Development of interactive strategic intervention materials

towards improvement of reading comprehension

NAME OF PROPONENTS: OLIVER E. MAGPANTAY

SDO QUEZON

I RATIONALE:

The Philippine Educational System undergoes major changes brought about by the kindergarten to
Grade 12 (K–12) Basic Education Curriculum. Challenges come along with these changes. One of the
issues facing the present curriculum is the dearth of learning materials. This issue became an inevitable
problem that haunts the country’s new curriculum after three years of its implementation. Admittedly,
the Department of Education agreed that there have been delays in the delivery of learning materials,
such as activity sheets and modules, to the pupils (Legaspi, 2014). The lack of learning resources,
particularly textbooks, was a problem that primary public-school teachers had already raised before the
curriculum transition and is still a problem today. A persistent issue in educational institutions is the
paucity of instructional resources and teachers' ignorance of the process of developing new materials.
Although the Department of Education (DepEd) brashly declared that all learning material shortages will
be eliminated before the end of 2013 and even promised to have a one to one or 1:1 ratio for student to
textbook within the school year 2022–2023, in the actual classroom setting, one textbook is shared by
two to three students and even more. Many elementary public schools in the Calabarzon Region have
the same concern about this. Some schools in Calabarzon have a student-to-textbook ratio of 1: 3
according to the Basic Education Information System (BEIS) (Dios, 2014).

Dios, A. (2014). Philippine basic education :philippines’deped , six months into school year , # Textbooks.
Retrieved http://philbasiceducation.blogspot.com/2014/12/philippine-deped-six-months-into-school.html
on January 3, 2015.

This implies that students who are required to keep the books have an advantage over those who are
allowed to go without taking anything with them.

Teachers must use their creativity to come up with the required, appealing, and engaging tools that
students can use in class in order to address this issue. Learning materials in teaching, especially English,
play a vital role in the teaching-learning process, hence it is strongly advised to utilize adequate,
strategically planned instructional resources appropriate for the type of learners. According to Dahar, its
use significantly affects students' academic performance, notably in the English subject (2015 as cited in
Salviejo, 2014).

Salviejo,E. (2014). Strategic intervention materials-based instruction, learning approach and students’
performance in chemistry. Retrieved from: www.ijlter.org/index.php/ijlter/article/download/10/pdf.
Additionally, instructional materials (IMs) like textbooks, workbooks, modules, etc. are crucial learning
tools because they enable students to interact with words, images, and ideas in ways that improve their
proficiency in a variety of skills like reading, listening, speaking, writing, and viewing. IMs are regarded as
the key source of comfort and confidence for English language teachers in the field of teaching,
specifically language. If students have access to IMs, they find it to be a simple task to convey knowledge
to them. This is essentially the justification for why having IMs available and accessible in every
classroom (National Council of Teachers of English, 2014). Clearly, there is a growing need for the
creation and implementation of instructional tools like SIMs in the teaching of elementary English. One
of the strategies used by DepEd to improve the academic performance of students performing poorly in
class is the use of SIMs, which are instructional resources created for remediation. SIMs are frequently
utilized as teaching aids for teaching science, although they are less frequently used when teaching
language arts. They are thoughtfully designed and created in order to increase student interest in a
certain skill and, as a result, their level of comprehension and mastery of the subject matter. Although
there are a number of Science SIMs that can be accessed online and are offered in public primary
schools, SIMs in English are thought to be uncommon.

The researcher on this topic created SIMs for Grade Four students who struggled to grasp the listening,
reading comprehension, speaking, and writing competencies during the first and second grading periods
of English IV. Since they are the first of their kind, the manufactured SIMs are regarded as prototype
SIMs in Reading Comprehension English 4. Mastery of the macro abilities in English is guaranteed to be
attainable due to the intervention material's use of color, the inclusion of well-known cartoon
characters, and the ease of the tasks.

Out of the four abilities that must be taught, reading is one that should be emphasized.
both speaking and writing. In the process of teaching languages, reading plays a significant part.
help kids improve their speaking, listening, and other communication abilities
writing (Maxom, 2009: 139) (Maxom, 2009: 139)

Maxom, M. 2009. Teaching English As a

Foreign Language. England: Wiley.

