The article highlights the features of the formation of students' cross-cutting skills, which are inherent in the basic key competencies. Critical, analytical thinking, teamwork, communication skills, creativity, empathy, the ability to make decisions, express their own opinions are the basis of a competency-based approach in the modern educational process, designed to integrate students into society, to educate individuals with national consciousness. The article studies the issues of updating the content of literary reading of junior schoolchildren under the condition of holistic primary school education and modern requirements for human education; features of influence on the development of personality through themes and genres that form the beginning of systemic critical thinking; involvement of modern Ukrainian fiction in the study of monographic topics, biographical material on the example of studying the life and work of Lesia Ukrainka. The activity aspect of reading is described as a special component of lifelong learning, as a variable set of knowledge, skills and strategies that the learner forms under different conditions through interaction with others and with society as a whole; special attention is paid to the variety of cognitive processes required for reading, as well as on their interactive nature. Reading as a cognitive skill involves cognitive reading interests. Motivation encourages readers to decide on the appropriateness of using new knowledge. Reading literacy is the joint result of three interrelated subjects: the reader, the text, and the task. These three dimensions interact in a broad socio-cultural context, so aspects of the organization of forms of reading activities of primary school children, the formation of key competencies, including literary competence in reading lessons; possibilities of combining a modern work of art with the biographical material of the writer; stimulating students to develop critical thinking, the formation of worldviews, their own vision, interpretation while reading fiction; features of formation of creative cooperation of the teacher and pupils. It is proved that in the conditions of personality-oriented professional training of students the role of self-knowledge, self-identification, self-education grows.