Hello all, I just found out I passed the RICA on the first try! I want to give any advice I have obtained because I am thankful for this forum when I was seeking advice. Just some background: I do not have any prior reading teaching experience and I have not taken any of my teaching credential classes yet. I only studied from the Ready for Revised RICA by James Zarillo and watching the Chris Boosalis Teaching Reading videos on Youtube. I would also suggest taking the practice tests on the website and practice typing out the essay prompts ( may be very time consuming, but very useful for me). I studied for about 3 weeks after work, and it was stressful but I passed with all +++ and ++++ on all the categories. Let me know if you have any questions because I know how stressful and nerve-wracking it can be! I read how many people had to re-take the test that I couldn’t even sleep the night before! Good luck to all!!!!! : )
Well done!!! I’ve read other posts where aspiring teachers claimed you *had* to have prior teaching experience to pass these tests and you provided a counterexample to that. And you only studied for 3 weeks, not months and months. Wow! See everyone, it CAN be done. Once again, congratulations! Edit: If you haven’t done so already, I would take the CBEST and CSETs for your subject area to get those done with and then you can just focus on your teaching credential.
Congratulations, Christine Chan! Deferring RICA can be practical for many elementary-education credential candidates. A good deal of the content is taught explicitly in reading-instruction methodology coursework, and many credential candidates find that the topics and strategies that seemed so obscure as the professor laid them out suddenly make a great deal more sense when student teaching serves up a number of real live kids really acquiring literacy. To top it all off, the state's position is that RICA is required to apply for the preliminary credential but not before that (in contrast to the basic-skills and subject-matter requirements, which by state law must be satisfied before a credential candidate's official student teaching begins). Most CSU credential programs require CBEST and CSET-MS at the time of application but either require RICA near the end of the program or leave it to the credential candidate. With all of that said, however, there's certainly no principled reason that a bright and determined credential-program applicant couldn't muster the means to pass RICA before starting the program - and clearly, Christine, you did. Again, congratulations!
I did it the same way, this was in 2010. Actually I didn't even use a book, just Google lol. I had no teaching experience, still in the credential program. I had read that so many people failed so I didn't know what to expect. Honestly I only studied terminology, since I had no idea about a lot of the keywords. But I think the big help was the no-stress feeling, because I had already passed all the tests I needed, this was just in addition to make myself more marketable. I think a lot of questions were common sense from what I remember.
You just used Google, lol! That is priceless. Don’t let all those test prep companies know that, haha!
I also just passed on the 1st attempt. If anyone has any questions, please reach out to me. I am in agreement with the James Zarillo and Chris Boosalis approach. I focused on memorizing his graph and used the same words he used when answering my essay questions. I scored low on the word analysis response, so be careful there.
