The electronic edition of the Critical Reading Inventory (CRI 3-E) continues the fundamentally different approach to the assessment of reading comprehension exemplified in the original CRI. Classroom research and assessment analyses suggest that many educators and assessment specialists believe that comprehension involves the ability to faithfully reproduce the ideas conveyed by a writer.
We take the position that comprehension also includes the ability to react thoughtfully to ideas in text, to consider their significance, and to use them as the basis for logical conclusions. To that end, nearly 60% of the comprehension items you will find in the CRI require readers to respond thoughtfully to the ideas they have encountered. As a consequence, CRI users are able to distinguish readers who can simply recall what they have read from readers who are also able to think about it. This type of analysis also enables educators to target instruction to meet the varying needs of their students.
Mindful of the demands on time that informal assessment can make of teaching professionals, we set out to simplify the process as much as possible. Our aim was to remove much of the time-consuming drudgery associated with the scoring, calculating and reporting of the results of an informal reading inventory.
Users who have completed the assessment and scoring of the CRI can access the ASII and click on appropriate boxes to input the number of word list miscues, the oral reading miscues, and the comprehension items. The ASII will automatically calculate percentage scores for the Word Lists, the RAI and MMI for each passage read aloud, and the oral, silent and/or average comprehension item scores at each level.
At the conclusion of the interview, the ASII will respond with a completed and professionally formatted Recapitulation Record that can be printed and used as part of a student’s academic records.
Valuable class time can often be consumed by the task of teaching users how to score student responses reliably and consistently. Our detailed tutorials provide users with extensive practice in the scoring of miscues, retellings, and comprehension items. Each tutorial is divided into sections to allow users to proceed at their own pace.
CRI 3-E subscribers have access to a telephone hotline to contact one of the authors or publishers with technical or user-related questions. We welcome the opportunity to gather feedback about the CRI 3-E in anticipation of its continued development as a valuable assessment tool.
484-678-1060