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The article reports on the results of specific research, which focused on the selection of textbooks and workbooks for the development of elementary reading and writing of students in the 1st to 3rd grade of a primary school in the Czech Republic. The respondents (teachers of primary schools) express their opinions in the survey towards books (reading books, spelling books and writing books) according to their own selection criteria. The most important parameters of the selection include content and didactic aspects of textbooks, their scope and design, to which the textbooks, spelling books and reading books published by Nová škola and Alter correspond the most.

The paper presents results of a research team from the Faculty of Education, University of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic. It lists the most common methods used to teach reading in primary schools (the analytical synthetic method, the genetic method and the Sfumato flowing reading method). It presents results of a pilot research focused mostly on reading comprehension in pupils from the second year of primary schools. During this period pupils' reading technique becomes automated, which provides space for them to focus more on reading comprehension (text's elaboration). The testing took place in the school year 2016/17 and focused on quantitative and qualitative parameters of reading performance of 2 nd year pupils taught by different methods. The contribution tries to identify the most effective teaching method from the perspective of reading comprehension. General conclusions cannot be drawn from the obtained data. The text in the test was newly implemented (it has not been investigated in the Czech Republic so far) with the use of silent reading, loud reading and listening and the effect of the three different modes on reading comprehension was observed. The research clearly shows that children undertstand text the most when they do not read it themselves but listen to it instead.

The study monitors two phenomena of graphomotor problems among children at the beginning and the end of primary education. The study has a character of piloting. A series of seven graphomotor tasks were submited to preschoolers (n = 51) and in the ninth grade (n = 22). For each task, tremor and number of hand move interruptions were considered as indicators of graphomotor difficulties. The results showed that the tremor was detected at 33.3% to 78.4% of preschoolers and at 18.2% to 59.1% of ninth grade pupils. In both groups, the tremor was the least prevalent in the ‘teeth’ task and the most frequent in the ‘double upper-lower loop’ task. The prevalence of tremor in the solution of graphomotor problems decreases with age, the difference is statistically insignificant. Contrary to the expectations, more interruptions were found at nineth grade pupils. Based on the study results, we recommend to note in the instruction that the templates are ‘straight lines’. Keywords: Graphomotor skills, graphomotor difficulties, tremor, number of interrupsions, preschool children, adolescents, pilot study.  

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