IRI and Struggling Readers

IRI and Integrating Instructional-Level Social Studies Trade Books for Struggling Readers in Upper Elementary Grades.

IRI is known as Informal Recognition Inventory which consists of three different assessment tasks: WRI (Word Recognition Inventory), QWIK (Spelling) and Passing Readings. IRI is a way to assess students to see what kind of reading level they on are. By assessing students to find their reading level, parents and teachers can work more with students to help them achieve their goals for a better reading level. Yes, it is very hard to assess all 20 plus students in a classroom. However, teachers can give a Spelling Assessment to the entire class and it would simply take about 15 minutes (maybe more or less depending on the grade level). Teachers that need to assess students and are unable to find the time could ask for a volunteer to come in and help out with the WRI, which can simply be done on the computer, or with the Passage Readings which do not take very long at all. Assessing students during the first week of school is a necessity for teachers so they know what kind of reading level their students are on. Without knowing their reading level, teacher would have to guess on where they think each student should be. If teachers had to guess reading levels, students would not properly be taught and may never get anywhere in their reading career. The article stated that even though students are on different reading levels they are still ALL able to be included in a lesson. In a classroom, if there are three different reading level groups, the teacher should have three different books that fit each reading level. This way each student is able to learn about the same topic at the same time. (This also makes it easier for teachers; teachers will not be teaching the same lesson 3 different times.)

Yes, there are some students that are not on the reading level that they should be. However, I feel that students who have a hard time trying to read and are asked to read in front of the ENTIRE class will end up feeling embarrassed and they will not want to continue to expand their reading skills. I think that teachers who know that students will not be comfortable reading aloud should not ask that student to read; if the student volunteer to read that would be outstanding and as a future teacher that would be the first student that I would call on to read. Students that are not good at doing something become easily frustrated with that task and do not want to continue with it. When students are asked to read and the teacher continues to push the student, the student will become very frustrated and angry at the situation. From personally experience, when I try to do something and it does not work out the way that I would like it to, I have to leave that task and return later; otherwise, I would never finish a task that is frustrating to me!

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