On Wednesday, I pulled 4 students aside to do an IRI with me. I started out doing the word lists with them, and I was amazed at how far they got, and how good they did!! On Thursday, I had the same 4 students do the reading/comprehension part of the same IRI, and they did terribly! — I spoke with Mrs. Harris about it and she said that these students can read the words by themselves, but when it comes to fluency and comprehension they struggle… we will use this information in workshop and design activities that build fluency and comprehension. We have also noticed that these same students struggle with spelling.
I am glad to have had the oppurtunity to do the IRI testing because I might have assumed that the word lists automatically match students skills in reading/fluency/comprehension and vise versa — clearly, this assumption was wrong, and I could have placed students into workshops that would have been inappropriate for them had I not tested on both areas.
