Abstract
The aim of the dissertation is to monitor the development of the initial reading literacy of early readers, i.e., children who have learned to read with the comprehension before beginning of their school attendance. The aim of the research was to find answers to the questions how and when these children learned to read and how their initial reading literacy and motivation to read developed during the first year of primary school.
Subsequently, the subject of the research was the verification of the connection between early reading and intellectual giftedness and family background. The theoretical part is devoted to current trends in primary school, the basic principles of primary education are described with emphasis on personal and constructivist conception of teaching, focusing on the topics of pupil assessment and inclusive education, including the education of gifted and exceptionally gifted students.
The term reading literacy is defined, the stages of its development are distinguished and questions concerning reading are discussed, including the results of research on early reading in the Czech and foreign contexts. The chapter devoted to giftedness defines the term of giftedness and its identification and introduces several models of it.
The research part describes the qualitative research methods which were used, the procedure for finding early readers and methods for identifying gifted pupils. The results of the research are described through case studies of children, their families and teachers.
The following are the results of diagnostic tests of reading and methods leading to the identification of the giftedness of early readers. It was discovered that the early readers we observed in our research come from families where reading is perceived as an important part of life, where parents support children in reading and provide them with sufficient stimuli for their overall development.
Most of these children learned to read on their own, at the age of 4-6 years. The motivation of children to read during the first year of their school attendance was still high, thanks to the support of parents and teachers.
However, the results of diagnostic reading tests showed that early readers at the end of the first year and in the second half of the second year achieve comparable results with many of their classmates who learned to read only at school. The connection between early reading and intellectual giftedness was proved in majority of the children from the research sample.
It is therefore necessary at the beginning of school attendance to develop not only advanced reading skills of early readers, but also their giftedness, so that they can fulfill their potential.