Correct Response: B. Cloze activities require students to complete sentences with words that are syntactically appropriate for their placement in the sentence and semantically appropriate for the sentence's meaning. A is incorrect because word recognition skills and reading fluency are typically assessed through an oral reading assessment, whereas a cloze activity typically involves silent reading and a written response. C is incorrect because, like word recognition skills, decoding skills are better assessed through an oral reading assessment. In addition, unless the teacher carefully planned that every fifth word in the passage represented specific spelling patterns or orthographic guidelines, the teacher would not necessarily gain much insight into the student's range of spelling skills simply by reviewing the student's spelling on the cloze assessment. D is incorrect because metacognitive strategies encourage students to think about their own thinking as they read. In the cloze activity described in this scenario, students are not necessarily given opportunities to reflect on their thinking. Sometimes teachers ask students to justify their answers in a cloze activity, which would promote metacognition, but the students in this scenario were not asked to do so.
