Remote Learning and Teaching: 2nd Grade Social Studies

A brief note
I never imagined 2020 was going to mark my return to teaching after three years out of the classsroom. This pandemic has turned me into a remote teaching tita for my nephews who are now learning from home in the midst of a badly managed pandemic. My approach has been to vet materials that are readily available online and supplement them rather than make all lessons from scratch. I thought I’d put together in one public place some of the materials we are using. Who knows it might come in handy for parents or other titas in the same boat. Feel free to use the worksheets or modify them as you see fit. To keep materials and activities organized, my nephews and I use a private Google Classroom. We also use Google apps to communicate and collaborate on their outputs. That is an option that you might like to consider adopting, too, if you are homeschooling on your own.

Social Studies: Community
In the Philippines, this unit is typically tackled in Grade 2. I prepared these lesson sets with my nephew in mind so they are tailored to engage his interest. He is particularly fond of the life sciences so even if this is a social studies lesson, I chose materials that integrated concepts from biology as well.

LESSON PACKET 1 | Building our knowledge: What is a community?

1) Find out what makes a community by watching the video “Alike and Different”. Use the worksheet to take note of important details discussed in the video. Remember that the pause, replay, and captions on Youtube are there to help you.

Think about the material

2) After watching the video and filling out the worksheet, think about the following questions and share your answer with your teacher (or parent, or learning partner).

• What type of community do you live in? What makes you think so? Point out specific characteristics.
• Have you ever been to any of the institutions in your community? When did you last go to these institutions? Describe your experience there.
• Have you met any community helpers in your community? Describe who they are and what they do for your community.

There are many ways that learners can share what they think. I suggest choosing the medium based on a) what skill you are aiming to develop, and b) what is feasible given your situation. Here are some of my suggestions:

• write a comment below the lesson material in Google Classroom; focus on digital literacy
• write answers on a piece of paper or notebook; focus on penmanship
• record an audio or video; focus on oral language fluency

LESSON PACKET 2 | Linking the present to the past: The first human communities, from nomads to residents

The very first humans were nomads. They did not live in one place for long. They moved from place to place in search of food. Most people living today are the opposite. We are residents in a community. We live permanently in a house with a specific address. How did this change happen?

1) Watch the video “Urbanization and the future of cities” to find out. Remember that you can use pause, replay, or captions on Youtube videos.

2) Complete the worksheet to summarize what you learned about how human communities changed over time. If there are details that you have forgotten, you can watch the video again to help you remember.

3) Answer the “Let’s Check!” exercise to check if you understood the key ideas that were discussed.

LESSON PACKET 3 | Back to the present: Responsibilities in a community

In this lesson, we will learn about responsibilities. Do you know the word “responsibility”? What does it mean?

1) Let’s check what the dictionary says it means. Look at the image and read the definition of “responsibility” from the Cambridge Dictionary. In the image, what responsibilities are the children carrying out? Do you also have these responsibilities? What other responsibilities do you have at home and how often do you have to carry them out?

2) In the same way we have responsibilities at home we also have responsibilities as members of a community. We have responsibilities because we are citizens. But what is a citizen? Find out by watching the video “Types of Communities”.

3) Think more deeply about what you learned from the video by answering the worksheet “Community Rules”.

LESSON PACKET 4 | Rural Life: A Farmer’s Responsibilities

In this lesson, we will find out the specific responsibilities of people living in a rural community.

1) Watch and sing along with the video “A Farmer’s Life for Me”. While watching, find out what responsibilities are in a farm. List them down on your notebook. Draw a star beside the responsibilities that you also have at home. Think about your responsibilities by answering the following questions:

• Are your responsibilities important?
• Why do you have to do them?
• Do you like carrying out these responsibilities?
• How well do you carry out your responsibilities?
• What can you do to make sure that you don’t fail at your responsibilities?

2) A farmer is one of the most important community helpers in a rural community and perhaps. In fact, when a farmer does his or her job well, he or she is able to help many other communities, such as the suburban and urban communities where his or her products are delivered and sold. Are there farmers in your community? Have you met or seen a farmer before? What do they do?

3) Watch the video “I Want To Be A Farmer” to learn about Ben, a kid who wants to become a farmer.

4) After watching the video, let’s discuss Ben’s plans. Answer the worksheet “Becoming a Farmer”.

LESSON PACKET 5 | The Benefits of Living in a Rural Community

In this lesson, we will look more closely at what life is like in a rural community. We are especially interested in finding out the benefits or advantages of rural life.

