Progress and Beyond: A Good Practice Digest on Early Grade Education | Digest #1

The best teachers believe that children’s experiences are the most effective means to learn. Such method has been proven helpful by the teachers of Cudangdang Elementary School in helping early grade learners master how to read.

Background
Located in the middle of vast sugarcane fields is Cudangdang Elementary School in the town of Enrique B. Magalona in Negros Occidental. The school is run by 14 teachers led by Principal Hazel M. Tolentino.
To reach the school, one must travel along an approximate six kilometer-stretch of unpaved road from the main highway. The area has limited mobile and internet signal, which affected children’s access to education when distance learning became the norm when COVID-19 pandemic hit the country in early 2020. With such change, the Kinder to Grade 3 (K-3) teachers have become wary on how they could guide the young learners to read – a foundational skill of a child –without face-to-face interactions.

Challenges
Despite the pandemic, Ms. Tolentino and the teachers were determined to help early grade learners build their literacy skills. For the School Year 2020-2021, the teachers conducted the Comprehensive Reading Learning Assessment (CRLA) via house-to-house visits to 38 grade 1 learners. The CRLA is a tool used to determine the reading profiles of early grade learners to help teachers develop appropriate reading instructions for each profile. The tool is developed by the USAID ABC+: Advancing Basic Education in the Philippines project in partnership with the Department of Education.
Based on the results of the CRLA, 11 out of 38 grade 1 learners of Cudangdang Elementary School belong to full refresher level. Learners of this level cannot recognize letters and its sounds, as well as phonics pattern.

Solutions
To address the competency gap of the grade 1 learners, Ms. Tolentino and the teachers implemented a project initiative entitled Literacy Enhancement Program @ New Normal in July 2021. They started by holding a Learning Action Cell (LAC) session to discuss strategies on improving the reading skills of the full refresher learners. Their shared solutions include:

• Incorporate the Language Experience Approach (LEA), Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), as well as Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) in the teaching strategies.
• Develop and distribute contextualized and localized learning materials to learners.
• Orient home learning partners on how to conduct reading activities at home.
• Conduct house-to-house monitoring following minimum health protocols, when possible

The teachers decided to use LEA as a method for teaching literacy to gauge the interest of the young learners. This approach relies on the child’s experiences so they can easily relate to and identify with the words. Teachers developed learning materials with contextualized and localized examples to ensure that the approach is followed.

Even if the intervention is for grade 1 learners only, Ms. Tolentino encouraged the teachers from grades 2 to 6 to help in developing the learning materials as an investment to their future students. The learning materials were packaged in kits and distributed to the 11 learners.

The teachers also conducted a demonstration on the use of the materials to the home learning partners. They also oriented them on creating an effective learning environment at home and fostering patience to their children as part of promoting the SEL and GESI approaches.

To further support the home learning partners, Grade 1 Teacher Ana Fe Arellano, who is also a resident of the barangay conducted house-to-house visits to the 11 learners. She assisted the home learning partners when needed and monitored the reading progress of every child.

“The best resources are the human resources and as an educator, the best resources are in our hands. We need to do our best for them because when they grow, they can contribute in improving our community.”
-Principal Hazel M. Tolentino

Results
After three months of implementation, the teachers conducted a post-test still using the CRLA tool in September 2021 to determine the progress of the children from the initiative. Of the 11 learners who were classified to be at full refresher level, seven (7) have improved to moderate refresher level while four (4) moved to light refresher level. This means that they can now recognize letters and its sounds but still need guidance on phonics pattern (moderate refresher) and reading accuracy (light refresher).

Aside from the improvement in the children’s reading profiles, Ms. Tolentino and the teachers observed that home learning has helped in developing a closer parent-child relationship. They have heard feedback from home learning partners how fulfilled they are to see their child’s reading progress after all the hardships on teaching at home.

With this success, their project initiative Literacy Enhancement Program @ New Normal was recognized as one of the 11 Noteworthy Literacy Practices of the USAID ABC+ project in December 2021. Ms. Tolentino is planning to re-implement the program in the coming school year. Before she retires in December 2022, she wishes to continuously contribute in attaining the vision of providing quality literacy instruction that enables learners to become competent independent readers.

To learn more about the good practice, contact:
Ms. Hazel M. Tolentino
School Principal
Cudangdang Elementary School
[email protected]