Globe is helping develop language literacy among children in view of the significant drop in the country’s global ranking in English proficiency. This is also in support of the Department of Education (DepEd)’s efforts to address the growing threat posed on the public education system by the ongoing pandemic.
Under its Global Filipino Teachers (GFT) initiative, Globe, through a partnership with Teach for the Philippines (TFP), provides essential learning sessions that promote 21st century learning and maximize digital resources among public school teachers and learners amid the COVID-19 crisis. TFP works to provide Filipino children with inclusive, relevant, and excellent education.
A focus of the GFT learning sessions is Early Language Literacy. In the recent GFT webinars, attendees were taught how to teach pre-reading skills, introduce sound and print, decoding and sight-reading as well as plan a reading program for children under the new normal.
Through the webinars, Globe aims to equip educators and parents with the knowledge to conduct an effective reading program to improve learners’ progress as well as guide them on the best offline and online approaches to reading.
During the discussions, teachers learned how children can combine strong decoding skills while expanding their sight vocabulary so they can invest more brain energy into comprehending what they are reading, thus enhancing their overall English proficiency.
The webinars also tackled the appropriate combination of learning modalities to target different learning goals, ways to monitor learners’ progress, and how to maximize learning by teaching children games and activities that they can engage in repeatedly for independent practice.
Teachers were also encouraged to involve students in preparing their own instructional materials out of common household objects and how they can nurture relationships with the children and their families. The sessions can be viewed through https://www.facebook.com/GlobeBridgeCom/.
“Our Global Filipino Teachers program supports our public school teachers with the necessary skills, knowledge, and mindset needed to achieve 21st century learning. More than ever, these supplementary programs are necessary to promote new skills needed in this new normal,” said Yoly Crisanto, Globe chief sustainability officer and SVP for Corporate Communications.
TFP’s marketing and events director Angel Ramos, on the other hand, said: “Our teachers and students need all the support that they can get. With new and innovative techniques in teaching reading to beginning and non-readers, we hope our teachers will be able to help improve our public school students’ learning outcomes even more confidently.”
The global health crisis has forced the entire country to adapt to new ways of teaching students at home. Aside from revising its learning standards for students, DepEd also shifted to flexible learning delivery options including primarily printed modules to be distributed to students’ homes and supplemented with TV, radio, and online distance learning.
However, the current setup threatens to increase the gap between those who are able to access and continue education and those who could not. It could also cause a setback to the development of students’ skills as well as affect the provision of developmentally-appropriate structured experiences that can help students navigate the crisis.
The situation can also further impact the children’s ability to learn and express themselves in English. Even before the crisis, data from the international education company Education First already showed that the ranking of the Philippines in the English Proficiency Index has been declining over the past few years to 27th in 2020 from 13th in 2016.