Teaching the four (4) components in English – Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing with its counterpart in Filipino as Pakikinig, Pagsasalita, Pagbasa at Pagsulat, may be the most difficult task that a grade 1 can have.
Listening and speaking may come spontaneously as 1st graders can listen and speak as they do in their homes and in the community. Whether they can listen well or the other way around, whether they can speak in mumbling or shouting, at least they listen and they can speak.
However, reading is a different thing. Reading demands some rules – in pronunciation and stress among others. Reading demands so much time, that what one child reads today may not be remembered a few minutes after.
Reading requires so much practice and a lot of effort – on the part of the learner, the teacher and even the family.
The family is also involved in the reading practice. The family – the parents or older siblings need to follow up the reading practice of the pupil. This course of action should be repeated over and over in order to ensure mastery and accuracy.
For the 1st graders there are about 200 plus basic sight words that they need to learn how to read – preferably to memorize so that reading of these sight words can become automatic in nature.
It is really very difficult to teach reading to a young child especially if he is not yet ready for reading – there is what we call reading readiness.
So then, to teach reading is one thing – but to make reading long lasting and more practical, it has to be concerted effort of the teacher, the pupil and the family
By: Rosemarie C. Laxa | Capitangan Elementary School | Abucay, Bataan
