ABSTRACT
The results of the study hoped to serve as a baseline in implementing Project GLARE to reinforce and enhance reading, for learners under the frustration level and non-readers.
The descriptive research was used in this study to gather necessary data. Records of the Phil-IRI pre-test and post-test and academic performance of learners during the first and fourth quarters were gathered to be used in comparing results.
To further describe, interpret, and analyze the data, the researcher used the F-Test or One Way ANOVA, and Measure of Central Tendency as statistical tools.
The findings concluded that Project GLARE is very helpful to struggling learners with reading difficulties. The F-value of 0.05 and the level of significance at 0.01 revealed that the project is beneficial to learners with difficulties in reading to improve their reading skills.
The study conducted among the Grade One to Six learners at Gawaran Elementary School, Bacoor City, during school year 2022-2023.
The stratified random technique was applied in determining sample size.
The results of the study proved that there was an increase on the academic performance of the project beneficiaries.
Based on the results, the project needs to be implemented to help learners under frustration level. There is a need to innovate reading materials to sustain the project for the 21st-century learners. The project reading volunteers from stakeholders need to be increased to have a smaller ratio of teacher-beneficiary or learner.
Keywords: reading difficulty, academic performance, reinforce, enhance, beneficiaries
INTRODUCTION
Reading is the complicated process of word recognition, comprehension, fluency, and motivation are all significant components. The learners who develop word recognition must learn phonemic awareness by breaking apart and manipulating the sounds. The alphabetic principle like certain letters is used to represent the sounds like s and h can form the /sh/ sound. Decoding is another thing to consider in reading by applying their knowledge of letter-sound relationships to come out words that are new to them. In developing comprehension, learners need to enhance background knowledge about many topics, broad oral and print vocabulary, understanding of how the English language works, different purposes for reading, knowledge of various kinds of texts, and strategies for identifying meaning from text, and for problem-solving when the meaning digests. The fluency in reading is attained through developing a high level of accuracy in word recognition, use of phrasing and expression for oral reading, and comprehension into automatic skills. Learners or children would not choose to read if reading is not fulfilling or pleasurable. According to Cotter (2011), understanding is the process of simultaneously extracting and producing meaning from written language through interaction and involvement. There are three components to it: reader, text, and intention. Using reading comprehension techniques, it is possible to comprehend texts, authors, and contexts more fully.
To maintain the motivation to read, learners or children need to appreciate the pleasures of reading, see reading as an opportunity to explore their interests, and view it as a social act to be shared with others. Allow them to be comfortable with different written forms and genres.
What may a reader expect from reading strategies? A good reader is usually a self-motivated, self-controlled learner. He reads for enjoyment or curiosity, for information and education, not because of external distinctions. Before beginning to read, each reader has personal objectives to understand the substance and meaning. Additionally, this kind of reader is often a competent reader who uses metacognitive strategies expertly and skillfully as tools to surpass a poor reader in terms of reading comprehension (Chen, 2009).
Children in the elementary level have engaged in reading activity in school which has a significant positive influence on the learners’ reading achievement, attitude towards reading, and attentiveness inside the four walls of the classroom. Teachers listen to their learners read through encouraging them to participate in the storytelling by miming certain parts of the story or even by simply making appropriate roles. Hence, much attention has been given to reading. Children’s knowledge of reading affects directly not only how successful they are in school but also how well they do throughout their lives. When children learn to read, they have the key that opens the door to all knowledge of the world. It opens new worlds that improve children’s lives.
The challenge in reading faced by our educators at present is the development and improvement of it through proper intervention and methodology. This is to make an interactive classroom environment where learners are empowered to share ideas and explore the wonderful world of reading.
According to Grabe (2001), Goodman saw reading as an active learning process in which students needed to be taught how to learn more efficiently and make assumptions based on context, recognize expectations, make inferences about the text, and skim ahead to fill in the environment.
Today, learning to read is a struggle for many children, and progress is hardly noticeable. The need to help learners who are having trouble reading is urgent. The Phil-IRI test results from the 2022–2023 academic year are proof of this. To cater to such reading difficulties, the Project GLARE is being planned and carefully created. GLARE is an acronym that stands for Grouping Learners by Ability for Reading Enhancement. The project has been implemented and launched for six consecutive years to support the development and improvement of reading skills to help ensure that every child can read appropriately in the grade level the learner is currently enrolled in. Project GLARE has five areas or categories namely: sound recognition, word identification or consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC), decoding, phrases, and comprehension such categories will address the reading needs of each learner starting from the category the learner will start, based on the result of the reading assessment, until the final level which is the comprehension. When a learner with reading difficulty starts with the sounds after recognizing their reading disability, they move on to the CVC, then to decoding, to phrases, and finally to comprehension. In this way, they are exposed to a variety of strategies and reach the last stage, which is the comprehension level. Every grade level has categories, and as the grade level rises, the difficulty of the topics increases. Project GLARE is perfect for meeting the needs of each learner because individuals who work on their reading skills are not separated from or even excluded from other classes they ought to attend.
