TPRI Toolkit

TPRI is a highly reliable assessment of students’ early reading skills. The diagnostic instrument is easy to use one-on-one assessment to quickly assess students’ early reading skills, helping teachers provide targeted instruction so that students improve as readers.

TPRI can be used:

• To detect early reading difficulties, and identify students who may be at risk of struggling with reading
• To provide a summary of reading skills that teachers can use in planning individual and/or group instruction
• To fulfill the requirements of the Texas Education Code §28.006, requiring an early reading inventory for each child in the state

The 1st and 2nd grade editions of TPRI are available on CLI Engage at no cost to all Texas public school districts and charter schools. On CLI Engage, TPRI offer three waves of assessment with benchmarks and function like the other assessments on the platform and leveraging integrated small grouping features (linked to the CIRCLE Activity Collection) and reporting tools.

TPRI is the intellectual property of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and the Texas Education Agency. TPRI is hosted on CLI Engage at no cost for Texas public school districts and charter schools through ongoing partnerships.

Your first step is to register your account on CLI Engage:

• New to CLI Engage? View our registration video for information.
• See our matrix to find which CLI Engage package is the best fit when you sign up for access.
• Most CLI Engage users log in using their Google account. If you do not have a Google account, you can create one using your existing email account or create a Gmail account by going to our Account Set-Up How-to-Guide page.
• Refer to Uploading Teacher and Student Data to learn about several options available for uploading data into CLI Engage. Click here to download a how-to guide on finding schools in CLI Engage.
• You can integrate CLI Engage with existing Clever, ClassLink, Okta, or Microsoft login. Submit a help ticket on CLI Engage with any questions.
• If a user has forgotten their login information, administrators can reset their account so they can login to CLI Engage again: Reset Account How-to-Guide

The TPRI User Guide is a comprehensive guide that includes “need to know” information about the administration of TPRI in 1^st and 2^nd grade classrooms.

TPRI User Guide

The Grade 1 Classroom resources page provides extensive information about how to use the tools and resources on CLI Engage in public school first grade classrooms.

The Grade 2 Classroom resources page provides extensive information about how to use the tools and resources on CLI Engage in public school second grade classrooms.

Training for TPRI is available in the Online Learning and Professional Development courses section of CLI Engage where users can earn a certificate for the completion of the course.

TPRI Assessment Training Webinar

Review how to access these courses once you have logged in: How to Access Self-Instructional or Facilitated Online Courses

CLI Engage offers two tools to support dyslexia screening for 1st Grade students in English and Spanish. These tools can be used together to identify students who may be at risk for dyslexia.

• Dyslexia Screener is a direct assessment that align with the student skill criteria for dyslexia screening in accordance with Texas Education Code §28.006 and §38.003(a)
• Dyslexia Referral Checklist is a supplemental questionnaire that build a link between direct assessment of early reading skills and classroom observations

The dyslexia screener on CLI Engage (administered at wave 2/MOY) uses the following measures to assess skills identified in TEA’s Dyslexia Handbook (2021). Teachers can use the Dyslexia Referral Checklist as a supplement to support screening.

• Word Reading Accuracy or Fluency:
  • TPRI 1st grade measure: SCR-2 Word Reading
• Phonological Awareness:
  • TPRI 1st grade measure: SCR-3 Blending Phonemes

Review additional information on the dyslexia screening tools on CLI Engage: Dyslexia Screening

TPRI offers administration resources, and each are available for all three waves (BOY, MOY, and EOY), if applicable. Testing resources include:

• TPRI Scoring Resources
• TPRI Branching Rules
• TPRI Quick Reference Guide
• TPRI Intervention Criteria

Utilize CLI’s resources for alternative remote administration functionality and protocols for TPRI. Visit our detailed webpage to access teacher’s guides, webinars, and visual schedules to support teachers as they administer assessments remotely: Remote Assessment Administration

The offline assessment feature can be used to assess students when an internet connection is not available at the time of administration. The offline feature for TPRI can be accessed from the assessment practice area (for practicing the offline feature) or directly from the class view in TPRI (when conducting the assessments): TPRI LEE Offline Assessment

Learn about the various reports available on CLI Engage and find how-to guides along with support resources for first and second grade programs. Many of the following reports can be generated at the class, individual student, class, schools, and community/district levels.

• Completion Report
• Growth Report
• Summary Reports (community, campus, class and individual student reports for parents and teachers)
• Percentile Rank
• Custom Score Report
• Grouping Reports (class level only)

Learn more about all the levels of CLI Engage Reports.

The CIRCLE Activity Collection: Pre-K to Grade 2 Collection includes the following in each lesson:

• A description of the activity, the learning domains the activity supports, and an appropriate grade level
• Materials needed for the activity
• Activity instructions and soft scripting for implementation
• Helpful hints, including tips to create variations, related books to read aloud, and ways to scaffold student’s learning
• Applicable alignments to 1st and 2nd grade Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS)

The TPRI Intervention Activities Guide is a teacher-friendly resource that includes activities designed to help teachers target the needs of students, which is also in the CIRCLE Activity Collection.

