The informal reading inventory assessment of the reading skills of hearing impaired mainstream students

This research is an attempt to assess the reading skills of hearing impaired mainstream students in integrated classrooms using the Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) within a descriptive model. The participants of the research are 13 hearing impaired mainstream students from the center of the province of Eskisehir. The data of this research has been obtained through student information forms created by Karasu, Girgin and Uzuner (2013b) with the use of IRI. The students' ability to retell what is read and level to answer questions was assessed by the "retelling what is read" tool and "answering questions evaluation" tool found in IRI. The findings of the research indicate that mainstream hearing impaired mainstream students are able to retell much of the main events they have read. They are also able to discuss the main idea and give information about most of the characters. The findings also indicate that students are able to use clues within questions to come up with answers, and are able to use question-answer strategies. It is believed that this paper, which is an attempt to evaluate the reading skills of hearing-impaired students in integrated classrooms using IRI, will contribute to the literature in this field. It is believed that it will guide teachers in evaluating the reading skills of hearing-impaired students. Keywords: Hearing impaired students, Retelling what is read, Question-answer.