Reading is one of the four fundamental talents in English, along with other skills such as
writing, speaking, and listening. This is the method for deciphering textual communication.
Reading, in the words of Nuttal (2000:2), is the outcome of interaction between the
both the writer's and the reader's minds. It is the reader's attempt to understand
message or the author's intended meaning. The reader makes an effort to
the writer's intended meanings so that the reader can understand them.

Nuttall, C. (2000). describes in ELT Chapter 1, what is reading? „Teaching Reading Skills in a foreign
language’ Oxford:
Macmillan Heinemann

Definition of Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is defined by Grellet (1981:7) as being aware of a written

text.  It entails efficiently removing the necessary information from the text.
One could argue that readers need to be involved in the content to

understand the information it contains.

Pang et al. (2008:14) define comprehension as the process of deriving meaning from

connected text.  The reader should interpret written symbols that represent languages and

They also employ their background knowledge to comprehend the information there.

As a result, reading comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences, and connected
text.

Grellet, F. (1981) Developing Reading Skills. Cambridge University

Press.
Pang, J. (2008). Research on good and poor reader characteristics: Implications for L2 reading research
in
China. Reading in a Foreign Language, 1-18.

Concept of Reading Comprehension

According to Brown (2004:189), reading is a process of negotiation to understand the texts. In this case,
reading is one way or process to get information from a text. Reading consists of two interrelated
processes: word understanding and word recognition. Word recognition refers to the process of
recognizing how written symbols relate to native language. Understanding is the process of
understanding words, sentences, and connected text.

Basic Skills in Reading Comprehension

Strategic Awareness

A significant finding of the classroom observation is the poor development of strategic

reading among the learners. Evidence of this problem includes learners’ inability to read and
comprehend the activities’ instructions. One of the causes identified in the present investigation,
which is consistent with some educational scholars’ findings, is the lack of metacognitive
instruction. This result is in line with the conclusion reached by Benkhider & Kherbachi (2020),
who established a correlation between metacognitive awareness and learners’ achievement? In
the same vein, Anderson (1991) claims that successful second language reading comprehension
is not a matter of knowing what strategy to use, but the reader must also know to use it
successfully and know how to orchestrate its use with other strategies. It is not sufficient to know
about strategies, but a reader must also be able to apply them strategically.
(As cited in Carrell, 1998, p. 07)

In order to gain a good understanding of texts, strategic readers reflect on what they are doing
while reading. In other terms, they constantly think about the strategies they need to interact with
the text.
Strategic awareness is an integral part of success in learning how to use reading
strategies. Teachers’ explanations include “information about what the strategy is, why and how
it should be learned, where and when to use the strategy, as well as how to evaluate the use of the
strategy” (Anderson, 1991, p. 470). However, the classroom observations demonstrated that most
teachers did not use strategy terms, did not inform the learners about the lesson objective, did not
discuss the usefulness of strategies, and did not model them. Besides, they neither explained the
reasoning behind their thinking nor encouraged them to select the needed strategies to facilitate
the decoding and understanding of texts.

Anderson, N. J. (1991). Individual differences in strategy use in second language reading and
testing. The Modern Language Journal, 75(4). 460-472. DOI: 10.2307/329495
Anderson, N. J. (1999). Exploring second language reading: Issues and strategies. Boston, MA:
Heinle & Heinle.

Benkhider, N., & Kherbachi, S. (2020). The influence of remote learning on students’ learning
habits during covid-19. Les Cahiers du Cread , 36 (3). 425-448.

