ABSTRACT
Molly asks a very good question about assessing metacognition. This chapter provides an informal instrument that can be used as an authentic assessment tool.
Erin performed very poorly on the Qualitative Reading Inventory-3 (3rd edition) (QRI-3; Leslie & Caldwell, 2000). She is in the fifth grade and barely scored at third grade for her instructional level. She has decoding difficulties (22 total miscues), fluency issues, and comprehension failures. Her major decoding difficulties were vowels, especially vowel digraphs and r-controlled vowels, as well as poor basic sight word knowledge. Erin’s fluency issues were a result of her decoding breakdowns. She could answer all of the explicit questions from the text, “Where Do People Live?” but could only answer one implicit question. These results are useful to place Erin at her correct reading level, but do they provide a complete picture of Erin’s strategy usage and instructional needs? What will provide a more in-depth look at Erin? How can her ability to express her thoughts about how she is learning be assessed? What assessment instrument can
be used to help provide insights into Erin’s metacognitive processes as they relate to her comprehension ability?