1) We will be listening to Rob who grew up in an urban community but left it for life in a rural community. Rob uses some important terms that might be new to you. Familiarize with these terms first by reading the Google Slides titled “Vocabulary: Countryside”. Try writing your own sentences using the new words you learned.

2) Once you’ve become more familiar with the terms, watch the video “6 Reasons Why Country Life is Better Than City Life”. Take note of Rob’s reasons on your notebook.

3) Let’s find out what it’s like to live on a farm by observing the Soto family in Puerto Rico. The Soto family was interviewed a short time after a hurricane passed through their island. Watch the video “Living Off the Land” and find out the advantage of living on a farm when a disaster strikes.

4) Check if you understood the key ideas in the video by answering the exercise “Let’s Check! Living Off the Land“.

5) Next, watch the video on sericulture (silk farming) by Li Ziqi.

6) Reflect on what you have observed from the Soto family (Puerto Rico) and Li Ziqi (China) by answering the guide questions in the worksheet “Reflection: The Benefits of Rural Life”.

LESSON PACKET 6 | Urban Life: Sights and Sounds

In this lesson, we will get a glimpse of what living in an urban community is like. We will be listening to a read aloud of the children’s book “Wake Up, City!” written by Erica Silverman and illustrated by Laure Fournier. This book was published in 2016.

To the parent/teacher/learning partner, I recommend that you read this Reading Companion for “Wake Up, City” ahead of time so that you can engage the learner during the read aloud in as natural a manner as possible.

[Pre-Reading]

a) Before we start listening to the read aloud, let’s have a very quick math practice! How old is this book?
b) Based on the title of the book, what do you think the story will be about? Hold on to your guess and let’s find out if you’re right as we listen to the read aloud.

[During Reading]

I am assigning you two important missions as you listen.

Mission #1: Try to spot any institutions, important locations, and community helpers.
Mission #2: Try to answer the questions I prepared below. Pause the video on the times shown and try to answer the questions I prepared for you.

[0:41] Based on the pictures in the book, what kind of building does the narrator live in? (Hint: You learned this word in a previous video and it starts with a “t”). What is the narrator’s house number?

[1:00] Can you guess what time it is for the narrator? What clues helped you think so? Where do you think she and her dad are headed? Okay, hold on to your guesses and let’s see if you’re right.

[1:30] Was your guess about the time of day correct? Which words helped confirm your guess? The narrator and her dad have just left an important location in the city. What was it? There are three other citizens in the picture. What are they doing?

[1:45] The narrator talks about a beast on hairy feet. Is it a real beast?

[2:18] What sounds of the city have you heard so far? The narrator is passing by another important location in the city. What is it? She has also passed by several community helpers already. Did you notice who they were?

[3:20] The narrator has arrived at her destination at last! Did you guess correctly?

[After Reading]

Discuss the story with a teacher or learning partner.

1) What are your mornings like? Is it the same as the narrator? Why or why not?

2) Based on what you heard or saw from the read aloud, what might you like about living in an urban community? Are there aspects that you might not like?

3) What did you think about the story itself? (Focus on the words, how the story was told, and the illustrations.) Was it interesting to you? Would you be interested in other stories written by the same author?

4) Did you notice anything about the sounds of the words that the author used? Many of the words had endings that sounded similar. They rhymed. Read the definition card below to find out the dictionary definition for rhyme.

5) Do you think you can spot the words that rhymed in the story? Listen to the read aloud again and identify ten pairs of words that have the same rhyme. Write them in your notebook then check it against the Checklist of Rhymes to see if you got them right.

6) Try it yourself. Write two sentences about you or where you live. Choose words whose endings sound the same to make your own rhyme. Write this in your notebook.

LESSON PACKET 7 | Comparing Urban and Rural Life

In this lesson, we will compare the differences between life in an urban and a rural community.

1) Watch the video “City Life vs Country Life”. It’s a conversation between a city mouse and a country mouse. Let’s eavesdrop on them and learn about some of the advantages and disadvantages of living in the city or in the country.

2) Answer the worksheet after you watched the video. There are quite a lot of details in this video so you might need to listen to it more than once to catch them all.

3) Finally, watch the video titled “Country vs City”. After watching the video, answer the reflection question below.

What does the video say about where people should live if they want to be happy? Where would you like to live?

Though this question can be answered through a written or recorded oral output, I encourage learning partners to hold a discussion with the learner if their situation allows for it.

