INTRODUCTION
Background of the study
Teachers use instructional strategies to help learners learn and engage with the instructional materials. These strategies empower students to make meaning, think critically and creatively, and reach their full potential. It helps learners apply reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills across a variety of subject areas. It also applies mathematical concepts, processes, and skills to solve problems in a variety of situations that helps students understand math by using it in ways that are familiar to them (Hulenstein, Bruckmaier & Grob, 2021).
Contextualized reading is one of the most significant foundations for a child to develop. It can be considered a lifelong skill for every individual wherever or whenever they could be in any part of the world. Focuses on authentic, content, such as reading and writing about a trade or vocational area branded as an adaptive ability via accident or if learners are ready to welcome reading (Waugh, 2019). It further helps students connect new information to their prior knowledge and real-world experiences. However, this is not the scenario anymore in the actual classroom set-up (Akubuilo et al., 2021).
In today’s generation, there are a lot of learners who are considered non-readers or slow readers and non-numerates for various reasons. Since every learner is different with multiple intelligence, a teacher holds a major role in dealing with learners, especially non-readers and non-numerates. This can be a consequential challenge for every teacher to overcome in the field (Cain & Parrila, 2019).
Teaching how to read, write, and compute is a priority, and the government is investing its efforts and finances to enhance high literacy and numeracy. About this, teachers are expected to use varied, relevant, and effective methodologies and strategies for the development of teaching reading and mathematical skills. Each student’s concern concerning reading and counting numbers must be taken into consideration through the use of new strategies that is necessary for its implementation (Barfield, 2024). According to Childhood Education International said that the education of today is the education of tomorrow. Teachers must reflect upon current practices and policies and identify some common instructional strategies to address new challenges in an increasingly complex world to children for their future. It can no longer rely on traditional education models. It allows for changes to take place that support dynamic ways to design and deliver quality teaching and learning especially on literacy and numeracy (Montalban, 2020).
The researcher observed that the Department of Education (DepEd) formulated multiple literacy and numeracy programs to lessen the number of non-readers and non-numerates especially at the K-3 levels since the reading and counting foundation starts from there. Subsequent training, seminars, and full implementation of school banner program were also conducted for teachers to adapt and practice different reading and counting instructional strategies and approaches that could help every learner to learn how to decode, read, comprehend, and compute.
Due to these observations, the researcher would like to determine the literacy and numeracy instructional strategies of teachers on contextualized literacy and numeracy programs as basis for program enhancement.
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