University of Phoenix Material
Informal Reading Assessment Questions
1. What are the components of an Informal Reading Inventory (IRI)?
Word lists/sentences used to guide initial passage placement.
Oral reading passage
Comprehension questions
Some also include:
Listening comprehension
Interest Inventories
Reading Attitude Surveys
Alphabetic Assessments
Retelling checklists
(Informal Reading Inventory, n.d.)
1. What reading skill does an oral retelling check?
Comprehension
2. Describe the difference between an internal assessment and an external assessment.
Internal assessments help a teacher to decide about the direction the instruction will take and to make progress reports to parents. External assessments and not designed by the teacher and are given by a district, the state or federal government, or by a commercial company.
3. What are metacomprehension strategies?
They are strategies that help a reader to understand their reading. They include but are not limited to preview, predictions, connections to prior knowledge, making questions that may need to be answered, re-reading, and retelling.
4. What is a miscue analysis?
This is one way for a teacher to assess comprehension through oral reading. It is based on the idea that students don’t make errors so much as they are trying to make sense of what they read based on their “experiences and language skills” (What is Miscue Analysis? n.d.).
5. What is the difference between a summative evaluation and a formative evaluation?
Summative is a formal evaluation such as a test that is determines a student’s grade. Formative is informal evaluation that guides a teacher in the necessity for reteaching.
6. What is the difference between a criterion-referenced test and a normative test?
If a test is criterion-referenced, then it is related to some type of pre established measure. Tests that report in “grade-level” scores are criterion-referenced. Norm-referenced is a percentage ranking when compared to an average population. You may be in a certain percentile which gives the percent of students above and below your score.
7. What are the major limitations of standardized tests?
There are many limitations of standardized tests. They leave out major portions of our population such as ESL and special needs through their idea of “standard”. They may be too low for schools with high achieving students giving a misperception of student’s progress. They narrow curriculums and force “teaching to the test”. They are not true measures of a student’s learning, since there is much taught in schools that is not reflected in multiple choice questions.
8. What are some characteristics of adept “kid watchers” with respect to the observation of reading skills?
Watchers can watch to see if the student is motivated, interested, enjoying the reading, if they make a habit of reading. They can also observe through questioning whether the student has literature to read at home as well as adult support. Other observations might be does a child know about the book. Do they know where the cover is? Do they hold the book right side up? Do they know punctuation? Do they make a connection with what they are reading and words that they speak?
A good kid watcher watches more than just the oral aspects or comprehension aspects of readers.
9. Describe the levels of reading abilities.
Leveled reading is based on many criteria such as word count from a timed reading, ability to read new words, the ratio of new words to total words, length of sentences, patterning, or repetition. Books may be leveled alphabetically on a professional level such as A-Z books.
Levels may also be determined by other criteria as early emergent, emergent, early fluent, and fluent.
11. Write at least two questions that this week’s readings generated.
Informal Reading Inventory, (n.d.). Retrieved November 2011 from www.csub.edu/~gmohler/documents/reading_inventory.ppt
What is Miscue Analysis? (n.d.). Retrieved November 2011 from http://www.sonoma.edu/users/n/nickel/463/what.is.miscue.analysis.pdf