Oral responses from students are used to gauge their recall and understanding. For students who read aloud, fluency, prior information, emotional state, word recognition, and comprehension are important factors in performance. This aids educators in assessing students' literacy abilities.
Teachers use this evaluation to assign students to reading groups, provide them with reading materials based on their progress over time, give directions to address their strengths and needs, and assign reading materials. It aids instructors in recognizing the gaps in students' abilities who struggle with reading.
Information about pupils' reading development is available from information reading inventories. The institution's literature programs benefit greatly from the material it provides. Educators are able to learn about the abilities, skills and needs of their students in planning a reading program.
Reading skills that are assessed by informal reading assessments;
Phonological awareness helps children to improve their reading and also to manipulate sounds in language to help them read better. It also helps students with disabilities, for future reading problems, and for those learning to read other languages including English (NICHHD, 2000).
Phonics is instructions that help students to learn how the sounds of spoken language and the letters of written language relate (NIFL, 2001). It is important because it facilitate understanding of the alphabetic principal. Students are given spelled words to read to test their ability to decode words. Phonics is used to measure student achievements on word reading fluency (Torgesen, 1998).
Fluency is the ability to read a message quickly and accurately. To assess fluency a teacher may use informal reading inventory, pausing indices, miscue analysis, reading speed calculation, and running records (NICHHD, 2000). Teachers are able to use assessments as they are as samples for generation of other assessments based on needs and level of education of specific students.
Vocabulary is how to communicate a word effectively. The words can be oral or reading vocabulary (NIFL, 2001). Students need to learn on how to use context to determine the meaning of a word, to figure out the meaning of words in a sentence or text, and also how to use references or dictionaries to find meaning of some words. Vocabulary enriches and enlarges reading vocabulary and increase appreciation of word values (Davis, 1942).
How to administer an informal reading assessment;
Concepts of print, an educator should sit in a quiet place in a room with the student and give the student a storybook and ask questions from the form you have formed until they are answered correctly.
Rhyming ; The teacher should ask the student if she/he knows what rhyming words are, if he/she says yes ask him/her to tell the teacher two rhyming words e.g. fat and fun.
Identifying initial sounds; the teacher should say words that start with same sound to the student e.g. cut and cup start with sound /c/. Make a list of paired words and let the student answer if the words start with the same sound.
Blending words; a student should guess a word from e.g. /s/-/at/. Teacher should fill list if questions are answered correctly or incorrect.
Phoneme manipulation; teacher should play a word game with the student to manipulate words such as bat and mat.
Phoneme deletion; teacher should play a word game of deletion such as win and in several times with student.
REFERENCES;
Nilsson, N. (2008). A critical analysis of 8 informal reading inventories. The Reading Teacher, 61(7), pp. 526-536.
Cheek, J. (2009). Assessment of Learning (Summative) vs. Assessment for Learning (Formative).
Opitz, M., Rubin, D. & Erekson, J. (2011). Informal reading inventory. Reading Diagnosis and Improvement, 6e. Pearson.
Florida Department of Education. (2003). Cool tools: Informal reading assessments.
