Reading educational texts in primary school and activities for promoting reading

TITLE: Reading educational texts in primary school and activities for promoting reading AUTHOR: Alena Vrňáková DEPARTMENT: Czech Literature Department SUPERVISOR: PhDr. Ondřej Hausenblas ABSTRACT: The aim of this thesis is to examine reading literacy and development of critical thinking skills during the teaching of educational texts. In this context I refer to the concept of the subject's reading literacy in relation to RVP ZV and to suitable conditions for developing one's literary ability. I also speak of the basic motivational principles of teaching, such as teacher's personality, goals and rules of active teaching. I also emphasis how one can achieve a better understanding of the given texts while reading them and provide a summary of teaching methods specificaly designed for the development of critical thinking. In practice I focused on the creation of a sufficient number of teaching materials of educational texts processed by methods of critical thinking and a model of learning EUR and on testing the efectiveness of these materials in the classroom. A part of this verification included monitoring ten pupils in their fourth year at the primary school Vrchotovy Janovice, where I work. KEYWORDS: Educational texts, reading, literacy, understanding, development of reading abilit