Language/Reading Curriculum in the Fourth Grade
Reading Policy
Reading instruction is an integral part of language and literature instruction, which is considered the most important subject at the beginning of school. By the end of second grade, students are expected to have mastered basic reading skills. In the grades that follow, reading comprehension is closely connected with literature instruction through emphasis on reading for pleasure, forming good reading habits, and having a positive attitude toward reading.
Summary of National Curriculum
In 2008, the National Council of the Slovak Republic passed Act No. 245/2008 (the School Act), which mandates that education in schools be conducted according to the State Education Program (Štátny Vzdelávací Program) and the School Education Program (Školský Vzdelávací Program).6 The State Education Program defines the compulsory content of education in schools and relinquishes approximately 30 percent of the overall content to the School Education Program via a curricular document unique to each school that describes how the school will attain the required general achievement and content standards. The School Act specifies the number of instructional hours per ISCED level rather than per grade and defines only minimal requirements. This reform was introduced and applied to Grades 1, 5, and 10 (i.e., the first grades of ISCED Levels 1, 2, and 3) during the 2008–2009 school year, and has gradually been implemented in all grades. The 2015 formation of the Innovative State Educational Program has reduced the autonomy of schools, but the PIRLS 2016 students were educated according to the previous policy. Reading was not a separate subject but taught jointly with writing and grammar. Schools with Slovak as the instructional language devoted at least 26 hours per week per four years of the first stage of primary school to this subject, while schools with minority instructional languages devoted 21 hours per week to both the instructional language and Slovak. Schools and teachers had the option to divide the hours between grades, and to choose the structure of lessons, the time allocated for each thematic unit, the use of particular works of literature, and the forms and methods of instruction to achieve the required objectives.
The State Educational Program, in the framework of the national curricula, emphasizes reading comprehension over academic linguistics in reading and literature instruction.7 At the end of fourth grade, students are expected to:
- Read aloud or silently, fluently and with understanding, texts with appropriate content, style, and vocabulary following preparation
- Read aloud with proper breathing, enunciation, and pronunciation
- Expressively read short excerpts from children’s literature
- Expressively read poems and excerpts from prose
- Expressively reproduce direct speech in dramatic texts
- Remember important facts and definitions
- Explain the principles of learned facts and the relationships between them
- Write a synopsis of a text
- Find the main idea of a text
- Reproduce the content of a text
- Express personal feelings and impressions from a text
- Identify main and supporting characters, speech figures, and chosen features
- Use literary features in a simple text analysis
- Analyze characters and their relationships
- Distinguish between prose and poetry
- Distinguish between fiction and nonfiction
- Reproduce and dramatize part of a fairy tale, story, or folktale
- Finish an incomplete story by narration, dramatization, or illustration
- Write a short work of prose
- Create simple rhymes
- Stage a short dramatic text
- Be acquainted with the school and public libraries
- Build a home library