QRI Report

QRI5 (Qualitative Reading Inventory -5) is an informal reading inventory that has word lists and passages per the student’s grade level.  It asses oral and silent reading and listening skills and can be used from pre-k to high school.  The QRI-5 can help determine a student’s independent, instructional and frustration level in reading, by measuring comprehension through story retelling, answering of implicit and explicit comprehension questions.  At the high school level, students are allowed to refer to the reading passages to answer the implicit and explicit questions.  Look backs allow the teacher to analyze what the student remembers and what they comprehend.

The following QRI5 Report will include assessment data from a 8^th grade and 1^st grade student.  The report will also include my analysis of the students’ areas of strengths and weakness along with lessons for intervention.

The first QRI5 assessment report is on an 8^th grade student by the name of Bane.  To begin the analysis, Bane was asked to read the Upper Middle School Examiner Word List.  He correctly identified automatically 100% of the words.  Therefore, he was asked to read the High School Examiner Word List.  With this word list, is identified automatically 65% (13/20) of the words from the list.  He also identified 20% (4/20) of the words by partially sounding them out.  Three of the words from the list he missed: immunodeficiency, chauffer, and retrovirus.  Overall, Bane scored an 85% which is in the upper part of the Independent level in reading.

Since was at the independent level on the high school word list, I asked him to read “Where the Ashes Are – Part 1” which is a high school level literature piece.  When conducting the miscue analysis, the student scored self-corrected on three words (defunct, government, and intricately) and skipped one word.  Therefore his accuracy rate was 706 out of 707 (99.9%) and the self-correction rate was 704/707 (99.4%). These scores indicate that he is reading text that is easy for independent reading.  The fluency was excellent and he decoded the unfamiliar words (defunct and intricately) by using phonemic segmentation.  His rate was 117.8 WPM (words per minute).

Although Bane is reading higher level books, he struggled with comprehending and recalling what he read.  His background knowledge regarding Vietnam and key words that would appear in the passage was an 80%.  He knew that Vietnam was a country were a war took place.  He thought a civilian was a person who lives in a state like a citizen.  He would define “escalation” and “ceasefire,” but loosely defined “convoy.”  He stated that a convoy was “a group of people in the military.”  After reading the passage, Bane was only able to recall 11 out of the 45 (24.4%) ideas within the story.  I asked him if there was anything else he could remember or wanted to tell me and he just repeated many of the ideas he had previously mentioned.  Even though the analysis of the retelling is not used to determine independent, instructional, or frustration levels, it provides information on the student’s understanding of the story structure or structure of paragraphs (Leslie, Caldwell, 2011). 

When I asked him the explicit and implicit questions, he was only able to answer correctly one explicit and two implicit questions.  The student did look back within the passage for two answers and was able to answer two additional question, one explicit and one implicit.  However, both scores indicate a frustration level with answering comprehensive questions regarding the text. 

With the results listed above, I recommend the student receive small group instruction or before or after-school tutoring in increase his comprehension level.  The Concept-Oriented Intervention Approach can be used to help the student.  The Concept-Oriented Intervention Approach integrates reading, writing and science while using real-world events and objects for instruction.  It has stages to use during intervention:

•      Observe & personalize – students generate questions from their observations

•      Search & Retrieve – students learn to locate information within text to answer questions

•      Comprehend & Integrate – students learn comprehension strategies to understand text

•      Communicate to others – students present to peers what they learned from the text

The following lesson can be used as a part of the above intervention approach for Bane the 8^th grade student. 

Lesson:  Reading and Writing to improve comprehension

Objective: Student will use a graphic organizer to recall details from the beginning, middle, and end of the text.  Student will use this information to generate person inquiry questions and use the information from the graphic organizer and inquiry questions to write about the passage.

Common Core Standard Addressed: RL 9 – 12

            1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text

            2. . Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

Materials:  Graphic Organizer, reading passages from http://www.teachervision.fen.com/reading-comprehension/skill-builder/55665.html

The second QRI5 report is on a 1^st grade student named Abbey.  I first administered the First Examiner Word List.  Abbey read 14 out of 20 (70%) of the words automatically.  She identified, with phonemic awareness, 3 out of 20 (15%) of the words.  Overall, she correctly read 17 out of 20 words (85%), which placed her at the instructional level.  The two words she missed was heard, friend, and afraid, blended sounds.

Next, I asked Abbey the concept questions to see what background knowledge she may already have before reading the text.  She knew what a newspaper was, but know the word “advertisement.”  She has a dog and could tell me what she did to take care of her pet.  With this knowledge she was able to connect self-to-text.  She was able to tell me that if she found something or a lost pet that did not belong to her, she would try to find the owner by putting up signs and telling her parents.  I scored her a 8 out of 9 (88.9%).

Finally, I had the student read “Marva Finds a Friend”.  As with the word list, student could not identify the word “friend” in the title and the word “heard” in the first sentence.  After, I told her what the word were, she did not have a problem remembering the pronunciation of these words within the remainder of the text.  There were six total miscues and no meaning-changes due to miscues.  Therefore, the total accuracy and total acceptability was at the independent level.  The rate was 88 WPM and the corrected rate after errors was 86 CWPM.

Abbey did okay with recalling information from the text.  She recalled 30 of the 50 ideas.  She did make the connections of self-to-text.  She told me another story about her dog.  She also connected text to world by stating she saw a sign on a try for someone who had lost their cat.  When I asked her the implicit and explicit questions, she was able to answer all the questions correctly, placing her at the independent level. 

Abbey is doing very well.  From my assessment, she needs phonemic awareness practice with higher level blended words.  The below activity I found on the Reading Rockets website (http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/blending_games/ ).  I can use this same activity to practice the words with the same blend as friend, afraid, and heard, /fr/ /erd/ /ai/.

Lesson on Blends

Objective:  Student will be able to identify and create words with these blended sounds:  /fr/ /erd/ /ai/

Common Core Standard:  Reading Foundational Skills

a. Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).

b. Distinguish long from short vowel sounds in spoken single-syllable words.

c. Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds (phonemes), including consonant blends.

d. Isolate and pronounce initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in spoken single-syllable words.

e. Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds (phonemes).

Segmenting cheer activity (from Reading Rockets)

This link provides teachers with information on how to conduct the following segmentation cheer activity.
See example > (32K PDF)*

Write the "Segmentation Cheer" on chart paper, and teach it to children. Each time you say the cheer, change the words in the third line. Have children segment the word sound by sound. Begin with words that have three phonemes, such as ten, rat, cat, dog, soap, read, and fish.

 

            Both students, in my report, where fluent readers and had a strong grasp of grade level or above vocabulary.  However, there was a difference in reading comprehension.  The 8^th grade student does need intervention and possible moved to Tier II of the RtI process.  The 1^st grade student would benefit from a personalized one- on- one at the teacher table during small group rotation activity with the blended sounds she is struggling with.  The 1^st grade student could also be challenged to create her own words with the designated blended sounds.  Abbey can practice blending sounds using the PBS Kids interactive games like Blending Bowl.  Additionally, Bane can go to Fun English Games website and play maps and direction to practice sequencing in a story, beginning, middle, and end.  

            I enjoyed the experience of assessing a 1^st grade and 8^th grade student.  Each student has their strengths and weakness which have to be addressed on an individual basis.  When thinking about Bane, I believe his weakness of comprehension is probably affecting his reading in other subject areas.  It would be interesting to see how he was comprehending the reading passages in science and social studies with the academic vocabulary.