Students who are included in Adapted education programme with lower educational standard can be short of reading motivation and reading fluency, in the same way as their other peers. Reading fluency is a skill which has a great influence on understanding a text. If students achieve reading fluency, there is a stronger possibility that they will understand a text and will become motivated to read. However, the level of reading fluency that students achieve depends on a number of factors. School environment can influence some of the factors and consequently increase the level of reading fluency. Students who come from less stimulating environment have a tendency to be poorly motivated to read, therefore they need special attention. Teachers can notice students’ motivational structure, which is the first level of motivation, and have an influence on how they learn to read at school.
In the thesis we tested whether the students in the 3rd and 4th grades at Adapted education programme with lower educational standard would improve their reading fluency using didactic games. In our case a didactic game is a didactic motivational stimulation which should contribute to higher reading motivation. We established a programme of didactic games that carried out reading training with a group of two students from the 3rd and three students from the 4th grades. Before the training we checked the interest in reading using the Questionnaire on reading motivation for younger students and the students used the following tests: CBM-Test of reading aloud fluency and subtests Tests of reading and writing disorder (Words I and Words II). After the reading training we did the tests again and evaluated the progress of reading fluency. The test results indicated progress in reading speed of words, which is an enormous success considering that reading fluency was developed for a short period of time. On the other hand, we cannot observe a considerable progress in the number of words that are accurately read after the reading training with the use of a didactic game. This reading training indicated that the students felt comfortable with reading and they wanted to take part in the activity again. The survey results suggest that it would be sensible to often use didactic games as motivational means in order to increase reading fluency, especially reading speed. However, to develop reading accuracy students need special goal-oriented exercises according to their individual abilities and specific learning difficulties.
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