The Inventory Section of the TPRI gives teachers an opportunity to acquire more data to help match reading instruction with specific student needs. This additional information can assist teachers and administrators to assemble educational resources and plan the most effective instruction possible for students. It is recommended that the inventory be administered with all students whose performance on the Screening Section indicates important reading concepts are still developing. The listening and/or reading comprehension tasks in the inventory should be administered to all students. The entire inventory can be administered with all students regardless of their performance on the Screening Section depending upon the time and resources available to the classroom teacher.

The Inventory Section of the TPRI consists of the following areas:
Book and Print Awareness (K) - Knowledge of the function of print and of the characteristics of books and other print materials.
Phonemic Awareness (K, Gr. 1) - The ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds within spoken words so that letters can be linked to sounds.
Listening Comprehension (K, Gr. 1) - The ability to understand what has been read aloud.
Graphophonemic Knowledge (K, Gr. 1, Gr. 2) - The recognition of letters of the alphabet and the understanding of sound-symbol relations (K, Gr. 1),word building activities (Gr. 1), and spelling (Gr. 2).
Reading Accuracy (Gr. 1, Gr. 2) - The ability to read grade-appropriate text accurately.
Reading Fluency (Gr. 1, Gr. 2) - The ability to read connected text accurately, quickly, and without hesitation.
Reading Comprehension (Gr. 1, Gr. 2) - The ability to understand what has been read.

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How the TPRI Stories Were Developed

In the 2001 2002 TPRI new stories were included and a word reading list added that places students in a story at their instructional level. What follows is a description of how these stories were developed and the science behind how the word list and stories were linked.

These stories were written carefully to reflect typical reading development of students as they learn to read. To ensure that the stories were appealing to students, a children's storywriter was hired to write these stories to conform to specific guidelines. First, they were written to conform to specific word level features based on what is taught at different points at each grade level. In addition, narrative stories were written to conform to story elements including:

• Main character(s) who or what the story is mainly about
• Setting where and when the story happens
• Problem what the main character wants or the problem he/she has to solve
• Major events most important things that happen to solve the problem
• Outcome whether or not the problem is solved

  
1st Grade Inventory Samples

In second grade, expository texts were also included which conform to informational text structure.

To determine what is typically taught, several reading series, district curriculum guides, and the reading standards (the TEKS, in Texas) were consulted. Thus, allowable word level features at specific time points do not reflect any one publisher's or district's scope and sequence, but reflect the reading standards. After the stories were written according to word level features, their levels of difficulty were verified using readability formulas.

Once written, the new stories were tested with 3,000 students in Texas. Stories were tested both in terms of how well students could orally read each story and in terms of how well they could answer the comprehension questions from each story. The order of the stories in the TPRI reflects how students in this sample performed on these stories. For example, students at the specified grade level read the first story with the greatest ease, and the last story with the greatest difficulty.

Results of the study, conducted in 1999-2000 with the 3,000 students from across Texas, showed that story grammar and word level features were accurate. Based on the response of these students, we were able to identify lists of words that predict which story is most likely to reflect a student's instructional level based on reading the words on this list. The Word Lists are linked to the reading accuracy in the stories through Item Response Theory such that students will read stories where the probability is high that their error rate will fall between 5-10%. The words on these lists are not selected for their phonic values. Instead, they are selected for their relatively high frequency of appearance in first and second grade texts and their representatives of the continuum of predictability of sound-spelling patterns in English.

Each inventory is designed to permit a detailed, but informal, assessment of a student’s reading and reading-related skills. The primary purpose of the inventories is to assist the teacher in setting learning objectives for the student. By administering the entire inventory, the teacher may obtain further support for a judgment of the student’s reading skills development. Thus, the teacher can set learning objectives for an at-risk student, but also has an opportunity to rectify a false positive error by using the inventory.

Each inventory consists of five components: Book and Print Awareness (Kindergarten), Phonemic Awareness, Graphophonemic Knowledge, Reading Accuracy, Fluency and Reading Comprehension. The rationale for these components can be found in the Introduction to the TPRI at each grade level.

Inventory items begin at levels that are developmentally less complex (easier) than the screening items. This is because the screens are designed to be more accurate with a student not likely to be “at-risk” for reading problems. In addition, the developmental progression allows the teacher to determine a student’s actual level of development in the components of the TPRI.

The inventories are subdivided into different tasks. Each task in the TPRI consists of 5 items. Concepts are described as developed, when a student provides correct responses to 4 out of 5 questions ( 3 out of 5 for the Book/Print Awareness task). When a student answers less than 4 questions correctly (3 for the Book/Print Awareness task), then the concept is still developing, and the teacher can move to the next component of the TPRI. These rules mean that not all items on a task need be administered. Thus, administration time is shortened.

It is recommended that the phonemic awareness and graphophonemic awareness portion of the inventory be administered to students who do not meet criteria on the screen at the beginning, middle, (kindergarten only) and end of the year so that growth in these literacy-related concepts can be noted and intervention strategies planned. Information gathered from the TPRI can be useful in identifying skill areas in which the student requires further instruction, which is the basis for planning learning objectives. However, the data gleaned from this inventory should be used in conjunction with other evaluations of student performance over time (e.g., samples of student work, lists of books that the student has read, and teacher observations) to provide an in-depth portrait of a student’s literacy acquisition. The TPRI was designed to inform instruction rather than to determine placement into programs for students with special needs. The TPRI does not replace the need for further evaluation for special services (e.g., speech and language services). It is also important to be sensitive to students’ dialectic, linguistic, and cultural diversity when administering the TPRI. Reliability of scoring can be jeopardized when student and teacher do not share the same dialect. Teachers must be sensitive to the student’s dialect. Lack of sensitivity to dialect differences may put the student at risk for reading difficulties because any classroom discussion of word parts (which occurs in beginning reading instruction) will suffer from dialect interference. Flexibility, professional judgment, and knowledge of students should be used in determining errors.