Brigada Pagbasa is an initiative/project of the World Vision Foundation in partnership with the Department of Education which aims to help Filipino children become functionally literate and enable them to achieve excellent academic performance.
It also contributes in empowering parents, community volunteers and other stakeholders to support learners become functionally literate as they pursue their education.
Undeniably, becoming literate plays a vital role in the development of any country. Perhaps, if everybody is functionally literate, everyone will have the boldness to discover their potentials and work on them to eventually result in making life better for all of us. If individuals improve, the country as a whole will also improve.
Amidst the pandemic, school personnel of the Sadsadan Trail Elementary School, the learners, parents and other stakeholders went through and are still experiencing a lot of struggles and challenges in the delivery of basic education. In fact, for almost two years, our school as a whole had been struggling regarding the literacy skills of learners most especially those in the primary grades.
After the conduct of the Phil.IRI (Reading Assessment) pretest, BRIGADA found out that twenty-three (23) out of one hundred fifty-nine (159) tested learners from grades four to six were under the frustration reading level which meant that our learners under this level needed reading assistance.
Despite the challenges, the spirit of “BINADANG” ignited the faculty members, parents and other stakeholders of the school to come up with interventions and programs to help address the problems of the learners at risk.
Prior to Brigada Pagbasa, and just after the conduct of Phil.IRI in September, 2021, the school coordinated with the Barangay Local Government Unit to identify or secure Community Learning Centers (CLC) where teachers will conduct remedial reading activities to learners with poor reading skills with strict adherence to health protocols. This initiative was found to be helpful as shown in the evaluation and assessment conducted by the Brigada Pagbasa Program which was launched in our district and then in our school on October, 2021 to enhance the schools’ reading activities.
With the implementation of Brigada Pagbasa as another program to help improve reading and comprehension skills of our learners, our school coordinated again with the stakeholders through invitation letters, social media and direct conversation to encourage volunteers to render services by helping in the implementation of various activities as well as in sourcing out reading materials which could be used in the program.
We are very thankful that representatives from the PTA and the church voluntarily accepted our invitation. With the goal to improve the literacy level of our school, volunteers for the Brigada Pagbasa came to school on schedule with different reading materials to conduct one-on-one guided reading with identified learners. Other volunteers conducted one-on-one guided reading with identified learners near their sitios in identified Community Learning Centers (CLCs). Aside from these, teachers and parents convened once a week purposely for reading activities to help them guide their children well.
With the Brigada Pagbasa implementation, the number of learners under the frustration reading level decreased from twenty 23 to 4 as shown in the first quarter report. Some of them became confident to stand and read, retell stories, answer questions and could spell out words.
The school joined also the BRIGADA PAGBASA festival in November, 2021 conducted in the district and division levels giving us the following awards:
In the District level: (1) 2nd – in Picture Me Arts Galore; (2) 1st – in Spelling Grade 3; (3) 1st — spelling Grade 4; and (4) 1st — AVP Category 1.
In the division level: 1st in spelling Grade 3; 1st in spelling Grade 4; and finalist in the AVP Category 1.
Aiming to achieve zero (0) frustration reading level during the post test and 0 failure rate at the end of the school year, our school is moving as one and we continue to implement this Brigada Pagbasa Program because we believe functional literacy is the duty of all.**By Lily M. Pawid – SH STES
