TEKSTO SUVOKIMO GEBĖJIMŲ UGDYMAS 2 KLASĖJE PANAUDOJANT BEŽODES KNYGAS [DEVELOPING TEXT COMPREHENSION SKILLS IN 2ND GRADE USING WORDLESS BOOKS]

The development of text comprehension skills in primary school is constantly seeking new ways of engaging students of different abilities. One such innovation is wordless books. Given the lack of information on the use of such books, the aim of this study was to investigate the impact of wordless book-based educational activities on the text comprehension skills of second grade students. The method chosen for the study was participatory action research. Three educational activities were planned and carried out to observe students' activity. Before and after the educational activities, the students' comprehension of the fiction text was measured. The methods used for data collection were: analysis of pedagogical literature, written questionnaire, informal natural indirect observation. The questionnaires used to investigate the text comprehension skills were specially designed and identified 4 main skills of fiction text comprehension (finding clearly presented information, making inferences, integrating and interpreting ideas and information, examining the content and details of the text, evaluating). The participants were selected by convenience sampling. The participants were 17 second grade students from one school class. Based on the results of the text comprehension skills test, 3 educational activities based on reading wordless books were designed. All the educational activities followed a single lesson model: at the beginning of the activity, students were introduced to the topic and objective of the lesson, followed by a collective reading of a wordless book, a discussion, a creative task and reflection. The study showed that the wordless book-based activities had a positive impact on some of the second grade students' inference and integration of ideas and information, and interpretation skills. The wordless book activities were more engaging for students with lower levels of educational achievement.