WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
Maria Cecilia A. Bundalian
Learners’ poor reading skills has always been an issue over the years. Aside from writing, reading is the pre-requisite skill a child must learn to master other subjects. But why there are still learners who reached high school yet are still under Frustration Level? Were they neglected during their formative years when they supposed to develop their skills in reading? Who are to blame? Are their elementary teachers or their parents who are said to be their first teachers?
All of these questions have no definite answer, because every child has his/her own story to tell. Some children unfortunately were not taught reading at home for even their parents cannot read or what we call them illiterate. While some children had no time to read for they were tasked to help their parents to earn for a living or do house chores after school. These are just some of the realities a publicschool teacher has to consider. That is why teaching becomes more challenging.
In my ten years of experience as a public-school- language teacher, the learners who excel in class are also those whom we call independent readers or those readers who can read and understand a text without the assistance of the teacher. Meanwhile, those who have reading difficulty are those of course who struggle in their academics. Hence, no matter how good their teacher presented the lesson, still they will not get it. So remedial classes come into the scene. But what remediation to conduct? Is it about the lesson?
Remediation will just be useless even if the teacher will teach the same topic over and over again if the child is under Frustration Reading Level. The teacher will just end up frustrated after every remedial class. Again, reading skill is a prerequisite skill to understand a lesson so it must be taught or developed first before presenting new skills to the learner. This is not just the load a language teacher will carry. It must be the load to carry by all the subject teachers.
A child who is under Frustration Reading Level must be given reading remediation by every subject teacher. If the subject is Mathematics, then all the terms in Math are the words ‘in focus’. If the subject is Science, then all scientific words will be asked for him/her to read. What is important is that the child will be given equal chance to learn the subject while enhancing a pre-requisite skill. As the saying goes, ‘Every teacher is a reading teacher’. Thus, all of us teachers have our part to improve our learners’ reading skills. If we will all work together, no child will be left behind in reading.
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The author is English Teacher III at Dapdap High School