Correct Response: A. Option A is correct because conceptually challenging words, especially those associated with a new content-specific unit of study, are not likely to be in students' oral vocabularies, let alone in their reading vocabularies. To support students' reading comprehension of content-area texts associated with the unit, it is critical to introduce students to key concepts and associated vocabulary in both their oral and written forms prior to reading. Options B and C are incorrect because high-frequency words, whether with irregular spellings (B) or multiple meanings (C), are likely to be in students' reading vocabularies. Similarly, by fifth grade, students should have mastered reading many multisyllable words that include more than one common syllable type (D), so a word's syllable types alone would not necessarily indicate that the word is unfamiliar to students.
