Ekwall/Shanker Reading Inventory (4th Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Ekwall/Shanker Reading Inventory 4th Edition
Review: Ekwall and Shanker did a great job in organizing a very useful tool for reading assessment in a user friendly format. I specifically liked the section that teaches and guides you as you learn how to write and format a diagnostic report which can be used to guide instruction.

Rating:
Summary: Ekwall/Shanker Reading Inventory 4th Edition
Review: Ekwall and Shanker did a great job in organizing a very useful tool for reading assessment in a user friendly format. I specifically liked the section that teaches and guides you as you learn how to write and format a diagnostic report which can be used to guide instruction.

Rating:
Summary: strengths and weaknesses
Review: I feel that the emergent literacy component was somewhat incomplete. The phonemic awareness component isn't comprehensive. It assesses initial, but not medial or final sounds in isolation. The letter recognition section tests recognition by auditory stimulus (telling the child to point to the named letter the tester says) and thirteen by visual stimulus (asking the child to say the letters as the tester points). All the letters of the alphabet should be recognized or named by the child; but it is not required that the child says the sounds the letters make individually (yet there was a phonics analysis included later for kids who failed the prescreening passage). Special letter combinations like blends, diphthongs, and digraphs are not addressed at all in the emergent literacy skills sections, but were included in the phonics analysis just mentioned as was a section asking the student to manipulate words by changing sounds to make new words. Neither of the examples of case studies used for explanation of how to complete the diagnostic reports even addressed the emergent literacy component at all.
I was also disappointed that there was not a writing inventory. Since reading and writing are so closely connected and influence each other to quite an extent, I felt it would be useful to have some sort of instrument included in the package.
Another slight fault was that although the lists of sight words and phrases were comprehensive, it did not include the flashcards. The user was expected to make and label two hundred sight word flash card and one hundred forty-three basic sight word phrases. It took hours to do, and I would have been much more satisfied if they would have at least printed them and put them in the book for me to punch out, or included cut out versions in a kit. The authors did include some helpful hint on labeling and numbering them in case they got dropped, which I acceded to.
I found the graded, reading passages are clear, interesting and grade appropriate on the whole. One oversight was that there were no background statements in the directions to be given to the child to activate prior knowledge. Yet, the passages appeared to be intact rather than merely incoherent excerpts which would not easily stand alone. However, from the preprimer level through the third grade level there are no expository passages ninth grade passages were strictly expository. This is not indicative of what you would find in use in the classroom. I believe an IRI should be as closely correlated to what goes on in the classroom as possible.
Another omission of the ESRI was that there was no analysis of the types of mistakes made in context. You just counted errors, but were not instructed to denote the types of errors. It might have been good to have guidelines of how, when and why to do a miscue analysis. I was also concerned that the forms do not suggest a silent and oral reading rate comparison.
For assessing comprehension the instructions were to give the questions as prompts, rather than allowing for any free recall in the form of retelling what was read. The comprehension questions accompanying the graded reading passages are simply literal recall from preprimer through the second grade leveled passages. The first one is typically quite easy; the rational being that it would build confidence. I found this to be a little incongruent with what the curriculum in schools demands. Starting with the third grade passages there is one vocabulary question, one inferential comprehension question and eight literal comprehension questions included with each passage. This is better, but still not indicative of what you would find in modern, grade-level basals and standardized tests which require much inference on the part of the reader. The rational the authors provided for the lack of inferential questions was that it was quite difficult to write inferential questions that were passage dependent. After all, we are assessing reading comprehension and not prior knowledge.
There were some features I especially liked. One was the table provided with each graded, oral reading passage. Across the top of the table is a series of numbers that denote the number of word recognition (decoding) errors. In the column on the left side is a series of numbers that denote the number of questions missed. You use these to locate the coordinates showing where the student performed. The grid is marked with (+) independent, (*) instructional, and (x) frustration levels, making it easy to see where the child's decoding and comprehension abilities come together to place them at the appropriate reading level. Another nice feature was the easy to use table used to assess reading rate. It gives the number of seconds a slow, medium or fast reader might take to read each silent reading passage. The assessor just has to use a stopwatch to account for the time passed in seconds and circle where the child lies; but it did not give the formula for calculating the actual words per minute. It is easy to use, yet it does not account for differences in rate during different times out of the year. A child will be significantly slower in the fall than in the spring, since more learning and practice should have occurred.
There is a section that teaches and guides users as they learn how to organize and write a diagnostic report which can be used to guide instruction. It gave samples of data collected and summaries of the evaluations with a few suggestions for possible treatment of difficulties. I found this to be useful.

