Informal Reading Inventories

Commercially prepared informal reading inventories (IRIs) are widely available. In addition, many basal reading series include their own version of an IRI with their programs. Most IRIs include more than one reading passage at each level, to be used for further testing, and they may focus on assessing oral reading skills, comprehension in both oral and silent reading (by use of questions and /or retellings), or listening comprehension. The student's independent, instructional, or frustrational reading  level may be determined. By systematically marking miscues (errors), a teacher can determine a student's strengths and areas of need. By asking comprehension questions after reading, you may determine if the student is having difficulty understanding what he or she reads. This may be due to word recognition problems, disfluency, lack of comprehension strategies, or failure to monitor and "fix-up" comprehension. You may be able to use the results of an IRI to find out which word recognition or comprehension strategies your students are using on their own.

To learn more about the types of reading inventory assessments, click on the following link.

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/critical-analysis-eight-informal-reading-inventories