Early Readers at the Beginning of School Attendance Procedure for Searching Respondents : Procedure for Searching Respondents
Abstract
This article introduces the ongoing research focusing on early reading and its relation to intellectual giftedness, which is an important topic in the development of initial reading literacy and preliteracy. It outlines the fi ndings of some foreign researches, and mainly, describes the way in which respondents were selected.
Respondents are primary school pupils who learned reading before entering school at least at the level of words or short sentences, then their parents and teachers. Early readers were identifi ed at the very beginning of their school attendance - in the fi rst half of September - through a simple group activity.
The children were told to perform tasks that were fi rst given in the form of an image. Among pictures there were also short texts that showed who was able to read them and to accomplish such tasks.
In total, 210 pupils from nine fi rst-graders classes of six Prague primary schools took part in this activity, of which ten early readers have been identifi ed. This activity could become a practical tool that would be easy to use for general identifi cation of early readers at school or in preschool education, so that stimulating activities can be offered to support the development of children's initial reading literacy.
At the end of the article, the procedure for the second part of the research that is currently being carried out is briefl y introduced.