Kayla Litofsky

March 22, 2018

Informal Reading Inventory

Word Recognition in Isolation. Kate did an excellent job reading the words for each list she got
through. She attempted all words, trying to sound out each phoneme, even the words that
were a little difficult. Kate was able to get all the way up to the sixth-grade reading list,
although we used the fifth-grade list as her frustrational level because of she scored a 15/20
and then a 11/20, so we found that the fifth-grade level was more appropriate. Kate should
work on recognizing words that have double vowel, such as in fluent, biography, and
championships. She should also work on distinguishing between long vowels and short vowels
in words such as in pilot and memorize, where she used the opposite vowel sound.

Word Recognition in Context (Passages). Kate read the passages beautifully and with
expression. As far as word recognition, she still attempted the words she did not know and did
a great job reading the entirety of each passage. Kate’s mistakes were similar to her missed
words in isolation- words with double vowels such as foul and wailing. Sometimes Kate guesses
on words that she does recognize, such as with the word horrifying, she said horrible because
that was a word she knows. Kate should work on sounding out each word, clapping out the
syllables, so that she can see where each sound begins and ends. We reached Kate’s frustration
level, which was sixth grade. Her independent level was third/fourth, and instructional was
fifth.

Comprehension. Overall, Kate answered the comprehension questions with the necessary
answers. She usually included some detail in her answers, especially for the passages on her
independent and instructional level. At first, Kate struggled with answering the questions from
memory and was tempted to look back at the passage, but with a little push she was able to
answer most questions correctly. In fact, her comprehension scores were continuously high,
getting 100% and over 83%, until reaching her frustrational level. Kate was able to answer
questions regarding setting, plot, and characters, but struggled with vocabulary questions. Kate
should work on vocabulary within readings, and thinking about what words could mean based
on sentence context and her prior knowledge.

Fluency. During the independent level readings, Kate read with a good speed and lots of
expression in her reading. Kate would change her voice as she read quotes, and showed
excitement when there was an exclamation point, which was quite endearing. She actually sped
up in words per minute when she got to the fourth grade passage, despite it being a grade level
ahead. When Kate would get stuck on words, she would slow down her speed of that particular
sentence because it seemed she was not sure if there were other difficult words coming.
Kate does falls within the appropriate third grade expected reading rate, although she should
continue to work on fluency and speed in order to keep pushing forward as she goes to fourth
grade.
Reflection. I really enjoyed administering the IRI with my student, Kate. She was very willing to
let me work with her and seemed to enjoy reading the passages especially. In administering the
IRI, it was interesting for me to see what types of words she was able to say immediately and
which words were a little more challenging. I was really curious to see how Kate would do
regarding reading the passages and answering the comprehension questions, since I have never
seen her during reading. While listening to Kate read and seeing how she did, I personally did
not enjoy scoring the IRI because I felt like I was giving her a grade, even though this was not
the case. The scores did end up being useful, but sometimes I think teachers get so tied up in
test scores that they do not pay attention to the true student and what their potential really is
regarding literacy. Overall, I did enjoy this assignment and found it useful as it is very similar to
literacy assessments we will be doing as teachers in our own classrooms.