Online Training On Literacy (Key Stages 2-4)

Day 3- January 20, 2021

Reflection Paper

As a school Reading Coordinator- What are your plans, at least for this school year?

In the lifelong process of learning that starts since childhood, reading is truly one of the
indispensable skills that we develop in different ways to perform our usual functions or roles in
the society. As we all know that reading involves more than just a mere decoding of a text, it
has always been our mission to make our students learn to read in the real essence of the word
“read”.

We can only say that we have succeeded in our goal to teach reading if in the first place, the
students understand its significance to their daily lives and its real nature—that it’s not just
about decoding the text but rather making sense or making meaning out of it.

It is this same goal that I aim to achieve for this school year. I plan to go back to the basics, to
the very core of reading by advocating purposeful reading. This will be done by making students
understand more the relevance of reading in the 21 st century, particularly enhancing their
critical literacy as well since many teenagers nowadays just carelessly browse through social
media without even understanding what they read, share, or believe. If they know how to read,
they won’t be gullible to fake news and misinformation. Hence, conducting a simple awareness
seminar for our students that would teach them to be critically literate can be one way to make
them experience purposeful reading, aside from its usual applications in the classroom context.

As Maureen McLaughlin says, “Critical literacy is not a teaching method but a way of thinking
and a way of being that challenges texts and life as we know it. Critical literacy focuses on issues
of power and promotes reflection, transformation, and action. It encourages readers to be
active participants in the reading process: to question, to dispute, and to examine power
relations.”

Indeed, reading is not passive. Its process is so active that our students or we, in general, are
moved to challenge others’ or even our own notions, engage in self-reflection, change our
ways, and might as well, undertake wiser actions.

Submitted by Edina T. Yuzon – SHS Reading Coordinator San Martin National High School