need help again with eighth grade testing

Just because it doesn’t make sense to you doesn’t mean it won’t make sense to us. We can’t interpret it for you without your sharing what was written. The Burns and Roe Informal Reading Inventory is a criterion referenced test for reading and I have heard it used as such..

Ok, Patti,
Here goes:
Comprehension Skill Analysis Chart
Skill # of Questions Number of Errors %age of Error

Main Idea 4 0 0%
Detail 14 14 0%
Sequence 4 2 50%
Cause and Effect 5 2 40%
Inference 10 4 40%
Vocabulary 6 3 50%

(How he can have O our of 4 questions with 0% error and 14 out of 14 detail errors and a 0% of errors is beyond me! And what does this correlate with? Where are the standardized comparisons that will make this information meaningful? Only 6 vocab questions doesn’t seem like alot of questions to me to then derive a score that is meaningful….)

Types of Miscues in Context:
10 Mispronounciation
3 Substitution
1 Insertion
2 Omissions
0 Reversals
5 Repetitions
0 Refusal to Pronounce
Raw Score 18

Summary of Percentages:
Level 4 80%
Level 5 80%
Level 6 65%
Level 7 70%
Level 8 80%

I look forward to a better understanding of this information because I am much more used to standardized reading testing results.
Thanks

THe triennial testing absolutely, positively should have standardized reading assessments in it. Period.

Looks like this kiddo gets the big picture. When you isolate word meanings he doesn’t do so well — but if he’s got weaker decoding skills, sometimes this simply means he doesn’t get the vocab. question right because he can’t read enough of the words in the question (or the word itself in isolation).
Boy, would I want to know what happened with the details. Obviosuly one of the numbers is wrong. I owuldn’t be surprised if he got all the details right, though.
There should at *least* be a comment about the level of the passages he was being assessed with in this informal inventory.

A bit of diagnostic information on the “mispronunciations” would have helped, too.

*IF* the percentage scores are a mushy compilation of his overall performance at the various levels, I would also smell a decoding problem. His comprehension is probably much higher — so, easy or hard, he misses enough words to keep from getting *everything* right, and my guess is level 6 had a couple of words in key positions that he missed or he read “shouldn’t” for “should” or something like that that would throw off comprehension.

But the bottom line is, that’s not a complete evaluation. Drop by, I’ll give him a GORT and DSPT….

However,

Sue,
You ARE good!!
The reading specialist’s report stated that “he demonstrated no difficulty with recalling details from the passages.” He got all the details just as you said.
She found that he was unable to make inferences and draw conclusions all of the time. When I asked my son about that, he said she read a short paragraph about a son and his father and then she asked my son a question about how he felt the mother felt. Well, my son inferred that maybe, since the mother was excluded in the paragraph, that that meant that he didn’t have a mother so he couldn’t infer how she felt. (Is that an unusual response? Does that mean that he can’t make inferences? Those of you who use this test who be better able to give feedback about this)
IN terms of the mispronunciations, she said, “his comprehension is directly affected by his inability to decode many of the difficult words that he encounters. He still struggles with the decoding of multi-syllable words, as well as words that demonstrate irregular pattersn. His miscues are often mispronunciations or substitutions. When he makes miscues he usually substitutes words that are graphically similar.”

I DID ask for the GORT, but they don’t have it. What is the DSPT? He is definitely a MUCH stronger reader than he was three years ago but I can’t really demonstrate that since they used very dissimilar tests.
Thank you so much for your input. I value what you have to say.

Many people on here recommend the REWARDS program for multisyllable work, but he may need a review of the basics with something like Phono-Graphix first. If you live near FL, I’d consider a week intensive in PG to give him a jumpstart!

Janis

I’d suspect he reads a little further along the “literal” spectrum than most — but that could be simply because he is intelligent enough *not* to impose assumptions on the reading. Now, when he gets to where he can ask himself “okay, but how dumb were the people who wrote this test, so what will *they* call the right answer,” he’ll start getting those questions ;)
I *would* occasionally talk through inferences just in daily life and see how he does with them, especially “social inferences” in life and lterature. FIgturing out behavior patterns and how different people are likely to feel can be real handy :) And talk through the more logical kinds of inferences too, though he probably does okay with them. It can be fun to make inferences about total strangers walking by on the street.
I’d very strongly recommend getting books on tape and get him in the habit of using a screen reader for grade level reading and above. It would benefit his language and academic development in a *big* way if the harder words were being read to him instead of him substituting in a differnet word. He may be developmentally ready to make the connections between the correctly pronounced word and the one in print (the good text-to-speech programs highlight the word being read).
And by the way this is a classic profile — a kiddo who’s being academically stalled because he hasn’t learned to read, and the obvious solution is to teach him that skill, but schools don’t seem to think it’s possible for some reason. I know it is because I’ve done it rather often.

Sue,
Could you please tell me what the DSPT is?
Thanks!