MTEL Foundations of Reading

Category - Foundations of Reading

A fifth-grade student reads the sentence, "After playing with her friends all day, Kaylee did her science homework, her geography project, and her English paper in one fell swoop." The student asks the teacher for support in understanding the meaning of the phrase one fell swoop. After explaining the phrase's meaning, the teacher could best deepen and extend the student's understanding of this idiomatic expression by:
  1. Asking the student to find other sentences in the text that use the words fell and swoop.
  2. Discussing with the student additional examples of the phrase used in context.
  3. Directing the student to look up different meanings of fell and swoop in the dictionary.
  4. Showing the student how to create a tree diagram of the structure of the phrase.
Explanation
Correct Response: B. Option B is correct because the phrase one fell swoop is an idiom. An idiomatic expression is a word or set phrase that derives its meaning from common usage and not from the combined literal meanings of component words. After explaining the meaning of an unfamiliar idiom, a teacher can most effectively deepen a student's understanding of the idiom by providing several additional examples of the idiom used in comprehensible contexts. Options A and C are incorrect because one fell swoop functions semantically as a single unit, so strategies for determining the meaning of its component words would not help the student determine the meaning of the idiom as a whole. Tree diagrams (D) are used to represent the grammatical structure of a sentence. This would be useful in helping the student determine the grammatical function of the phrase in the sentence but not its meaning.
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