A Critical Analysis of Eight Informal Reading Inventories

Abstract

For this content analysis study, the author examined and cross‐compared the various ways in which eight informal reading inventories (IRIs) published from 2004 to 2008 address key issues relevant to new U.S. federal guidelines and the National Reading Panel's five critical components of reading instruction. Results suggest the IRIs range in technical rigor, with only one providing sufficient reliability data to support use of alternate forms. Measures for comprehension and vocabulary are more common than for fluency, phonemic awareness, and phonics. Some of the IRI authors offer passages in Spanish. All of the IRIs have their strengths and limitations, but each one offers special features that set it apart from the others. Results have implications for literacy‐related professionals searching for IRIs well‐suited to various educational settings and classroom contexts.

An Exploration of Elementary Teachers’ Views of Informal Reading Inventories in Dual Language Bilingual Programs

“…Teachers of emergent bilinguals must have a solid understanding that they are teaching reading as a generalized ability across languages rather than reading in either English or Spanish. Based on this shared understanding, as Gandy (2013) and Nilsson (2008) advocate in their earlier work, reading assessment tools should be selected intentionally. These researchers advocate that the components of a variety of IRIs be examined and selected according to the needs of the student population.…”

“…IRIs are comprised of graded word lists, leveled passages, comprehension questions for leveled passages, and comprehension rubrics (Nilsson, 2008).…”

“…This analysis allows teachers to peg students' reading with a text level and is a key feature of IRIs (Fountas & Pinnell, 2000;Nilsson, 2008). Based on a given student's percent accuracy of reading words from a leveled text combined with their ability to fully comprehend that text, teachers can establish a student's reading level.…”

The Informal Reading-Thinking Inventory: Twenty-First-Century Assessment Formats for Discovering Reading and Writing Needs—and Strengths

“…This approach to quantifying passage comprehension based on answers to a series of questions of these types persisted until fairly recently, despite criticism that it measured the product, not the thought processes, of comprehension (Cioffi & Carney, 1983, p. 765). Authors of several commercial IRIs responded by adding the option of evaluating comprehension by retellings (Nilsson, 2008), which are difficult to quantify and arguably even more literal than questions of all other types.…”

The Influence of Testing Prompt and Condition on Middle School Students’ Retell Performance

“…Retell and free recall are among the most commonly used approaches for assessing students’ reading comprehension, particularly in classroom assessments (Cohen, Krustedt, & May, 2009) and informal reading inventories (IRIs; Nillsson, 2008). After reading a passage, students are asked to tell what they remember in their own words and, usually, without referring back to the passage.…”