Many adolescents with learning disabilities (LD) experience difficulties reading. To improve reading outcomes for these students, research has demonstrated the importance of providing students with appropriate texts. Appropriate texts are those that match both the reading and interest levels of students and are often credited with reducing…

This study draws from a number of researchers who push for critical literacy and a critical stance to question power, inequality, and the status quo; to understand scholars' own participation in power structures; and to reframe and retheorize scholars' beliefs and understandings. In this article, the author uses the critical stance framework to…

Reviews the Secondary and College Reading Inventory, an informal reading inventory developed for students at and above the middle school level. Considers the inventory to be a useful resource in reading clinics, resource rooms, and general classrooms. (RS)

Discusses guidelines for the construction of an informal inventory that focuses on text and reader characteristics and task demands. Gives examples from a sample inventory. Demonstrates how the inventory can be used to plan an instructional program. (RS)

Describes an informal reading inventory designed especially for secondary students which includes silent reading passages and an interest inventory. (MKM)

Describes a group reading inventory that deals with high interest, adolescent-theme literature, noting its strong and weak points. (AEA)

Reviews ERIC documents dealing with the preparation and use of informal measures of reading comprehension. (DD)

Suggests using readability formulas, a skills inventory, an introspective report, and diagnostic approaches based on models of comprehension as informal evaluations of students' content reading ability. (MKM)

Presents two classroom activities designed to get students' questions without stress and to use journals for content area comprehension. Discusses informal reading inventories and the consensus model of reading. (RS)

Argues that informal assessment is an important bridge between formal assessment and classroom instruction. Notes that one way to keep an informal record of a student's progress is to maintain a portfolio, a collection of student work that reveals both affective and cognitive growth. (RS)

Six informal diagnostic procedures are outlined to assist teachers in assessing how well their students may be able to read assigned readings. The procedures are observation, simplified reading inventory, cloze procedure, informal reading inventory, group reading inventory, and criterion-referenced tests. (MKM)

During an inservice training program on the construction and use of informal reading inventories, 14 teachers of freshman English learned how to administer informal reading inventories, how to use information obtained to construct reading profiles, and how to use reading profiles to guide reading instruction. After six 2-hour sessions, they…

Suggests that informal reading inventories (IRIs) should include both narrative and expository passages. Describes a study of several reading inventories indicating that some current secondary school IRIs have been constructed with some consistency of text types, but failed to reveal a clear picture of text structure for the inventories. (HTH)

Notes that the goal of interactive assessment is to discover the conditions under which a student will succeed in reading, rather than simply describing a student's current status as a reader. Illustrates the differences between static and interactive assessment by presenting a case study of a seventh grade at-risk student. (RS)