Organization of the extended reading of literary texts in after-school programs

The master's thesis deals with the question of text complexity in a reading event. By reading literary texts at a reading event, the reading comprehension mentor gets important insights into the pupil's response to the text. Readers or listeners of different ages can namely understand the same text, but of course, differently (see Saksida, 2009). In the master's thesis, we focused on pupils' responses to more demanding literary texts using the long reading method.Reading comprehension mentors play an important role in the reading of a young reader. In the theoretical part, we relied on three important questions to which the reading comprehension mentor has to know the answer to why, what, and how to read texts at school. The question of why we read is answered by the definition of literacy. With the question of what to read, we linked the reading motivation, the reading interest, and the positive attitude to reading. A reading comprehension mentor has to proceed from pupils' reading interest, but he should not emphasize it too much, since reading the texts at a reading event does not mean reading anything, that is, reading only for pleasure. Also reading the texts at a reading event requires deep reading and conversation about the read. In the master's thesis, we emphasized more demanding texts, which students can be offered to read (better more demanding than too simple texts), but we need to discuss exhaustively on the more demanding spots in the texts. We have defined the question of how to read by reading strategies, as they are related to reading and talking about what we read. We described a model for the development of reading ability, which we divided into the mentor's preparation for the school interpretation of the belletristic text and on the stages of school interpretation of the belletristic text. We attached great importance to the verification of all cognitive levels, both higher and lower, and in details described Bloom's classification, which teachers use to the maximum extent. We presented the method of long reading, which creates encouraging positions in which pupils spontaneously slide into the world of literature. In our study, we read the book Happy King and Other Fairy Tales written by Oscar Wilde to the pupils of the first educational period, therefore we presented the author and the book of fairy tales itself, showed the position of the book in the curriculum, and stated the goals that can be realized with fairy tales in the first educational period.In the empirical part, we verified the fact that the same text can be understood by listeners of different ages, but differently. The pupils of the first, second and third class of Utik Affiliate School participated in the empirical work. With the study we wanted to check the response of students to more demanding literary texts – The Happy Prince, The Nightingale and the Rose, The Selfish Giant and The Devoted Friend. We read the fairy tales using the long reading method and found that this method is definitely suitable for reading longer and more complex texts. The method was constantly increasing the tension, raising the motivation for listening to fairy tales, and it has made it possible for us to discuss exhaustively the more demanding points in the text.Perfectly appropriate responses of some students to more demanding texts led us to the conclusion that solid and unambiguous classification of children's texts into closed age groups is unnecessary. More time should be devoted to the very development of the ways in which readers recall the text.Similarly, the reading comprehension mentor should adjust the content, goals and methods of the reading event, especially for more capable (gifted) pupils by offering them a slightly more demanding text and different levels of reading tasks.