Many schoolchildren struggle with reading and need specific intervention. The right kind of help is only possible after an intensive reading assessment.
This was pointed out at the recent literacy forum on the theme “Thoughtful Teaching through Meaningful Measurements” conducted by Reading Association of the Philippines (RAP) at Xavier School in Nuvali, Laguna.
Dr. Lorna Dig-Dino, assistant secretary for programs and projects at the Department of Education’s (DepEd) OIC-Regional Director of Region II, talked about reading assessment in light of the K to 12 (kindergarten to Grade 12) curriculum.
She discussed briefly the DepEd’s vision-mission and its core values and how these were embedded in the K to 12 basic education curriculum framework.
The new program emphasizes 21st century skills—information, media and technology; learning and innovation, communication and life and career.
Dig-Dino, one of the three plenary speakers, said assessment was used as a quality assurance tool to promote self-reflection and personal accountability for one’s learning.
She said the teacher’s roles in reading and assessment were as facilitator, guide, motivator and inspiration to students.
Reading for learning
Frederick Perez, English and Filipino department head at Xavier School, Nuvali, spoke on classroom-based reading assessments. He said reading assessment was the responsibility of all teachers because every content area involved some form of reading.
To help students become effective readers, he said, all teachers should teach and assess reading. Reading assessment, he said, was an ongoing, recursive cycle that included clarifying what effective readers did, gathering evidence in a variety of ways, making inferences and interpretations based on evidence and doing instructional plans based on those inferences and interpretations.
Perez said teachers often could identify the weaknesses in students. A follow-through was crucial to provide the instructional support students need to improve their performance.
Victor Villanueva, director of Read-Ability Literacy Improvement Center and an expert on clinical assessment of reading, discussed the process involved in addressing a reading disability.
He said a reading specialist should always have a frame of reference to explain how proficient reading took place and how it broke down.
He said the modified cognitive model by Michael McKenna and Katherine Stahl (2009) guided a reading specialist across all components of an assessment. It also helped identify difficulties and how they could be addressed.
Villanueva said that without an assessment, children who struggle with reading might not get the help they need.
In the session on “Assessment Using Uncued Retelling,” Villanueva taught participants an informal way to analyze students’ performance on retelling narrative and expository materials using grids and quantifiable ideas.
Dr. Leonor E. Diaz of the University of the Philippines College of Education, in “Emphasis on Phonological Awareness as a Crucial Part of Teaching Beginning Reading,” stressed the importance of teaching sounds before letters so children could master oral English fluency.
Nursery rhymes and similar materials helped kids understand that the playful manipulation of sounds of letters gave different meanings to words. Phonemic awareness was vital to meaningful comprehension.
Sponsors of the RAP Literacy Forum, which also featured a book exhibit, included Scholastic, Vibal and Adarna House.
(The author is division English coordinator at DepEd San Juan.)