents to her suspicions.
B. She is permitted to make a report to Child Protective Services, provided that she has obtained the permission of a school administrator.
C. She is permitted to make a report to Child Protective Services or to school administrators, although she is not required to make such a report.
D. She is required to make a report to Child Protective Services even if she has been denied permission to do so by a school administrator.


D: Mandatory reporting is a law that requires a teacher or other caregiver to report suspected child abuse. Since the teacher suspects the bruising might be the result of abuse, (D) is the correct response. Parents are not to be alerted before a call to Child Protective Services (A), because it is the agency’s job to determine whether abuse has occurred and, if so, who is responsible. The mandated reporter’s legal responsibility supersedes the decision of any school official (B). Reporting under this law is not an option (C) but rather a legal requirement.


Question 3
The teaching and learning strategy described below is an example of which learning concept?
At the end of their unit on the ecosystem, Ms. Sterling creates cooperative learning groups in her 11th-grade earth science class and gives the students an assignment to investigate ways they could make an ecological improvement in their school or community. After Ms. Sterling discusses several ways to gather information and shares a rubric that outlines her expectations for their final presentations, the learning groups work independently. The teacher guides the groups by asking the learners questions related to the information they have gathered, and she suggests additional resources they may wish to consult.
A. Vicarious learning
B. Problem-based learning
C. Mapping
D. Direct instruction


B: Ms. Sterling is engaging her class in problem-based learning because the students are directly collaborating to solve a real-world problem. Choice (B) is correct. In vicarious learning (A), students observe but do not engage directly in an activity. Mapping (C) allows students to make connections between ideas. Direct instruction (D) is explicit, teacher-led learning.


Question 4
Which of the following is NOT an accurate depiction of analytical scoring?
A. Analytical scoring provides separate scores for each targeted skill, thus making clear a student’s areas of strength and weakness.
B. With analytical scoring, a single skill deficit is less likely to dominate the teacher’s assessment of student work.
C. Analytical scoring improves grade reliability by requiring that the grader assign a number of scores to a single piece of work.
D. Analytical scoring focuses on the total effect of student work, rather than the success of individual aspects of the work.


D: Analytical scoring measures a learner’s proficiency by considering the essential elements of the key learning skills involved. Therefore, the correct choice is (D) because it describes holistic grading, which focuses on the effect of an entire work. With analytical scoring, the student’s strengths and weaknesses are assessed for each targeted skill (A), making it less likely that only one skill becomes the focus of an assessment (B). Grade reliability is increased (C) because a variety of criteria are considered.


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