Notes

This post has been updated to include the following materials:

• lesson packet 7 was added on 17 Dec 2020
• lesson packet 4, 5, and 6
• enrichment materials for lesson packet 2 have been omitted and are now in a separate post

I will add a project for the unit as a summative assessment in the coming weeks.

Vaccines are on the horizon – Part 1 (Remote Learning: 4th Grade Health)

Activating Background Knowledge

For this part of the lesson, it is recommended that the learning partner and the learner have a relaxed and free discussion. Focus on allowing the learner to share what he/she has heard/read about COVID-19 vaccines. Return to these questions at the end of the lesson and guide the learner in coming up with his/her own answer(s). You can mix oral and written modes here, depending on the learner’s ability level. For example, writing skills in a target language can be integrated by asking learners to write down their questions after they have expressed them orally. You can guide them in refining the phrasing of their questions.

Have you heard the news that vaccines for COVID-19 are now available? What do you know about these vaccines? Where did you hear/read/learn about it? What questions do you have about this news?

Listening Activity

Let’s find out more information by watching a news report from ABS-CBN on the first COVID-19 vaccine that was administered in the United Kingdom. As you watch, listen for the answers to the following questions:

1. What vaccine is the United Kingdom using in its mass vaccination program against COVID-19? answer: Pfizer vaccine
   
2. How many doses do they aim to administer in the month of December?
   answer: 2,000,000 doses (2 million doses)
   
3. The first vaccine was administered by a Filipina nurse. What is her name?
   answer: May Parsons
   
4. For this particular vaccine, how many doses does each person need to be considered immune?
   answer: 2 doses
   
5. Who will be prioritized in the mass vaccination program?
   answer: residents of care homes, people aged 80 years old and above, health and social care workers

You can pause the video to write down relevant information on your notebook.

If listening in Filipino is still a skill being developed by the learner, you can use this transcript of the news report as a supplementary material. Filipino is my nephew’s second language and he still needs help understanding the level of language used in a fairly short news report such as this. I asked him to listen without assistance first. He was able to catch some details on his own. For the details he couldn’t catch right away, I asked him to make guesses by highlighting phrases in the transcript (color, bold, italics, etc). Your goal is to make the learner comfortable about not knowing, guessing, and asking for help. If they have made their best guesses and are still struggling, offer to translate phrases. Remember that you are just a resource. The learner should still decide whether he or she has found the right information to answer the guide questions.

Clarifying our understanding

These are just some follow up questions you can ask as you discuss the answers to the listening activity questions.

• What do you know about care homes?
  This question can start a mini-discussion about the difference between how the elderly are cared for in the Philippines and the United Kingdom.
  
• Why do you think the United Kingdom are prioritizing the elderly and health and social care workers in their mass vaccination program?
  This question can help the learner recall and apply prior knowledge about COVID-19 from previous lessons. If you haven’t had prior lessons about COVID-19 yet, you can use this question to gauge what they know about the pandemic and what sorts of interventions you need to prepare so that they become well-informed.

Drawing insights from the information we learned with the help of some math skills

Now that we have our basic facts, let’s deepen our understanding by asking more questions.

1. How many people in the United Kingdom are expected to gain immunity from COVID-19 by the end of December?
   answer: 2 million people (4 million doses divided by 2 per person)
   
2. The estimated population of the United Kingdom as of December 2020 is 68,050,379 according to worldometers.info. How many total doses are needed if the United Kingdom uses the same type of vaccine for its mass vaccination program?
   answer: 135,772,022 doses (68,050,379 multiplied by 2 doses per person)
   
3. If the National Health Service of the United Kingdom will continue to administer 4 million doses per month, how long will it take them to completely immunize the entire population?
   answer: 34 months or almost 3 years
   
4. According to worldometers.info, the Philippines has an estimated population of 110,248,788. Supposing that we also used the same vaccine and could also administer 4 million doses per month, how long will it take us to completely immunize the entire population?
   answer: 55 months or around 4 and a half years (110,248,788 multiplied by 2 doses per person divided by 4 million doses per month)
   
5. How should this information affect ordinary people’s behavior toward the pandemic?
   
6. What are some interventions that could be done to speed up the mass vaccination?
   
7. Aside from the cost and effort needed, what are the other possible challenges for countries who plan to implement a mass vaccination program for COVID-19?