Carrell, P. (1998). Can reading strategies be taught? The Language Teacher, 22(3), 7-14.
Carrell, P., Devine, J., & Eskey, D. (1988) Interactive approaches to second language reading.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Review of Related Literature and Study

Importance of instructional materials. Instructional materials as defined in
Florida Statutes are materials with intellectual content that are made to supplement
the instructions received by the learners. “Instructional materials” refers to tools
used in educational lessons which involve active learning and assessment. Basically
it is any resources used by the teacher in teaching the students. Anything that could
help in delivering instructions may considered as instructional materials, it may
come in different forms such as, textbooks, workbooks, standard and localized
newspapers, PowerPoint presentations, recording, video clips, journals, magazines
and CDs. (Dahar, 2011)

Dahar, M. (2011). Effect of the Availability and the Use of Instructional Material on Academic
Performance of Students in Punjab Pakistan. Euro Journal Publishing Inc.

In Philippine educational system, teachers were encouraged to make

instructional materials. These instructional materials can support students learning
and increase students’ success. Also, modified instructional materials help low
achievers in mastering the least learned concepts in different subject areas. Section
5 of the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 stipulates that producing local
teaching materials are highly encouraged and the approval of which should regress
in the entirety of educational levels.

In the study of Dahar (2011) entitled "Effect of the Availability and the Use of
Instructional Material on Academic Performance of Students in Punjab Pakistan" he
state that instructional materials play a very important role in the teaching -
learning process. He's study revealed that instructional materials have a strong

STRATEGIC INTERVENTION MATERIALS

impact in the academic performance of the students, furthermore, making it

available to the students every time contributes to successful learning.
In line with this, the Division of Bayawan City especially the Science
Department has inspired teachers to make instructional material namely strategic
intervention materials with high hopes that this material will be a great help to
students who struggle and had a hard time coping in a regular classroom
instruction.

Strategic intervention material (SIMs).“Strategic Intervention Material” is

an instructional material prescribed by the Department of Education to improve
students’ performance in all subjects and to promote successful learning in different
subject areas in both elementary and secondary among public schools.
To some researches like Dy, (2011) define SIMs as a teaching material
Acquainted in teaching methods to stimulate students’ active participation and
thereby increased their level of understanding. These were especially given to
students who have not met the standard performance in a certain concept in a
regular classroom instruction.

Dy, L. (2011). Teaching Physics through strategic intervention materials.

Dy, J. (2012). How to Develop Strategic Intervention Material. Retrieved from
http://jhody.hubpages.com/hub/HOW-TO-DEVELOP-A-SIM-STRATEGIC-INTERVENTION MATERIAL (12
March, 2012).

Similarly, Bunagan (2012) defined “Strategic Intervention Material as an aid

in re-teaching lessons that are least mastered by the students. This material
promotes independent and self-paced learning which makes the students
responsible in their own acquisition of knowledge and concepts.
SIMs is different from modules in some ways because it focuses on the skills
not developed during regular classroom teaching. Another difference between the
two is that the SIMs contains one topic only while one module may contain several

Bunagan, F. (2012). Strategic Intervention Materials.Retrieved from

http://www.slideshare.net/felixbunagan/strategicinte.

STRATEGIC INTERVENTION MATERIALS

topics. SIMs is intended for remediation purposes, while module is used in regular
classroom teaching.

SIMs increases and deepens students ‘skills in manipulation, knowledge or

thinking, understanding and observing the microscopic into macroscopic
representation of matter like atoms, molecules and ions which students believe as a
discrete representation of the existing matter and other related components of
science (Togonon, 2011).

Togonon, I. (2011). Development and evaluation of project–based SIM (PB–SIM) in teaching high school
chemistry. Technological University of the Philippines.

With the results of the different studies conducted and in support with
DepEd Memorandum No. 117, series of 2005, providing teachers the training and
workshop on how to prepare this intervention material for successful learning and
to further encourage the wide use of SIMs, DepEd design yearly competitions like
science fair in cluster, division, region and national level.
With the recent
seminar/workshop in DepEdBayawan City Division which the researcher herself is
one of the facilitators noted that Strategic Intervention Material (SIM) is composed of
five parts as stipulated in Division Memorandum No. 92, s.2013; The guide card,
activity card, assessment card, enrichment card and reference card.
Developing SIMs. The five parts of SIMs is comprehensively described by J.
Policarpio (2011), according to him the first part is the Guide Card; this part
provides the general descriptionand an overview of what the learners will learn in
the material. It introduces the focusskills and engages learners’ interest. In making
the Guide Card, several things must be considered;

Policarpio, J. (2011). Strategic Intervention Materials: A Closer Lock [Blog Spot]. Retrieved from
https://tsoktok.blogspot.com/2010/11/strategic-intervention-materials-sim.html

(a) Make it interesting and enjoyable for the students, you may start it with a story
related to the topic since children love stories and adventures.

