One of the problems that most public educational institutions experience in the implementation of the new educational landscape of the country is the insufficient learning resources that would respond to the demand of the new curriculum.
In as much as the teachers would like to expose the learners to reading materials for them to find reading fun, books found on the shelves are only a handful.
More so, these reading materials are resources of the old curriculum.
With the desire to bring reading materials into the classroom, the heads of schools then borrow books from the library hub.
The trouble is some learners don’t find such books interesting to read because of unfamiliar context.
Thus, the DepEd Division of Negros Oriental, in its pursuit to establish a genuine love for reading among learners, has developed big books with stories and legends of the different places, local delicacies, local games, and even local heroes of the province of Negros Oriental.
The stories and legends are written in the local language for the primary grades, with English translation at the end of the page; while some are written in Filipino, and English for the higher level.
For a total of 535 schools, the DepEd Division of Negros Oriental was able to bank all these big books in the library hub.
This reading project was conceptualized with the aim of inspiring learners to appreciate one’s culture, and connect the now with the past to understand such culture better.
This concept is anchored on the theory of constructivism that espouses that an individual is better able to interact with what is closest to his experience, and maybe craft a new idea from the already- known thing.
Reading is fun and enjoyable if the individual can connect the characters in the text to the real world. This happens such more if the details in the text and the language used are close to his environment.
Moreover, the new curriculum or the K to 12 program in the country has compelled all educators to contextualize and localize instructional and learning materials for the learners’ enjoyable experience and better understanding.
Thus, the idea of making big books containing stories and legends of the different places, people, food, games, etc. of this Province was realized.
With the integration of technology which responds to the call for a 21st century learning, these contextualized and localized reading materials or big books are digitized for more enjoyable reading and interactive learning.
Select computer experts were pulled together to digitize the big books to bring more life in reading, and to make the teaching-learning process in the classroom more exciting.
The school teachers are able to facilitate the teaching-learning process with more convenience with the use of technology and digitized learning materials.
The big books project has gone through quality assurance by the local Learning Resource Management & Development System, both in terms of content and technical aspects.
These big books were also validated by the local culture and tourism offices for veracity and accuracy.
A number of positive feedback from the teachers and learners have thus far been received because of the use of contextualized and digitized big books.
Learners have become more interactive in the classroom because they can relate to the content of the stories. Not only can they read the stories and legends in printed/hardcopy format, they can also enjoy them on the screen with authentic illustrations creatively digitized.
Comprehension is further enhanced because of the meaningful details which seem closer to the learners’ experiences.
Indeed, reading is fun with the contextualized, localized, and digitized stories and legends in the different places of Negros Oriental.
Nilita L. Ragay
[email protected]