Answering our initial questions

At this point, you can bring in the learner’s initial questions and evaluate whether you have gained enough knowledge to answer them. Learners can first develop their answers orally. You can help them refine their answers by providing content-related suggestions. You can ask them to write these down in a target language and work on refining the phrasing together, this time focusing on the grammatical/syntactical aspects. If based on your evaluation, there are still questions that could not be answered with confidence because of incomplete information, then this can be a basis for the content of your next lesson.

The next blog post will focus on Part 2, where the basic types of vaccines will be discussed using a TED-Ed video and a LiveScience article. Since my nephew asked about the safety of the recently-developed vaccines because of how fast they were developed, we will also be discussing about the risks associated with vaccines through this Kurzgesagt video.

Remote Learning and Teaching: Enrichment for 2nd Grade Social Studies

The material that follow can be used for enrichment of lessons regarding community, which is typically tackled in 2nd grade social studies. Consider the learner’s ability level and interest when using them.

Enrichment: Linking social studies to science, How does selective breeding work?

The next materials are optional. It is not required. But I have included them in case you are curious about selective breeding.

• The video “What Fruits and Vegetables Looked Like Before We Domesticated Them” shows examples of fruits and vegetables that humans have improved over time through selective breeding.

• Did you know that dogs would not come to exist without humans? They are the result of selective breeding. Watch the video “A Brief History of Dogs” to find out how early humans transformed the proto wolf into the pet dog that we know today.

Enrichment: Deepening what we know about early human societies

The first video shows what life was like in the very first villages of the Jōmon people dated around 13,000 to 16,000 years ago in Japan.

The second video is an excerpt from one of the best documentaries I have seen on the transition from nomadism to sedentism. Specifically, the documentary focuses on the Natufian culture in the Levant or what is today known as the Fertile Crescent where the countries of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel are located. The documentary is based on the latest evidence from archaeology and evolutionary anthropology.

Enrichment: Linking past to present, Modern nomads

Over 10,000 years ago, all human societies were nomadic communities. The invention of agricultural techniques by early human societies changed the course of history as it enabled humans to live in permanent settlements. Today, sedentary communities are the norm. There are a few human societies though that have remained nomadic communities. Let’s find out a bit about them.

Remote Learning and Teaching: 4th Grade Health

I never imagined 2020 was going to mark my return to teaching after three years out of the classsroom. This pandemic has turned me into a remote teaching tita for my nephews who are now learning from home in the midst of a badly managed pandemic. My approach has been to vet materials that are readily available online and supplement them rather than make all lessons from scratch. I thought I’d put together in one public place some of the materials we are using. Who knows it might come in handy for parents or other titas in the same boat. Feel free to use the worksheets or modify them as you see fit. To keep materials and activities organized, my nephews and I use a private Google Classroom. We also use Google apps to communicate and collaborate on their outputs. That is an option that you might like to consider adopting, too, if you are homeschooling on your own.

HEALTH: COMMUNICABLE DISEASES

LESSON SET 1 | Building our knowledge: What are communicable diseases?

Right now, we are all advised to stay home as much as possible because of COVID-19. Parents and other adults work from home and only essential workers are allowed to go to their workplaces. Even learning has to be done at home, too. Do you know why?

COVID-19 is an example of a communicable disease. Just based on the term “communicable” what do you think a communicable disease is? Find out if you guessed right by watching the video prepared by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases of South Africa titled “Communicable Diseases”.

One term used in the video is “zoonotic”, an adjective. It is derived from the noun “zoonosis” or “a disease that can be transmitted from animals to people”. Learn more about zoonotic diseases by reading the article prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the United States.

Use the Activity Sheet to summarize important points from the video and the article.

Advanced:

If you’re interested to learn how exactly diseases are spread from animals to humans, watch the TED-Ed video titled “How do viruses jump from animals to humans?”.

LESSON SET 2 | Building our knowledge: How do pandemics spread?

Part 1: Improve Your Vocabulary

In this lesson, we will learn about how communicable diseases spread widely over a community, to several communities, and, at its worst, across the globe. We will find out by watching a TED-Ed video titled “How do pandemcis spread”. Some of the words used in the video might be new to you so let’s prepare by getting to know these words.

1) Are you familiar with the term “pandemic” and “epidemic”? What do you think it means?

2) Find the dictionary definition of “pandemic” and “epidemic” using the Cambridge Dictionary. Use the link: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/. Write the dictionary definitions in your notebook.

3) But what is the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic? Let’s find out by reading the Merriam-Webster article titled “Pandemic vs Epidemic: What is the Difference?”. After reading, explain in your own words the difference between the two. You can name some examples. Has an epidemic ever happened in your community? Do you know of any pandemics that have happened before?

