My youngest will get answers wrong because of unfamiliarity of items specific to states where it snows. Like a picture of a mitten he will put a g in the blank because he doesn't know the difference between a mitten and a glove. Same with other things like cliff and mountain. He is well read and understands the concepts but for phonics pages he doesn't get the nuances that gloves have fingers and mittens don't until you point them out to him.
This is fairly commonly common for tests with diverse populations. In NY an inner city group realized that city kids were doing poorly on certain sections of the math regents exam not because they didn't know the math but because they didn't get the farm references which the upstate kids did. So the group started lobbying for references to city blocks or subway routes on the test to make things even but also taking the kids to see farms became about more than just getting them outside the city!!!
DeHe
