Praxis Early Childhood Education Online Center
This Praxis Early Childhood Education Online Center brings together practice, lessons, worksheets, flashcards and review tools. Choose the resource that matches the skill you want to work on next.
Praxis Early Childhood Education Practice Center
Take a full form with no calculator, then read the explanation under every question you missed. Score literacy and mathematics separately from the three smaller content areas; they are fifty-five percent of the test between them and they respond to completely different study.
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Praxis Early Childhood Education at a glance
This is a content test rather than a pedagogy test, and the balance surprises people: language and literacy is thirty percent and mathematics is twenty-five, so more than half the test is those two subjects. The other half spreads across social studies, science, and a combined category covering health, physical education, and the arts. There is no calculator, which matters more than it sounds when a quarter of the questions are mathematical.
| Test code | 5025 (Early Childhood Education) |
|---|---|
| Status | Current. It was not part of the 5002 to 5005 Elementary Education renumbering. |
| Number of questions | 120 selected-response questions. There is no constructed response. |
| Time limit | 2 hours |
| Calculator | Not permitted. ETS states this explicitly, which is worth noting given that mathematics is 25 percent of the test. |
| Format | Computer-delivered, at a test centre or at home |
| Score scale | 100 to 200 |
| Passing score | ETS does not set one. Each state sets its own qualifying score. |
ETS publishes counts and percentages for all five categories: Language and Literacy 36 questions and 30 percent, Mathematics 30 and 25 percent, Health and Physical Education together with Creative and Performing Arts 20 and 17 percent, Social Studies 17 and 14 percent, and Science 17 and 14 percent. Literacy and mathematics are 55 percent between them.
The five categories, in plain language
ETS lists each category and the topics under it. Here is what each one asks of you.
Language and literacy (30 percent, 36 questions)
The largest category, covering how young children come to read and write.
- Oral language development and its link to literacy
- Phonological and phonemic awareness
- Print concepts and alphabet knowledge
- Phonics and word recognition
- Emergent writing and invented spelling
- Vocabulary and comprehension
- Children’s literature and read-alouds
- Assessing early reading
Mathematics (25 percent, 30 questions)
Early mathematics content, by hand.
- Counting, cardinality, and one-to-one correspondence
- Subitizing and number sense
- Operations and early fact strategies
- Measurement and data
- Geometry and spatial sense
- Patterns and early algebraic thinking
- How young children develop mathematical ideas
Health and physical education; creative and performing arts (17 percent, 20 questions)
Two areas sharing one category.
- Motor development and movement skills
- Fitness, nutrition, and personal safety
- Social and emotional wellbeing
- The elements of visual art and music
- Dramatic play, movement, and creative expression
- How young children develop artistically
Social studies (14 percent, 17 questions)
The social world at an early childhood level.
- Self, family, and community
- Geography and simple map skills
- History and the passage of time
- Citizenship and rules
- Basic economic ideas: wants, needs, and work
Science (14 percent, 17 questions)
Inquiry and the beginnings of content.
- Inquiry, observation, and asking questions
- Living things and their needs
- Physical properties, matter, and motion
- Earth, weather, and the sky
- Safety in an early childhood science activity
A study routine for a two-hour content test
One minute a question, no calculator, and five subjects. The efficient path is to fix the two big categories first and use a deck for the three small ones.
Complete topic map
One hundred twenty-two lessons on the literacy and mathematics that carry more than half this test, each opening in a new tab, followed by the topics ETS lists for each category.
