Teaching · For Tutors

Three reading levels from one sitting, worked out for you.

Enter the word lists and each passage as you score them. The summary works out word recognition accuracy and comprehension, marks every passage independent, instructional or frustration, and names the level to teach at.

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Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Or get it in the Tutoring business kit, $69 for 64 items.

The inventory record

One record per student and sitting. Use initials or a code, never a name. The example and its counts are made up.

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What you get

Teaching · For Tutors$19 · included with Classroom and Whole-school licenses

What you finish with
For each sitting, accuracy and comprehension for every passage, the independent, instructional and frustration levels, word-list results and next steps.
Who it is for
Reading tutors, reading intervention teachers and classroom teachers who give an informal reading inventory to place a student or check progress.
Format
Browser form used beside the inventory booklet. Several saved sittings per student; printed with the summary or as a blank score sheet; CSV; export and import a file.
Access
$19 one-time, yours on every device you sign in on; the tool opens once you are signed in with it. Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Also in the Tutoring business kit ($69) and the Teaching Suite pass ($199), and 1 more bundle. Everything you type stays in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives
The For Tutors space in Caveat Teaching.
Support
Questions about an order, access or a correction: team@caveatacademic.com.
234easy, just right, too hard
Drawn for this page. The levels come from where accuracy and comprehension hold up, and where they give way.

How to use it

  1. Start a record with the student’s initials or a code and the date.
  2. Name the inventory, the grade placement and the criteria from its manual.
  3. Enter each word list and passage as you score it, lowest level first.
  4. Tick what you noticed while the student read.
  5. Plan instruction at the instructional level the summary names.

Start an inventory

What the organizer is for

Three levels

The independent level is text a student reads with ease alone. The instructional level is text that is hard enough to teach with and easy enough to succeed with support. The frustration level is text where accuracy or understanding breaks down. A passage takes the lower of its word recognition and comprehension results.

Which criteria

Betts’s classic bands (1946) are strict: 95 to 98% word recognition for instruction. Many current inventories use a wider band, about 90 to 97%, because the strict figures were never firmly tested. Pick the criteria your inventory’s manual uses.

What this is not

An informal inventory gives criteria-based levels, not norms, percentiles or a diagnosis. Confirm a level with the student’s classroom reading, and use a standardized assessment when a decision needs one.

Sources

  1. Betts, E. A. (1946). Foundations of Reading Instruction. American Book Company (the classic independent, instructional and frustration criteria).
  2. Halladay, J. L. (2012). Revisiting key assumptions of the reading level framework. The Reading Teacher, 66(1), 53 to 62.
  3. Nilsson, N. L. (2008). A critical analysis of eight informal reading inventories. The Reading Teacher, 61(7), 526 to 536.
  4. International Literacy Association (formerly International Reading Association), position statements on assessment: use several measures and avoid decisions from a single test.

The example student and counts are made up. Reading levels here come from criteria, not norms; they do not diagnose a reading disability. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.