Bethany Linkous
March 6, 2008
IRI Summary Report
I administered the IRI diagnostic reading assessment to Noel, a second grade student. Noel attends a suburban private school in North Carolina. The assessment went well, providing me with detailed information of her reading instructional level, and the strengths and weaknesses of her reading ability.
I began the assessment with the isolated word recognition task. Noel has adequate sight vocabulary through the third grade level. On the third grade list she was able to read 70% of the words automatically, and 100% of the words when given more time. Noel showed great decoding skills on this task. On the fourth grade level words, Noel was in the gray area on the flash section (55%), but was able to score 75% on the untimed part. She had a big performance drop on the fifth grade level words, marking clear frustration. As a second grader, Noel has strong word recognition power. In looking at her flash scores, I predicted that she would probably read on a third or fourth grade instructional level. I began the oral reading section of the IRI at the second grade level, since this was the highest grade level where Noel scored 80% or better on flash word recognition.
In interpreting Noel’s IRI results, I began by establishing a frustrational reading level. I looked first to see if there was an oral accuracy score less than 90%. There was not, so I moved to the flash column of word recognition for the fifth grade level. This was very low at 25%, a clear frustration for Noel. I looked for further support in the rate columns. Noel’s oral reading rate for the fifth grade passage was 91 wpm, quite low than the expected reading rate at that level. Her comprehension on this passage was slightly below the instructional level. Noel had 8 meaning change errors, out of thirteen total errors. There were no silent reading scores because she reached frustration on the fourth grade passage. I confirmed that the reading of fifth grade material was frustrational for Noel.
I then moved up to the fourth grade level to see if that would be instructional for Noel. She read the fourth grade passage with 96% accuracy, in the instructional range. I moved to the flash score of word recognition and noticed that she scored 55%. This is in the gray area, and on the border of being frustrational. I kept this in mind, as I looked at her rates. She orally read the fourth grade passage at 112 wpm, which was actually adequate for a fourth grade level reader. Her comprehension was a little bit low at 72%. However, there was a big discrepancy in her silent reading performance. She read this passage very quickly with very poor comprehension. I felt that Noel struggled with this fourth grade passage. Because of the inconsistent scores at the fourth grade level, I looked at her performance on the third grade level before deciding if fourth grade was frustrational or instructional.
At third grade, Noel scored 70% on the flash word recognition task, which is in the instructional range. Her rate, 94 WPM, was actually lower on the third grade passage, than on the fourth grade passage. She also struggled with comprehension on this passage, scoring only a 65%. She had a total of 8 errors, with 3 being meaning change errors. It was quite surprising to me to see that she did better on the fourth grade oral reading passage than on the third grade passage. I decided to give Noel another oral third grade passage to see if that would give me a clearer picture of Noel’s reading ability. She read that story with good accuracy. Her rate improved some, but it was still on the lower end of the instructional range. Her comprehension was nearly instructional. It was in comparing those scores that I decided to set Noel’s instructional reading level at third grade, and her frustrational level at fourth grade. Noel’s second grade reading scores reveal this to be her independent reading level.
I then confirmed her reading levels by looking down the columns to find drop-offs in performance. Her automatic word recognition skills show a drop-off from 70% at the third grade level to a 55% at the fourth grade level. The oral rates do not show a drop off, however the silent rates combined with the comprehension scores show a drastic change in silent reading ability. I would rather be on the conservative side and say that third grade is instructional for Noel. In my opinion, there were too many discrepancies in Noel’s reading ability to mark fourth grade as instructional.
I would like to take some time now and describe what I believe are Noel’s strengths and weaknesses as a reader. As a second grade student, Noel is instructional in reading a grade level above. The first strength that jumps out at me is that Noel is an accurate reader. She attends to the print that is on the text. Of the errors Noel made few were meaning change errors, with the exception of the fifth grade passage. She has strong decoding skills which helped her accuracy, especially on the more difficult passages. Noel had an adequate reading rate on the third and fourth grade oral passages, although it was on the lower end of being instructional. A stronger sight vocabulary at these levels may allow her to read at a faster rate.
The area that gave Noel the most trouble was comprehension. I had to probe her a lot on the comprehension questions. Comprehension development as well as automatic word recognition skills would be where I would focus Noel’s reading instruction.
I am going to set Noel’s instructional spelling level at third grade, at 75%, and her frustrational spelling level at fourth grade. However, Noel’s scores were not as clear cut as I first thought. This IRI reminded me how important it is to go back and examine the quality of the spelling errors. When analyzing Noel’s spelling errors I began to rethink these levels. I looked at her incorrect spellings to see how many features she was missing. On the fourth grade list she missed half of the words. However, each word was only missed by one feature except for the word cabbage (Examples: gazed spelled gased, scurry spelled scury, and stared spelled staired). In addition, almost each misspelling preserved the phonemic structure of the word. It appeared that Noel was confused at times which grapheme to use for certain phonemes. This can be seen in the examples gravel and scream. Noel also struggles with the rules in adding the endings of –ed and –ing (examples: chasing, slammed). As a second grader, Noel has sound knowledge of short vowels, high frequency vowel patterns, blends and digraphs. Noel’s strong knowledge of these more basic spelling patterns will assist her in the spelling of more difficult words.
I am going to keep Noel’s spelling instructional level at third grade. One of the reasons for this is because she is a second grader and is already working above grade level. However, I would expect Noel to move through word patterns at this level at a brisk pace. Beginning spelling instruction at the third grade level will help Noel internalize those patterns before moving on to more difficult words.