Informal Reading Inventory Essay

The National Reading Panel identifies alphabetics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension as four literacy essentials. These fundamentals are what make up readers, without these skills students’ cannot progress in reading. In order for each individual student to thrive teachers must diagnose and implement appropriate reading content. There are many ways to assess each student in the classroom. A favored methodology among classroom teachers is Informal Reading Inventory. Informal Reading Inventory(IRI) is a system that measures the skill level of individual students’ reading performance. Nina L. Nilsson, an experienced scholar in the field of literacy education published a journal article about IRIs and the importance they serve.

The alternative option that gives educators a baseline to accessing students skill sets would be formal assessment, such as standardized testing. A positive to IRI would be it informal nature. There is more pressure attached to standardized testing which could potentially affect their scores. IRIs give teachers one on one time with their students, which allows for a rapport to be established with each child. They also provide further information to shape lessons and the materials used in the classroom. Students that are provided with materials that match their skill levels allow for growth and strengthen readers. In the informational video titled “ Word Study and Deep Spelling Instruction” by Donald Bear he informs the viewer of developmental spelling inventories and how they can be used to categorize students into three groups below, on level, and above level. Being able to identify each student with their appropriate level can help achieve grade level performance. The teacher can turn each word list for each group into activities that help students internalize the words. IRI is also beneficial in the way they are adaptable. Each student is aligned with work that does not exceed their abilities. In an era of standardized testing, IRIs gathers accountable data, allowing to target each students individual needs and allow time for particular instruction each child needs

IRIs provide teachers with effective ways to measure oral reading fluency. Using a grade level oral passage as a screening tool could help teachers gauge what reading fluency is acceptable for some proportion of the class. Comprehension can be measured by asking guided questions after students have read a passage. Guiding questions on IRIs students’ complete can provide teachers with the level of comprehension. Alphabetics are addressed in the word lists provided. Teachers can provide students with a letter-name inventory, a letter-sound inventory, a phonics-inventory which will strengthen their developmental spelling inventory along with strengthen students word decoding (Walpole & McKenna, 2006). Being able to obtain information about students vocabulary, is crucial to establish a vocabulary developmental program. Some IRIs available provides vocabulary knowledge assessments that can gauge the level of vocabulary comprehension. Generally vocabulary and comprehension scores are comparable. When comprehension is scored high, vocabulary scores are typically higher (Gunning, 2014,