Parental involvment in their child's reading is the most important factor of early reading literacy development. It is important to start reading stories with preschoolers and continue up to lower grades of primary school, since this is the period of a child's literacy development. The collaboration of families with kindergardens, schools and libraries is crucial in developing reading literacy. One of the most important factors of successful reading literacy development is parents' education level. Parents having higher education level are generally more motivated to read with their children and they read with them more often than parents having lower level of education.
The present thesis deals with preschool children aged 5-6 and pupils of 1st grade from primary school Šmartno and their parents. The thesis presents reading of stories and its influence on the development of reading literacy and reading comprehension in relation to their parents' education level. The theoretical part of the thesis deals with different types of stories, it focuses on research studies about reading literacy of children in Slovenia, it presents family reading of stories, the influence of parents' education on their children's literacy, literature education and collaboration between parents and kindergardens, schools and libraries.
The empirical part of the thesis comprises of quantitative research in two parts. The first part presents a research based on a questionnaire involving 84 families, which shows parents' opinion on reading stories, the influence of their education on their child's literacy development, their habits regarding reading of stories and the way they collaborate with schools, kindergardens and libraries. The second part of the research focuses on checking reading comprehension of children aged 5-7 based on two reading tests, which show whether children whose parents have higher level of education read better and have better reading comprehension. The research confirms that parents with higher level of education are more motivated to read stories with their children and are slightly more aware of the correlation between reading stories and development of their child's reading literacy as opposed to parents with lower level of education. Moreover, the research shows that more children whose parents have higher level of education read independently and comprehend what they have read.
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