THE focus of last year’s Brigada Eskwela is to strengthen partnership engagements that complement DepEd’s efforts to ensure quality basic education amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, the Brigada Pagbasa was launched as a form of Brigada Eskwela shall highlight the implementation to promote literacy and numeracy through the help of DepEd partners and volunteers.
In Region III, the DepEd Regional Office contextualized the said initiative and conducted the Regional Reading, Mathematics and Science Tutorial Program to intensify efforts to guarantee that every Filipino learner acquire the basic competencies such as literacy and numeracy.
The different schools and DepEd Schools Division Offices in the region implemented these projects to help their learners meet the learning expectations appropriate to their grade levels. These are Project AWESOMe - A Word Everyday Saves One from Meanness; Project SHARP: School – Home Assistance Reading Program; Project READERS in the New Normal (Relevant Exercises And Drills to Enhance Reading Skills); ‘Nay, ‘Tay; Tara Basa Tayo; Project LETRA (Learn, Enhance, Teach Reading Advocacy); Project SARA Synchronous/Asynchronous Reading Activities; Project JANE - Journal of Analysis of Needed Enhancement of Pupils (for teachers); Family Assistance in Reading (FAIR); Home-based Enhancement of Reading Outcome (HERO); Reading Enhancement Amidst Pandemic (REAP); and Project STAR (Share The Art of Reading).
Through these strategies and interventions, DepEd Region III was able to boost the reading skills and learning literacy of the students; develop genuine love for reading among every learner; identify the problems and difficulties students encounter in terms of their reading skills; nurture and enhanced the reading comprehension and uplift the learning literacy rate of the students; promote strong and better partnership between parents and school; develop a sense of responsibility for one’s own reading progress and comprehension; and improve the reading skills from frustration to Instructional level of proficiency.
These best practices are interventions and catch-up strategies to help learners cope with the increasing difficulties relative to distance learning. Through the Regional Reading, Mathematics and Science Tutorial Program, the basic literacy, numeracy, and comprehension skills of the target learners were addressed and developed.