Rating:
Summary: strengths and weaknesses
Review: I feel that the emergent literacy component was somewhat incomplete. The phonemic awareness component isn't comprehensive. It assesses initial, but not medial or final sounds in isolation. The letter recognition section tests recognition by auditory stimulus (telling the child to point to the named letter the tester says) and thirteen by visual stimulus (asking the child to say the letters as the tester points). All the letters of the alphabet should be recognized or named by the child; but it is not required that the child says the sounds the letters make individually (yet there was a phonics analysis included later for kids who failed the prescreening passage). Special letter combinations like blends, diphthongs, and digraphs are not addressed at all in the emergent literacy skills sections, but were included in the phonics analysis just mentioned as was a section asking the student to manipulate words by changing sounds to make new words. Neither of the examples of case studies used for explanation of how to complete the diagnostic reports even addressed the emergent literacy component at all.
I was also disappointed that there was not a writing inventory. Since reading and writing are so closely connected and influence each other to quite an extent, I felt it would be useful to have some sort of instrument included in the package.
Another slight fault was that although the lists of sight words and phrases were comprehensive, it did not include the flashcards. The user was expected to make and label two hundred sight word flash card and one hundred forty-three basic sight word phrases. It took hours to do, and I would have been much more satisfied if they would have at least printed them and put them in the book for me to punch out, or included cut out versions in a kit. The authors did include some helpful hint on labeling and numbering them in case they got dropped, which I acceded to.
I found the graded, reading passages are clear, interesting and grade appropriate on the whole. One oversight was that there were no background statements in the directions to be given to the child to activate prior knowledge. Yet, the passages appeared to be intact rather than merely incoherent excerpts which would not easily stand alone. However, from the preprimer level through the third grade level there are no expository passages ninth grade passages were strictly expository. This is not indicative of what you would find in use in the classroom. I believe an IRI should be as closely correlated to what goes on in the classroom as possible.
Another omission of the ESRI was that there was no analysis of the types of mistakes made in context. You just counted errors, but were not instructed to denote the types of errors. It might have been good to have guidelines of how, when and why to do a miscue analysis. I was also concerned that the forms do not suggest a silent and oral reading rate comparison.
For assessing comprehension the instructions were to give the questions as prompts, rather than allowing for any free recall in the form of retelling what was read. The comprehension questions accompanying the graded reading passages are simply literal recall from preprimer through the second grade leveled passages. The first one is typically quite easy; the rational being that it would build confidence. I found this to be a little incongruent with what the curriculum in schools demands. Starting with the third grade passages there is one vocabulary question, one inferential comprehension question and eight literal comprehension questions included with each passage. This is better, but still not indicative of what you would find in modern, grade-level basals and standardized tests which require much inference on the part of the reader. The rational the authors provided for the lack of inferential questions was that it was quite difficult to write inferential questions that were passage dependent. After all, we are assessing reading comprehension and not prior knowledge.
There were some features I especially liked. One was the table provided with each graded, oral reading passage. Across the top of the table is a series of numbers that denote the number of word recognition (decoding) errors. In the column on the left side is a series of numbers that denote the number of questions missed. You use these to locate the coordinates showing where the student performed. The grid is marked with (+) independent, (*) instructional, and (x) frustration levels, making it easy to see where the child's decoding and comprehension abilities come together to place them at the appropriate reading level. Another nice feature was the easy to use table used to assess reading rate. It gives the number of seconds a slow, medium or fast reader might take to read each silent reading passage. The assessor just has to use a stopwatch to account for the time passed in seconds and circle where the child lies; but it did not give the formula for calculating the actual words per minute. It is easy to use, yet it does not account for differences in rate during different times out of the year. A child will be significantly slower in the fall than in the spring, since more learning and practice should have occurred.
There is a section that teaches and guides users as they learn how to organize and write a diagnostic report which can be used to guide instruction. It gave samples of data collected and summaries of the evaluations with a few suggestions for possible treatment of difficulties. I found this to be useful.

Rating:
Summary: Where's the Primer?
Review: If you choose to purchase this book you should be aware that there is no primer passage, making it difficult to get an accurate assessment of a young child's reading. I am a reading specialist and I found that my second grade at-risk students at the start of the year would be independent on a pre-primer passage and frustration on a grade 1 passage. Therefore I was unable to find a student's instructional reading level. This assessment would be fine for students who are above the first grade level only.