Practice Creating an Informal Reading Inventory (IRI Process)

for 8th-Grade Natural Sciences

Imagine you serve on an eighth-grade team at a local middle school. You and your colleagues have
noticed that from year to year, the rising eighth-graders demonstrate poor comprehension of
grade-level nonfiction text. The team decides to construct an IRI that can be administered during the
first weeks of school to establish a baseline for each students independent, instructional, and
frustration reading level of nonfiction text.
Using the text excerpts below, collaborate with your team to accomplish the following:
1. Level the texts. Use all your resources: qualitative feature analysis, readability formulas, your
common sense, and each other! Determine which excerpt is grade-level (grade band 7-8) and
which text is above and which text is below. Simply label the excerpts: BELOW
GRADE-LEVEL, G
RADE-LEVEL, and ABOVE GRADE-LEVEL. Make sure there is
team consensus.
2. Write comprehension questions. Each team member should write at least one question for each
excerpt and label each question using the categories described in Afflerbach (2010):
TEXTUALLY EXPLICIT, TEXTUALLY IMPLICIT, and SCRIPTALLY IMPLICIT.
Attach a comment to the question with your name and a rationale for why you labeled the
question as such. There should be more implicit questions than explicit.

LEVEL: Grade-level
While all this is happening, the embryo is getting longer. Now the tail bud begins to
develop, and the embryo develops suckers beneath the place where the mouth will be.
Although it is only about twenty-eight hours old and barely recognizable as a tadpole, the
embryo now hatches. Toad embryos emerge very early while frog and salamander embryos
are further along when they come out of their jelly prisons. The small embryos hang by their
suckees to the jelly. It will be five more hours before they can move their muscles at all.
When they are a little more than a day and half old, their hearts begin to beat. Soon
the blood begins to circulate through the gills, the developing eyes can be seen, the mouth
opens, and the suckers begin to disappear. At two and a half days of age, when the blood
starts circulating in the tail, they really look like tadpoles.
COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:
What is a difference between toad and frog embryos? Explicit
When does the tadpole become recognizable? Explicit
According the the text, how long does it take muscle movement to form? Explicit
What is the first stage of the toad life cycle? Scriptually Implicit

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LEVEL: Below grade-level
Frogs, toads, and salamanders are a
mphibians. Amphibian comes from a Greek word
that means double life. Amphibians begin their life cycle as water animals. They develop into
air-breathing animals as they grow up.
Female amphibians lay their eggs in wet places. The eggs are covered with a jelly-like
material to protect them. The eggs hatch into larvae, or tadpoles. Tadpoles swim in the water
and grow legs. When they are adults, amphibians live on land and breathe air.
Toad tadpoles grow up quickly. It takes them only a few months to lose their tails and
become small toads. After that, it may take as long as three years for them to become
full-grown adults! Toads have been known to live to 30 to 40 years.
When frog eggs hatch into tadpoles it takes them a very long time to grow up. Several
years can go by before the tadpoles become frogs.
COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:
Which tadpoles, toad or frog, grow up quicker? Explicit
It can take up to how many years to become full grown adults? Explicit
Where do amphibians live? Textually Implicit
How do tadpoles breathe? Scriptually Implicit
What do tadpoles consist of? Scriptually Implicit

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LEVEL: Above grade-level
Frogs and toads have an aquatic larval stage, the familiar tadpole. The fishlike tadpole
has gills which are later lost in metamorphosis. The moist skin of frogs and other amphibians
contains mucous glands that assist in maintaining the moisture. Moreover, the eggs of
amphibians, laid in water or other moist areas, are usually covered with a gelatinous
substance. Thus amphibians remain dependent on aquatic (or at least wet) environments in
many ways.
This group also shows adaptations for living on land. Most importantly, adults have
lungs adapted for air breathing and are therefore no longer dependent on water for gas
exchange. (It can occur through the skin when amphibians are in water.) Furthermore, the two
nostrils are connected to the mouth cavity to facilitate breathing through the lungs. Almost all
amphibians have two pair of jointed appendages that permit locomotion both on land and in
water. Frogs and toads also have sound-sensitive membranes (external eardrums) on their
bodies; such specialized sense organs are essential for land dwellers, because air does not

transmit sound waves as efficiently as water. Finally, amphibians have a more efficient type of
circulatory system than fish, including a heart with three chambers rather than two.

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:
What helps assist in maintaining frogs moist skin? Textually Implicit
In which stage does the frog lose its gills? Explicit
According to the text, what adaptations do frogs have for living on land? Explicit
Using your prior knowledge, and the text, define amphibians. Scriptually Implicit