STRATEGIC INTERVENTION MATERIALS

Acuña, Gutierriez and Areta (2015) in their study on the “Content-Area Reading Based Strategic
Intervention Materials (CARB-SIMs) in Science VI” concluded
that the integration of reading skills in the development of CARB-SIMs may
facilitate the learning of science concepts in a sense that the pupils actively
engage and participate in activities that connect to their real-life experiences, a
view anchored on constructivist view of learning. Comparably, Science as a
major subject area matched with effective reading practice may assist in
understanding science concepts and process skills to develop learners' stake
and make them interested in taking part of their own learning.

Acuña, L., Gutierrez, M. R. M., &Areta, G. C. (2015). Content Area Reading-Based Strategic Intervention
Materials (CARB-SIMs) in Science VI. The Normal Lights, 9(2).

(b) Make sure to provide factual information because it will be the students’ basis in
answering the activities in the next part of the SIMs.

(c) Make it attractive to the eyes of the children but refrain putting too much
design. As much as possible use graphic designs related to the topic to avoid
confusion and not to complicate more the child’s mind.

The second part of the SIMs is the activity card which is the heart of the
Strategic Intervention Material. It defines the task needed to be accomplished by the
learners. Itis composed of activities that will unfold the understanding of students in
the target objective in the lesson stated in the guide card. The task in this card is
competency-oriented and its main purpose is to provide enough practice for the
learners so that they may be able to perform the skill and meet what is expected of
them after using the SIMs. In developing this part, always begin with the learners,
think of their level and see to it that the activities are of increasing level of

complexity. Provide clear directions and instructions that are easy to understand
and follow and always relate the activities in real-life situations. (J. Policarpio, 2011)
The third part is the assessment cards which are made up of evaluation
Activities that will help learner measure their own level of mastery of the skills upon
completion of the tasks. It is composed of questions that may come into different
forms (multiple choices, interpreting graph/illustration, identification, and
matching type). The result of this assessment identifies the knowledge/skills that
the learner may need to enhance or develop. (Bunagan, 2012)

Bunagan, F. (2012). Strategic Intervention Materials.Retrieved from

http://www.slideshare.net/felixbunagan/strategicinte.
Policarpio, J. (2011). Strategic Intervention Materials: A Closer Lock [Blog Spot]. Retrieved from
https://tsoktok.blogspot.com/2010/11/strategic-intervention-materials-sim.html

The fourth part of the SIM is the enrichment card. This section provides
practical activities that may enhance the learning-process. It extends learning by
providing additional exercises that involves realistic applications of the topic in
their daily life, in school and in the community as a whole. It may also contain
additional information to extend their knowledge about the topic. ( J. Policarpio,
2011)

The last part of the SIM is the reference card which includes the title of the
books, websites, or any other electronic or printed materials used in the SIM as
sources. This part may be used by students as reference for additional information
and further reading concerning the topic covered. (Bunagan, 2012).

Awareness and Preparedness of Using SIMs. Strategic Intervention

Materials are used during remedial classes, meaning it is made for the learners who
fall short during the regular classroom teaching. Some points to ponder before
preparing a SIMs;

STRATEGIC INTERVENTION MATERIALS

(a) Simplicity. Keep the activities short and simple; remember that these
SIMs are for the poor performing learners.

(b) Easy to reproduce. Cost is a factor in preparing an instructional material

do not overdo the SIMs by making it thick, 1-25 pages will do as long as the content
are intact and aligned with the objectives.

(c) Consider the different learning style of the learners, if you already
identified what is best for them then it will be easy for you to guide them in using
the SIMs. Some might be Visual-spatial, linguistic, kinaesthetic and others. So mind
to vary the activities to cater all different learning style.

