Why teach reading in Filipino?

Please see this infographic, posted here with kind permission from the Global Center For The Development Of The Whole Child, University of Notre Dame.

What are leveled books?

Leveled books are books that are organized into levels based on the difficulty of the text. This means that the first level is the easiest level and suitable for emergent readers; as the levels increase, the books become more difficult and complex.

By reading leveled books every day with proper guidance from their teacher, a grade one student will be able to advance to four reading levels: starting at level A in August and reaching Level D in June.. And a grade one student who reads all our books from Levels A to D will have read a total of 160 books independently. This has never happened in any public school in our country.

How did we create our leveled books?

We used the “batayang talasalitaan” or sight words used by the Department of Education in grade 1. This is a list of the most commonly used words in Filipino.

Each story is illustrated by young Filipino artists who depict Filipino children, Filipino surroundings and Filipino sentiments in their illustrations.