engleski

Preschool children participation in classic reading technique and guided reading

Since an open and democratic society education considers it important to teach young people problem solving, critical questioning of the situation, confronting alternative opinions and making deliberate and grounded decisions, the idea of the research was to introduce reading of classic fairy tales in a more modern way. Fairy tales are meant to teach us values of different kinds, but modern generations of children are not able to process and comprehend them without help of the adults. It is therefore important to talk with children about the morals of these fairy tales and to interpret them according to their age. In this context, we have decided to conduct an action research into the classic reading technique and guided reading of the fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen and The Brothers Grimm with an aim to research the process of children’s participation in reading and encouraging critical thinking. The action research was conducted within the course of Early and Pre-school Education and Teaching Action Research in the course of the summer term of the academic year 2018/2019. The children (N=24) aged six to seven participated in the research. The activities of the research included the selection of fairy tales that are similar in their composition and topic in order to be comparable. The data were collected by recording children by smartphones while being read to. The estimated evaluation criteria comprised video-recording observation, recording activities and participation of children in the process of reading the fairy tales in a classic technique and in guided reading. After having listened to the fairy tales the children expressed their preferences by filling out the children’s evaluation sheet in form of a Likert scale. The results of this action research show that children like both classic reading and guided reading. However, in course of guided reading the children participated actively, the discussion with children was more fruitful, motivated them to think and put questions, facilitated expressing their personal opinions and recognizing the moral of the story. We consider that this type of reading keeps the motivation level of reading and researching, while creating the opinion respecting conditions.

action research, preschool children, classic reading technique, guided reading, participation

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