What the course is

It covers literacy competencies for beginning readers, strategies for developing a multilingual and multiliterate learner, and the preparation of lessons, instructional materials and microteaching.

Course framework, in order

1. 01Understanding the child
2. 02Language development
3. 03Emergent literacy
4. 04Reading and writing development
5. 05Evidence-based literacy instruction
6. 06Multilingual and multiliteracy education
7. 07Assessment for learning
8. 08Instructional materials development
9. 09Microteaching
10. 10Reflective professional practice

The order is the point: instruction begins with understanding children, not with methods.

The eight goals

Policy anchors

History in five periods

Where the country stands

• FLEMMS 2024: basic literacy high, functional literacy uneven across regions and income.
• PISA 2018: among the lowest performers in reading literacy.
• SEA-PLM 2019: many Grade 5 learners below expected proficiency.

Functional literacy (PSA) is reading, writing, computing and comprehending well enough to function in everyday life. Decoding alone does not count.

Professional expectations

Five factors shaping outcomes

1. 01Home literacy environment
2. 02Quality of early childhood education
3. 03Teacher quality, the strongest school-based factor
4. 04Language of instruction
5. 05Access to learning resources

The four theories

Limits of each

• Emergent: children still need systematic instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension.
• Constructivism: without guidance, misconceptions form.
• Sociocultural: opportunity varies by family, so teachers must equalize.
• Cognitive: alone it ignores social, cultural and emotional dimensions.

Four stages of literacy development

Ehri's four alphabetic phases

1. 01Pre-alphabetic. Visual cues only. Knows the Jollibee logo, not the letters.
2. 02Partial alphabetic. Knows ball starts with B, guesses the rest.
3. 03Full alphabetic. Decodes unfamiliar words by blending.
4. 04Consolidated alphabetic. Reads chunks: patterns, syllables, affixes, word families.

This same sequence returns in Unit 6 as the stages of decoding. Learn it once, use it twice.

Why development is not linear

Home literacy environment, language background, quality of instruction, and motivation.

Five components of oral language

Five theories of language development

Oral language milestones

Listening and speaking

Listening is not hearing. It is attending, processing, interpreting, remembering, responding. Its four parts: listening for attention, for understanding, for meaning, and critical listening.

Speaking has four parts: vocabulary, sentence development, narrative skills (beginning, middle, end) and conversational skills. Narrative ability strongly predicts reading comprehension.

The Simple View of Reading

Decoding answers "What does this printed word say?" Language comprehension answers "What does this message mean?"

The three profiles

The evidence

1. Print awareness

The understanding that written language is organized, meaningful and follows conventions. Broader than knowing the alphabet.

Six components: functions of print, book awareness, directionality, concept of word, print against pictures, environmental print.

Environmental print is the entry point: Jollibee, Mercury Drug, STOP signs, jeepney destination boards, classroom labels. Filipino children often read these logos before letters.

2. Alphabet knowledge

Letter names, shapes, features and sounds, used meaningfully. Singing the alphabet song is not alphabet knowledge.

Six components: letter recognition, letter naming, letter-sound knowledge, uppercase and lowercase, letter formation, functional use.

Children usually know the letters in their own names first, and uppercase before lowercase. Teach with the mother tongue: A for aso, B for bahay, M for mangga.

3. Concepts about print

Marie Clay's term for understanding the conventions of written language. Her Concepts About Print Test is the landmark assessment.

Seven components: book orientation, directionality, print carries the meaning, concept of word, concept of letter, punctuation awareness, spaces between words.

4. Book handling skills

Seven components: identifying parts of a book, holding it correctly, turning pages one at a time, knowing beginning and ending, following the flow of reading, caring for books, exploring books independently.

In the Philippines, book access varies sharply between homes, so the classroom library is an equity measure, not decoration.

Progression across all four

Sound discrimination

Hearing, comparing and distinguishing sounds. The auditory foundation phonemic awareness is built on.

Four types: environmental sounds, musical sounds, speech sounds (/b/ against /p/), word discrimination (pin and pen, coat and goat, fan and van).

Perceptual narrowing: at six months infants can hear nearly all the world's speech sounds; by ten to twelve months they specialize in the languages around them.

Discrimination against phonemic awareness

The progression, large to small

1. 01Environmental sounds
2. 02Rhyme
3. 03Alliteration
4. 04Sentences into words
5. 05Clapping syllables
6. 06Blending syllables
7. 07Onset and rime
8. 08Blending phonemes
9. 09Segmenting phonemes
10. 10Manipulating phonemes

The four skills

Four kinds of manipulation: addition (top plus /s/ becomes stop), deletion (smile minus /s/ becomes mile), substitution, rearrangement. It develops last because it loads working memory.

Strategies

Interactive read-alouds with listening prompts, Filipino songs (Bahay Kubo, Leron Leron Sinta, Awiting Pambata), rhyming games, syllable clapping, Robot Talk for blending, Elkonin sound boxes for segmentation, Change the Sound for manipulation, listening walks, dramatic play, shared storytelling.

Embed it in routines: rhyming names at morning meeting, movement chants at transitions, sound hunts outdoors, same-beginning-sound at snack, goodbye rhymes at dismissal.

Multilingual note

Some phonemes exist in one language and not another, so ship against sheep needs explicit practice. Pronunciation differences reflect language background, not low ability. Awareness built in the first language transfers to the others.

1. Letter-sound correspondence

Letters (graphemes) represent speech sounds (phonemes). This is the alphabetic principle.

1. 01Letter awareness. Recognizes letters visually.
2. 02Letter naming. "This is letter M."
3. 03Letter-sound connection. "M says /m/."
4. 04Sound blending. /m/ + /a/ + /t/ becomes mat.
5. 05Automatic recognition. Reads mom, dog, sun instantly.

Common first sequence: m, s, a, t, p, i, n. Those seven letters already build sat, mat, tap, pin, map, pan, nap, so children succeed early.

2. Decoding

Translating written symbols into spoken language. Four steps: visual recognition, letter-sound retrieval, blending, word recognition where meaning activates.

Five strategies: sounding out, continuous blending ("mmmaaat" reduces load), chunking (sunflower becomes sun plus flower), word families (cat, bat, rat), analogy (cake unlocks lake).

Decodable texts use only patterns already taught. After m, s, a, t, p, i, n: "Sam sat." "Pam is at the mat."

Gradual release: I do, we do, you do. Plus Elkonin boxes and word building with letter tiles.

3. Sight words

A sight word is recognized instantly, without conscious decoding. The term describes how a word is read, not a category of word. Any word can become one.

Orthographic mapping is the mechanism: the brain stores a word by linking its letters, their sounds, and its meaning. So most sight words are learned through phonics, not memorization.

Regular sight words follow phonics patterns (and, him, can, stop, jump). Irregular ones, called heart words, have one part learned by heart (said, one, does, two, could).

Filipino high-frequency words: ang, si, sa, may, mga, ito, ako, tayo, bata.

4. Word analysis

Six strategies: known letter-sound patterns, syllables, prefixes and suffixes, base words (playground = play + ground), context clues, cross-checking ("Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?").

Filipino morphology behaves the same: bahay = ba + hay, laruan = laro + an, magluto = mag + luto.