(d) Remember that each student differs from one another, they have
different learning styles and that they learn in different way and pace. (Smorenberg,
2014)

Remediation and its Importance. Remediation by definition from Oxford

Advanced Learners Dictionary is an activity given to students with slower learning
ability than others. It is devised to accommodate those children who were unable to
keep pace with the teaching-learning process in the classroom. These children at
time hardly understand the complexity of normal textbooks and workbooks,
therefore, modification of materials is at best solution for learning to occur.
Remedial teaching act as the haven for the students who fall short from what is
expected level of achievement. It determines particular difficulties that hinder the
child in grasping the lesson thoroughly providing them with suitable and
appropriate remedial measures that support the prevention of reoccurrence of
these difficulties in the future. (Burris, 2009)

STRATEGIC INTERVENTION MATERIALS

Considering the numerous literatures on learning gaps among pupils, the
Department of Education issued DepEd Order no. 39, s. 2012 entitled Policy
Guidelines on Addressing Learning Gaps. In these guidelines, the implementation of
remediation and how it should be conducted was enumerated. The same order
encourages teachers to use Strategic Intervention Materials (SIMs) as an
intervention to be used during remediation.

In the study entitled "The Impact of Remedial Teaching on improving the

competence of Low Achievers" published on September 2012 in the International
Journal of Social Science and Interdisciplinary Research Vol.1 Issue 9, states that
remedial teaching validates its effectivity in uplifting the learning accomplishments
of the students in Tamil Language and Mathematics. Remedial sessions can help
struggling learners brace up their basic skills. This extra support from their teachers
help them catch up to their peers. It covers the void between what a student knows
and what is expected to know. A remedial activity is one that is meant to improve a
learning skill, rectify or totally minify a problem area.

Remedial teaching consists of differentiated instruction that targets the

individual’s difficulty in particular topic/s that hinders and weakens the learning of
the students. It provides activities that enhance the basic skills of the students
making use of their strengths to achieve the desired outcomes. (Tucker, 2015)

The Sun Star Pampanga published an open letter from a Teacher III at Sta.
Lucia Integrated School last 24th of March 2017 where she wrote an open letter
entitled “Strategic Intervention Materials for a Change” the said teacher shared her
experience as she used SIMs in her remedial classes. According to her SIMs suites to

21st century learners as it helps the learners develop the focus skills it aims. She
then tries to present it in two various ways, one is using a power point presentation
when remediating a large number of pupils and the other way is the regular teacher
made notebooks. In cases the learner cannot finish their work; they are allowed to
bring it at home which is also good because the learner will have plenty of time to
study the SIMs. Her SIMs in Mathematics entitled “Creating Word Problem Involving
Division and Other Operations” won 2nd place in the contest held in the Division of
Pampanga.

Importance of SIMs. With the implementation of K-12 Curriculum different

challenges arose; one of it is the lack of learners’ materials such as textbooks,
activity sheets and other learning resources. The critical shortage or lack of learning
resources impact negatively in the performance of the students. Due to this
problem, teachers in the public schools have to shoulder the shortcomings of the
government by looking for a specific way on how to help the children acquire
quality education. One helpful solution is to make Strategic Intervention Materials;
specifically, SIMs helps students perceive difficult lessons into an exciting and
achievable one. These teaching-learning kits benefit both the learners and the
teachers. (Rodrigo, 2015)
Togonon (2011) stated that prior to the introduction of SIMs, the pre-test
result of her students yielded a rating which is less than the adopted passing score.
Similar result is also evident in the study of Alburoto (2017) where the pre-test
score totalled an average of 48.25% which is also below 75%.

On the other hand, when the SIMs was used as a remediating tool result
showed an increase in their post-test scores. (Soberano, 2010) Similar findings also
surfaced in the study of Salviejo (2014), Miguel (2010) and Estacio (2008).
Motivation Affects Learning and Behavior. Motivation is a driving force of
learning; it directs behavior towards particular learning goals which the learners
strive. (Ormrod, 2014)