Resources for data driven instruction can also be found on our beginning, middle, and end of year specific pages. These pages were curated to meet the needs of educators across the span of the school year:

• BOY Assessment Resources
• MOY Assessment Resources
• EOY Assessment Resources

Benchmarks are the minimum performance levels students are expected to reach by certain points of the year to indicate skill understanding. The TPRI Benchmark tables display the cut scores for benchmarks and are helpful in analyzing your data.

TPRI alignments to the 1^st and 2^nd Grade Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) can be found here:

• TPRI-TEKS Alignment for Grade 1
• TPRI-TEKS Alignment for Grade 2

Teachers using TPRI can share individual student reports with families by printing reports or by providing a personalized identification number (PIN) for families to view results online. Teachers can also send families activities that are designed to support skills of concern at home. Some resources to support you when sharing data with families include the following.

Implementation Guide: Student Report for Parents

This guide was developed for teachers who are sharing the Student Report for Parents with families. It includes the following topics:

• Understanding the Student Report for Parents
• Generating the Student Report for Parents and Sharing it with Families
• Having Conversations with Families about Data
• Supporting Resources

Refer to Understanding Your Child’s Assessment Results to assist families in becoming more knowledgeable about progress monitoring and supporting learning at home.

When sharing assessment results with parents, refer to our Family-Friendly Description of Assessment Measures.

View how-to guides for printing parent reports and viewing results online:

• Generating Student Reports for Parents
• Printing Parent PIN Pages

CLI Engage provides a CIRCLE Activity Collection specifically designed to support children’s skill development at home with their parents and families. The CIRCLE Activity Collection: Family can be accessed on mobile devices and does not require a login. This collection is also available in Spanish and provides a variety of hands-on activities that families can do at home. This collection is organized around seven learning domains: Language & Communication, Reading & Writing, Math, Science, Social & Emotional, Physical Development, and Art & Sensory.

CLI’s family engagement resources make the most of procedures you already have in place, such as progress monitoring, homework, parent-teacher conferences, and open houses.  The following resources are available on CLI Engage to assist with family engagement:

• Family Event Planning Checklist: The checklist helps teachers track key tasks for family event planning starting one month out, as well as recording specific activities and materials needed.
• Teacher Toolkit: Tips for Building Relationships: This is a quick reference guide for strategies that build positive working relationships with families. These strategies are discussed in more depth in the Partnering with Families and Promoting Positive Communication professional learning session
• CLI and PBS Collaboration: CIRCLE STEM Lab: The collection is a library of classroom lessons freely available for use by Texas prekindergarten to grade 2 teachers and administrators. It includes 20 child-directed, interactive lessons with activities that teach foundational STEM skills.
• Supporting Families with Understanding and Tracking Children’s Development includes:
  • Family and Teacher Goal Setting Form (all ages)
  • Words for Hard Conversations with Parents
  • Professional Learning Session
  • Promoting Two-Way Conversations with Families to Individualize Student Support

TPRI is a criterion-referenced instrument; therefore, the stories don’t have grade equivalents or percentile ranks. At the early grades, grade equivalent scores are highly unreliable. The stories have phonic elements and story grammar elements that increase in difficulty from the first story to the second story, as validated in a research study in Texas schools with over 3,000 students.

With respect to the stories, this means the phonic elements and story grammar elements increase in difficulty from grade 1 to 2. In grade 2, the vocabulary level is also higher and the sentence structure more complex. It’s unreliable to think in terms of grade equivalents because a student who reads at the frustrational level on Story 1 at the beginning of the year, may read at grade level by the end of the year due to targeted instruction.

In order to select 20 words to include on the TPRI Word Reading and Spelling tasks, the TPRI development team field tested about 60 different possible words at each grade level, for each type of task. The 60 field tested words were chosen by referencing current grade level TEKS, while considering words which covered a range of representative phonic elements and spelling patterns appropriate for each grade level. After field testing was complete, initial sets of words were created. Sets were formed by grouping together words with similar phonic elements and levels of difficulty. After careful consideration, 4 sets of 5 words were finalized. Each set included words that shared types of phonic elements, were of similar difficulty, and allowed for the sets to progress from easier to more difficult. The selected words also resulted in the creation of a highly reliable task. 

 Yes, in TPRI all students attempt to read both stories even if they score at a frustrational level and proceed to answer the listening comprehension questions.  In the development study conducted, some students could read the second story but were not able to read the first. So, students have a chance to read both stories to ensure their story reading is measured correctly.

Yes, the TPRI reading comprehension section is only for students that read the story independently. Once the student has reached a frustrational level during the read aloud portion, have the student stop reading and proceed to read the story to the student from the beginning and administer the Listening Comprehension questions.

A dyslexia screener is available in Wave 2 of TPRI to quickly and efficiently assess all 1^st grade students before January 31st in the school year for possible risk of dyslexia as required by Texas state law. Screening of first-grade students can begin anytime in the fall and must conclude no later than January 31st of each year.