In the history of mankind reading has always played an important role. It is one of the main ways of human socialization, development, training and education.

Today in Russia the role and attitude toward reading has strongly changed. According to All Russian Public Opinion Research Center data, 34% of Russians do not read any more. The level of reader's culture in many social groups of children and teenagers is declining.

A teacher sets a very important task - to foster pupils' interest in reading, teach them how "to read".

In this article, we will try to find the most successful ways to organize pupils' cognitive activity on the basis of semantic reading. For starters, we will consider such concepts as "informative activity" and "semantic reading".

Cognitive activity, as well as any activity, has its motives and purposes. The basic motive inducing the person to learn the world is the need for research of environment on the basis of which a complex system of cognitive motives is formed. The aim of cognitive activity is the acquisition of information about the unknown in order to establish its relationship with the known and to find new ways and means for an exit from a problem situation. The content of the cognitive activity is determined by the knowledge that a person acquires in the process of cognition.

According to the extent of penetration into the text content methodologist, linguist S.K.Folomkina allocates search-viewing, sample and semantic reading. In this article we are interested in semantic reading.

The purpose of the semantic reading is to understand the text content more precisely and fully, to catch all details and practically comprehend the acquired information. This is an attentive reading and penetration into the meaning by text analysis. When a child is reading thoughtfully, the imagination is working and he can actively interact with his internal images. The child himself sets a ratio between him, the text and the world. When he has skills of semantic reading his oral speech develops, followed by the development of written speech.

There are many ways of organizing cognitive activity, to promote the development of the semantic reading skills. The most effective way is problem-search method and its components: discussion, debate, modeling and drawing.

The problem-search method involves the selection of an issue and its discussion.

The discussion is the collective exchange of opinions organized by a number of problem questions that are relevant to this audience and organically derived from the book under discussion. This method involves thinking about the work, its integration with the world of the child and the real world surrounding him. Although questions to the text are usually raised by adults, but their solution is developed, tested, and formulated through the interaction between all participants. The teacher must create conditions at a lesson so that each participant of educational activity could actively participate in the solution of an educational task that is to be the subject of teaching. Subjectivity in the process of educational activity involves putting the question to yourself, your own consciousness and the desire to resolve the contradiction. The discussion, which began with the answers to questions prepared in advance, often turns in to a debate and is beyond the scope of the put-forward problems.

Through modeling and drawing children transfer printed characters, culture signs to another symbolical system. It helps pupils to imagine the location, images of characters etc. Transferring the text to another symbolical system, the child takes subjective intellectual action which requires the child to enhance the experience of the past, find the appropriate images in it and generalize these images to a coherent illustration. Transferring the text into a series of drawings allows children to learn how to keep the story line of the work.

In addition, these methods develop pupils' imagination and give them the opportunity to dream. Creative work is pleasant to children, it is always fun for them to carry out.

Cognitive interest of pupils plays a huge role in the organization of cognitive activity. The task of the leader of reading is to form and strengthen deep core interests of the children, while ensuring, at the same time, versatile reading. The person, experiencing emotion of interest to reading books of a certain subject, has a desire to explore, expand the experience by inclusion of new knowledge and thereby get satisfaction from realization of the planned purpose, personal enrichment and a new view of the world.