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Forum Participants Discussed Modern Strategies for Reading

On March 26, the VII Interregional Scientific and Practical Conference "Modern Strategies for Reading and Understanding Texts of Various Functionality" was held at the School No. 47 named after D.S. Likhachev.

The conference was attended by more than 200 teachers from St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, and the Republic of Crimea. In addition, the conference was attended by teachers and administration from Armenia (Gymnasium named after A. Blok, Yerevan). The role of culture in human and social life was welcomed by Marina Obukhova, Director of school No. 47.

The leading research associates of the St. Petersburg Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education attended the plenary session. Natalia Svirina, Ed. D., Professor of the Department of Basic and Secondary General Education of the St. Petersburg Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education, head of research of the Association of Gymnasiums of St. Petersburg, made a report on "Some aspects of methodological support of text activities of schoolchildren". The problem of functional reading and possible solutions to it were highlighted by Lyudmila Gvozdinskaya, senior lecturer of the Department of Philological Education of the St. Petersburg Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education (report "Reading comprehension as a step to functional literacy"). Yuri Eelmaa, Ph. D., secondary curriculum coordinator at the Moscow International Educational Fair, focused on the changes that are taking place in the humanities in the context of blended learning. Sergey Fedorov, Ph. D., Head of the Department of Philological Education of St. Petersburg Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education made a report "The World of Culture As a Text". It was devoted to the problems of the semiotics of culture and the interpretation of aspects of cultural tradition: from the national ethnic mentality to the local St. Petersburg text.

Within the framework of the conference, six dedicated thematic sections continued their work. Each of them was devoted to an important issue of reading, comprehension, and interpreting texts of different functionality.

The section "The Language of Illustration" was devoted to the issue of interaction between pictorial and literary texts, the possibilities of interpretating literary works when referring to illustrations created by both professional artists and students in the process of studying the text.

The participants of the section "The Language of Cinema" discussed various forms of interaction between cinematic storytelling and literary text and the possibilities of involving schoolchildren in this dialogue.

The speakers at the section "The language of facial expressions and gestures" addressed a specific form of communication – non-verbal communication, which was considered in two interrelated aspects: literary text and pedagogical interaction.

The participants of the section "The language of things and exhibits" presented literary museums of the city and schools. The experience of the museum and museum practices were demonstrated - how an exhibit can "tell" about history or show an era. The participants of the section reflected on working with the exhibits when constructing a story, applying this practice in the classroom, excursions, and in life.

A special feature of the scientific conference was in its cross-curriculum approach. The section "From the language of formulas to the language of life" reflected the experience of teachers and teaching teams (school No. 365 named after M. P. Krasnolutsky), who take an active part in forming a unified view of the meta text of culture, as well as in finding interaction between subject teachers when working with texts of various functionality: artistic, scientific, educational, journalistic, popular science, memoir, and others.

In the questionnaires based on the results of the VII Interregional Scientific and Practical Conference "Modern Strategies for Reading and Understanding Texts of Various Functionality", the participants highly appreciated the work of the organizers: the Department of Philological Education of the St. Petersburg Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education, the organizing committee of the conference of the School No. 47 named after D. S. Likhachev, as well as the quality of the workshops and reports presented at the conference by teachers of St. Petersburg, the creative atmosphere that prevailed in the classrooms. The participants expressed the wish to make the scientific conference at School No. 47 a good tradition of the St. Petersburg International Educational Forum.