ORELA Elementary Education (NT102) cheat sheet

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words; phonics is the mapping of those sounds to letters. Phonemic awareness tasks include blending, segmenting, and deleting sounds and require no print.

The five essential components of reading instruction are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension; fluency comprises accuracy, automaticity, and prosody and is typically measured as words correct per minute.

The Simple View of Reading holds that reading comprehension equals decoding multiplied by linguistic comprehension, so a weakness in either factor limits overall comprehension.

In a syllable, an open syllable ends in a vowel sound (long vowel, as in go), a closed syllable ends in a consonant (short vowel, as in cat), a silent-e syllable has a vowel-consonant-e pattern (as in cake), and a vowel team has two vowels making one sound (as in rain).

Common English morphemes: prefixes un-, re-, pre-, dis-; suffixes -s/-es (plural), -ed (past), -ing (progressive), -er/-est (comparative/superlative), -ful, -less, -tion. Morphemes are meaning units; syllables are sound units.

The writing process stages are prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Revising addresses content, organization, and word choice; editing addresses conventions such as grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

The six traits of writing are ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. Rubrics scoring these traits assess writing quality rather than only mechanical correctness.

Text structures include compare-contrast, cause-effect, chronological/sequence, problem-solution, and description; recognizing signal words (because, however, first, therefore) supports comprehension of expository text.

In U.S. history, the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation (1781), was drafted in 1787, and was ratified in 1788; the Bill of Rights (first ten amendments) was ratified in 1791. Federalism divides power between national and state governments, and checks and balances separate power among three branches.

Place value in base ten: each position is ten times the value of the position to its right, so in 4,706 the 7 represents 700. Expanded form is 4,000 + 700 + 0 + 6.

Fraction operations: to add or subtract, use a common denominator; to multiply, multiply numerators and denominators; to divide, multiply by the reciprocal. A fraction a/b is equivalent to (a×n)/(b×n) for any nonzero n.

Order of operations: parentheses, exponents, multiplication and division left to right, then addition and subtraction left to right. Example: 3 + 4 × 2 = 11, not 14.

Area of a rectangle is length × width; area of a triangle is ½ × base × height; circumference of a circle is πd or 2πr; area of a circle is πr². Volume of a rectangular prism is length × width × height.

Mean is the sum divided by the count; median is the middle value when ordered (average of the two middle values if the count is even); mode is the most frequent value; range is maximum minus minimum.

The scientific method steps are question, hypothesis, experiment with controlled variables, data collection, analysis, and conclusion. An independent variable is manipulated; a dependent variable is measured; constants are held fixed.

Earth and space: Earth rotates on its axis once about every 24 hours causing day and night, and revolves around the Sun once about every 365¼ days causing seasons (tilt, not distance, drives seasons). The Moon's phases result from its changing position relative to Earth and Sun.

Life science: photosynthesis uses carbon dioxide, water, and light energy to produce glucose and oxygen in chloroplasts; cellular respiration releases energy from glucose. Food chains transfer energy from producers to consumers, with decomposers recycling nutrients.

Health and physical education: the components of health-related fitness are cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition. Nutrients include carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and water; handwashing and immunization are key disease-prevention practices.