Identifying Early Readers at the Start of Their Compulsory Education

compulsory school attendance by using a time-saving group activity. Early readers are fi rst-year
primary school pupils who have learnt to read and understand what they read at least at the
level of words or short sentences when they start school.
The different levels of reading skills at the beginning of the fi rst year of primary school put
a great strain on teachers. It is necessary to provide all children with suitable stimuli to develop their initial reading literacy and support their motivation to read. To reach this goal, it is
necessary to have an overview of the pupils’ current knowledge and skills. This text offers a way
to get a general overview of each pupil’s reading skills within one lesson. The procedure was
developed for children who are learning to read in Czech, so it is also explained on this premise.
However, we believe that the principle by which reading skills are determined is applicable to
other languages as well. Therefore, we primarily present here a general methodological procedure which can be adapted to different languages as needed. After the initial examination,
further activities should follow according to the individual teacher’s choice, which will refi ne
the knowledge acquired and enable the planning of subsequent learning activities.