How to Prepare for the VRA Exam (Virginia Reading Assessment)
The VRA exam is a Virginia Reading Assessment that measures the competence of reading teachers. It is designed for elementary and special-education reading instructors and has a separate exam for reading specialists.
Pearson Education creates and administers the VRA exam on behalf of the Virginia Department of Education. It provides a number of resources to help Virginia reading teachers prepare for this state certification test.
It is important to study hard for this test. Unlike a number of teaching certification test, the Virginia Reading Assessment has both multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. The second type of question is going to require test takers to apply their knowledge of reading instruction to give a unique written answer. This requires substantial knowledge of reading instruction, not just recognizing the correct answer from multiple-choice options.
The VRA study guide provides a list of domains tested on the exam. You can access that guide (only a portion of the guide is posted there) by using the link in the Resources near the bottom of this article. The domains simply provide the main topics tested, but that is a good guide to help determine your strengths and weaknesses when preparing for the VRA test.
Go to the "Preparation Resources" document. This contains a glossary of terms that you definitely need to know for the test and, more importantly, a full reading list of references that you can use to get ready for this Virginia teacher certification exam.
There are 16 reading-instruction exam references on the reading list. Although this could be pretty expensive, the clear best way to prepare for the Virginia Reading Assessment is to actually read and absorb the material found in those textbooks and other test references. This could take quite a bit of time. Allow for a few months to prepare for the VRA exam. A large number of Virginia or other state teacher certification tests do not even provide specific exam references. So do not waste this opportunity for this good source of exam preparation.
There are also some VRA practice test questions for both types of reading exams administered to Virginia reading teachers. Access those practice items on the "VRA Study Guide" page.
Resources:
Pearson: VRA Exam Study Guide
Pearson: VRA Exam Preparation Resources