According to the schema theory, the features try to bring back previously learned information on the topic of the selection to ensure that the concepts and ideas being learned are understood more clearly. The learners are helped to comprehend and appreciate various activities that make use of various techniques and strategies.
To complete the assigned task on time and advance in the achievement of learning requirements, the teacher is working to improve the reading skills of the learners. The project focuses on a set of exercises for mastering as well as an assessment tool to find out how well the learners have mastered the abilities that are intended to improve their reading comprehension.
The activities provided to the students are not only interesting, but they also help them enhance their oral and cognitive abilities, which in turn helps their reading comprehension. They will come to understand how fun and exciting learning is. It will give him more chances to read and comprehend what he needs to read.
Project GLARE is different from other forms of addressing the learning disabilities of one child, particularly in reading disabilities. Some educators isolate learners with reading disabilities from nondisabled peers. Such a scenario is causing another problem.
Some educators isolate learners with reading disabilities from nondisabled peers. Such a scenario is causing another problem. The pattern of within-school segregation based on observed disability has persisted for decades without public outcry, although millions of students, teachers, and administrators comply with it daily, and it is well documented (Tyson, 2013). Remedial reading programs have been implemented in Philippine primary schools for a long time in the school system. Genero’s research (quoted in Gatcho & Bautista, 2019) revealed how the nation's primary and secondary schools created their remedial programs to help struggling readers read. According to Deborah Wolter in her article “From Labels to Opportunities”, April 2017, when we view struggling readers primarily through the lens of their disabilities, we set them on a path to segregation and ineffective instruction. As she added, we should view all young readers and writers primarily as readers and writers, not as students with disabilities. The capacity to coordinate subskills, such as reading, includes the ability to decode print independently and to understand or interpret print; a print-to-sound translation procedure that makes the text understandable (2010) Cassidy et al.
According to the National Center on Universal Design for Learning (2014), the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a process in which curriculum objectives, teaching strategies, instructional resources, and assessments are planned from the outset to consider the individual differences among students. The method acknowledges that kids' developmental timelines don't follow the calendar. There is no requirement to enforce rigid differences between classes, grades, or even benchmark levels. All kids should be offered ongoing progress by educators. According to the Common Core State criteria, "no set of grade-specific standards can fully reflect the great variety in abilities, needs, learning rates, and achievement levels of students in any given classroom" (2012).
Teachers can use UDL principles in many ways as they plan literacy lessons and activities. They can make available a variety of engaging children’s books and other print materials at a wide range of levels; use dynamic and flexible groupings in their small group instruction; and always provide clear, concise directions and identify learning goals. At each center for assignment, teachers should offer developmentally appropriate, authentic, enticing materials students can practice with. Such material should be “open-ended” or able to be used by all students, such as blank notebooks, or any writing tools, word lists, and computers, retrieved (National Center on Universal Design for Learning, 2014).
The creation of Project GLARE is very significant to address appropriately and properly the reading disabilities of the learners. The whole-hearted support of teachers in the implementation of the project is very much applauded for they work on it by setting aside other schoolwork like checking and recording learners’ output. The Project GLARE is being implemented from grade one to grade six learners. Every grade adviser from grade one to grade six, in all sections, had identified learners who had reading disabilities during September 2022 and after the results of the first periodical examinations.
At present school year 2022-2023, the selection of Project GLARE recipient learners is based on the Phil-IRI pretest who fell under non-reader and frustration levels. The success of learners catered by Project GLARE was reflected at the end of the school year through posttest in Phil-IRI assessment tools (Department of Education, 2013).
A meeting of all parents and guardians of the pupils identified who will undergo the project was made to inform them of the objectives and purpose of it and the process of conducting the project.
The process of implementation in every grade level is to group learners according to their reading ability.
Academic failure was long considered to be the primary characteristic of young readers. Educators are dealing with a previously unheard-of rise in the frequency of damaging and threatening activities that seriously impair instruction and student learning, as well as a rising proportion of students who haven't mastered proficiency in reading (Blackburn, 2009). For this reason, the researchers came up with this study to find if there is an impact of Project GLARE on the academic performance of the learner beneficiaries.
see PDF attachment for more information