Language and Literacy (30 percent, about 36 questions)
- 01Recognize the stages of language acquisition and what is typical at each stage in early childhood
- 02Differentiate literacy instruction for diverse learners, including English language learners, students with special needs, and gifted students
- 03Describe how print awareness develops and how to build it
- 04Explain the role of phonological awareness in early reading and give concrete examples of phonological awareness tasks
- 05Explain the importance of phonics and word analysis in learning to read
- 06Apply letter-sound correspondences and syllabication in early reading instruction
- 07Apply spelling conventions and teach sight words and high-frequency words
- 08Define fluency and explain how fluency affects comprehension
- 09Identify key ideas and details in literature and informational text and teach students to do the same
- 10Recognize text features and organizational structures in informational text
- 11Analyze point of view in a text
- 12Integrate information presented in written, visual, and oral form
- 13Judge text complexity and apply leveling systems when matching texts to readers
- 14Recognize the developmental stages of writing in young children
Mathematics (25 percent, about 30 questions)
- 15Recognize and extend patterns as an emergent mathematics skill
- 16Apply one-to-one correspondence in early counting
- 17Use grouping and classification activities with young children
- 18Explain subitizing, the instant recognition of a small quantity without counting
- 19Apply sequencing and conservation of number
- 20Apply the counting and cardinality principles that underlie early number sense
- 21Explain the base-ten place-value system and represent numbers within it
- 22Use mental strategies and computation strategies with whole numbers
- 23Perform and model operations with whole numbers
- 24Solve word problems using the four operations
- 25Identify the problem situation a word problem represents, such as join, separate, part-part-whole, or compare
- 26Represent fractions in multiple ways and use visual fraction models
- 27Recognize equivalent fractions and compare fractions
- 28Use unit fractions as the building block of fraction understanding
Social Studies (14 percent, about 17 questions)
- 29Guide young students in exploring and identifying their individual identity
- 30Support interpersonal relationships and appropriate social behavior
- 31Teach group social skills and conflict resolution
- 32Explain how family, community, and social systems influence a child
- 33Explain how institutions influence identity
- 34Support emotional development and self-regulation
- 35Identify the components of culture and explain why culture matters
- 36Describe the ways families address human wants and needs
- 37Explain how cultural perspectives shape individual experience
- 38Recognize language, literature, music, and artistic expression as expressions of culture
- 39Recognize unity and diversity within and across groups
- 40Explain interdependence between cultural groups
- 41Apply spatial thinking and geographic perspectives
- 42Apply geographic concepts such as region, measurement of distance, and landmarks
Science (14 percent, about 17 questions)
- 43Apply unifying concepts of science, including systems, cycles, constancy, and change
- 44Apply the scientific process, including asking questions, testing a hypothesis, and communicating results
- 45Use basic science process skills, including observing, classifying, measuring, inferring, predicting, and analyzing data
- 46Describe the properties of objects and materials
- 47Identify forms of energy, including light, heat, electricity, and magnetism
- 48Describe the position and motion of objects
- 49Identify objects in the sky and describe their properties
- 50Explain changes that affect weather and patterns of daylight
- 51Describe the properties of earth materials, including rocks, soils, fossils, water, and gases
- 52Describe the basic characteristics of organisms and the environments they need
- 53Describe organism life cycles and the inheritance of traits
- 54Explain interdependent relationships in ecosystems
- 55Solve problems by inventing and building solutions, as in an engineering design task
- 56Recognize situations that call for an improvement or a designed solution
Health and Physical Education; Creative and Performing Arts (17 percent, about 20 questions)
- 57Apply concepts of health promotion, wellness, and disease prevention
- 58Identify risks to children’s health and safety and the practices that prevent them
- 59Describe the structure and function of human body systems at an age-appropriate level
- 60Identify the factors that affect mental and emotional health
- 61Identify resources that support mental and emotional health
- 62Recognize environmental, community, and consumer health issues
- 63Explain the harmful effects of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs
- 64Explain the importance of healthy nutrition
- 65Explain how health affects learning and development
- 66Apply principles of motor development and motor learning
- 67Identify the components of health-related fitness
- 68Explain the benefits of physical activity for learning and for enjoyment
- 69Explain how physical activity affects overall development
- 70Explain the purposes for which visual and performing arts are created
Key ideas, details, and textual evidence
Inference, conclusions, and how ideas develop
Word meaning, word choice, and tone
Text structure, features, and organization
Purpose, perspective, and point of view
Evaluating claims, evidence, and reasoning
Integrating information across texts and formats
Sentence Foundations
Sentence Boundaries
Agreement, Verbs, and Pronouns
Punctuation and Capitalization
Spelling and Confused Words
Knowledge of Language
Vocabulary and Word Parts
Counting, place value, and operations
Fractions and decimals
Ratios, proportion, and percent
Algebraic thinking and patterns
The coordinate plane
Measurement and geometry
Data, statistics, and probability
Before test day
Two things decide this one. The first is the calculator rule, because a quarter of the test is mathematics and a candidate who has not done arithmetic by hand recently will be slower than they expect on the first twenty questions. The second is remembering that this is a content test: it asks what you know about early literacy and early mathematics, not primarily what you would do about a child. Where a question does ask about a child, the early childhood answer usually observes first and builds on what the child is already doing.
A USEFUL NEXT STEP
Praxis Early Childhood Education: study questions
What can I study in this Praxis Early Childhood Education Online Center?
This Praxis Early Childhood Education Online Center includes practice, lessons, worksheets, flashcards and review tools. Topics on the page include Key ideas, details, and textual evidence, Word meaning, word choice, and tone, Text structure, features, and organization.
How should I use the Praxis Early Childhood Education resources?
Choose a topic or practice activity from this Online Center. Review the linked explanation, try the practice, and use the result to decide what to study next. Check each resource’s directions for its format and access requirements.
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