The Department of Education (DepEd) has declared the month of November as the National Reading Month and has instructed school officials to conduct various activities to rekindle the interest of school children in reading.
Education Secretary Armin Luistro, in Memorandum No. 244 issued this week, said the various reading activities are part of DepEd’s move to institutionalize the national “Every Child a Reader” program.
Among activities lined up are the Read-a-Thon, which aims to discover outstanding readers in class; the Dear program, which engages students in 15 to 20 minutes of reading daily; and the shared reading or readers’ mentoring program, where older students are encouraged to assist younger readers with reading difficulties.
Schools are also urged to hold vocabulary and “A Paragraph A Day” sessions, where students learn one new word a day and read aloud one or two paragraphs every day to enhance their speaking skills.
The program likewise aims to bring back the interest of school children in reading instead of them spending too much time on the Internet and inclination to online activities.
