Katarra Waldron

IRI Paragraphs

Oral Reading (Word Recognition)

For word recognition, my student’s independent level was 2nd grade, his instructional
levels were 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. I was unable to find his frustration level for word
recognition because he stopped comprehending the passages after 4th and 5th grade and he
was just word calling instead. I was impressed with his ability to read up to 5th grade and
possibly beyond since he is in 2nd grade. Some of the passages I had him reading were non-
fiction passages and had some difficult vocabulary words in them since they were about rather
specific topics. During his oral reading, I noticed that the student would go back and repeat
himself in order to use context clues to self-correct. I thought that this was a good strategy
since he is in the 2nd grade and likely has not encountered many words that he has had to
chunk or use structural analysis to figure out. When he missed words, it was usually a
substitution for a non-sense word rather than a mispronunciation. The student also had some
trouble with some of the vocabulary words from the text, “slope” being a word from one of the
texts that he missed every time he read it. The student also had a good attitude while he was
reading, even as the passages got increasingly more difficult. Not once did he seem like he was
becoming frustrated with the reading material and he seemed to always try his best.

Oral Reading (Comprehension)

For oral reading comprehension, one of the student’s strengths was being able to
identify what the main idea of the passage was, even if it was an informational text which I
think is sometimes harder for students to identify the main idea or the purpose of. For fictional
passages, he did rather well at inferencing and predicting what was going to happen in the
story. He was also able to recall details from fictional passages better than he was in
informational or non-fiction texts. One of his weaknesses was identifying cause and effect. I
don’t think that they have worked on cause and effect in second grade yet so that might be part
of the reason why he had trouble with it. Another one of his weaknesses was identifying the
meaning of vocabulary from the text. This was mainly because some of the texts were non-
fiction and used vocabulary that the student was unfamiliar with. The student also struggled
with sequencing and recalling the order of events. Again, I do not think they have worked on
this yet in the second grade.

Silent Reading (Comprehension)

For silent reading, the student was very good at identifying the main idea of the text. He
was also good at identifying vocabulary from the text which is surprising because that was one
of his weaknesses in oral reading comprehension. One of his other strengths was inferencing
and predicting things that would happen next from the story. His silent reading weaknesses
included sequencing, cause and effect, and identifying details. I was surprised that identifying
details were a weakness since it was a strength in oral reading comprehension. As he read, he
also seemed to read the passages silently faster than he did when he read them orally. It makes
me wonder if he was skimming the text or not reading all of the text which could have
influenced his comprehension performance.

Word Lists
During the word lists, I was really impressed with how well the student did. According to
the scoring measurements set by the IRI, my student went straight from independent too
frustration between 3rd and 4th grade so I wasn’t completely sure what his instructional level
was, so I put it as 3rd grade since both 1st and 2nd grade were also independent. Even after the
student hit the frustration level, he was still working very hard to pronounce the words that he
did not know. He would sound them out to the best of his ability and he never gave up or got
upset about not knowing a word. He was very accepting about the fact that the words were
getting more difficult and he was unable to continue reading them. I noticed that a lot of the
higher level words that he missed had blends and digraphs in the words or had irregular vowel
sounds and letter combinations.