Brigada Pagbasa, Bayanihan in the Midst of Pandemic
By: Errol John P. Ruiz
Reading has been the focus of man’s advancement to knowledge. It hugs the center stage in schools. It is a fact that more concerns have been expressed in the improvement of reading instructions more than in any other endeavor in the curriculum. Unfortunately, despite the heap on reading, much room for improvement still remains. Reading comprehension continues to be a problem in both the regular inclusive classrooms and in the field where children with difficulty in reading and comprehend abound. To raise the achievement of students, especially those who can hardly read and with poor comprehension, early intervention is necessary.
The Department of Education launched the Brigada sa Pagbasa, a movement that seeks to enhance the reading skills of Filipino children. This project is an extension of the Brigada Eskwela campaign that promotes community participation in time for school opening. In adherence with the DepEd’s call to spread reading literacy among Filipino children, Marcela Marcelo Elementary School took part in this endeavor in helping the learners in need of intervention and enhance their reading skills and develop comprehension during this break and in time of the pandemic.
As an initiative of MMES teachers, all grade levels launched their own reading intervention strategies. The school-based one-on-one online reading remediation runs for three weeks. This important piece of learning for the schools that took part has been the need to remediate learners with difficulty in reading and poor comprehension. A pre and post-test were conducted to measure the improvement of learners’ reading levels after the intervention program. Stakeholders also shared their time in conducting reading during plenary sessions. They also provided tokens and gifts for the learners who participated in the reading classes. Teachers also received shirts from stakeholder partners of each grade level.
The initiative promoted “Bayanihan Spirit” among teachers, parents, and stakeholders to address the reading problems of the learners. Truly, learning must continue despite the pandemic. The resiliency among Filipinos was prevalent even in the most trying times at present.