4) When you watch the video in a bit, you will learn that the terms epidemic and pandemic are borrowed from another language. Find out and answer this later.

5) The words “globalized” and “cyanosis” are also used in the video. Use the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to find out its definition. Use the link: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/. Write the definition in your notebook.

Part 2: Watching and Listening for Information

Watch and listen attentively to the TED-Ed video “How pandemics spread”. After watching, use information from the video to answer the questions below. Write your answers in your notebook and discuss them with your learning partner. You can re-watch the video again if you were not able to catch all the details from your first viewing.

1. What are the two reasons stated in the video why diseases did not become pandemic when humans still lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle?
2. When did communicable diseases, specifically zoonotic diseases, start to occur?
3. Which three viruses are the most common causes of epidemics in the world today?
4. What do scientists study and use as evidence of pandemics that happened in the past?
5. Scientists have observed that seasonal influenza becomes virulent every 20-40 years because the virus undergoes a dramatic mutation. What is the technical term for this dramatic mutation?
6. What is the common cause behind the dramatic mutation of a wild flu virus into a more virulent strain?
7. Based on the information in #6, what is one way that we can prevent seasonal flu from becoming virulent?
8. Compare the account/narration of the spread Great Mortality/Black Death, the Great Flu of 1918-1919, and SARS. What was common about how the three pandemics spread?
9. Why are pandemics likely to occur at present compared to the past?
10. What message did the creators of the video wish to impart about how people living today should respond to a pandemic?

This post will be updated once the next lesson set has been completed. The next lesson set shall focus on how communicable diseases can be eradicated.

My Favorite Children’s Books at 25

My love affair with books started as far back as my earliest memories of childhood. I remember reading illustrated fairy tales like The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks with my twin sister to fill the days when we were too young to attend kindergarten. We read whatever could be read at home which was an eclectic selection of illustrated Bible stories, superhero comics, fables and fairy tales, magazines, newspapers, and my mom’s Reader’s Digest subscription. I’m sure my sister and I only understood half of what we got our hands on, but boy did we read! I have an even earlier memory of begging my dad to read me anything before bedtime. He would pick up a Reader’s Digest anthology and read me stories like Tom Clancy’s The Patriot Games. This was not an age-appropriate choice now that I think about it but this completely explains why later on I would fancy espionage novels during my elementary school years.

This was the first novel my mom bought for me. She challenged me to finish it in one summer when I was in second or third grade, I think. Thank you, mom! You made me the avid reader I am today.

My love affair with books wouldn’t have blossomed into complete bibliophilia if not for my mother who bought books for me when she had the spare cash, borrowed books for me at a local book rental club when I had completely overrun the books at home (including her Harlequin titles…), and later paid for my own lifetime membership in the very same book club. By then I was in fourth grade? reading both Nancy Drew and Frederick Forsyth novels. That’s an odd combination, but my access to age-appropriate books was really sporadic at best.

Maybe I’m compensating now for the children’s books I couldn’t get my hands on because I now have a growing collection of children’s books, accumulated in the past three to four years. I’m a teacher and I guess that’s a convenient excuse (an excuse I tell myself when making budget decisions!) for hoarding reading materials, even though a secondary school teacher doesn’t really need a lot of children’s books. But you know, I find that the best children’s books have something important to say to adults, too. In fact, I’m of the conviction that we would all be better off if we never stopped reading children’s books, ever.

So to help young readers get started on their own love affair with books and to lure my adult friends into reading them, I’ve come up with this list of my most favorite children’s books of all time at age 25 (I realize this line up could change and it will give me reason to revisit my top five next year, won’t it?). Here goes!

Xilef is a story by Augie Rivera illustrated by Beth Parrocha-Doctolero. It won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 1999

#5 Xilef is fifth in my list. This story is lighthearted, playful and zany what with the busy cartoon illustrations of Xilef and the way he perceives the world around him. The book cover depicts Xilef as an intergalactic superhero protecting planets from devastating asteroids. But Xilef has bigger problems than these space rocks and he has to rouse himself out of his daydream in order to face bullies and chase after words flying out of his books. Xilef is a story about a child’s dyslexia and how he gains the help of adults around him to understand why letters dance and tease him so. The teacher in me admires this book for choosing to brave this subject matter and providing teachers like me with a means to broach this topic with children. But more importantly, the reader in me admires this book for deftly creating round characters in thirty pages. Xilef is actually the least quirky character in this story. After all, he has a six-toed teacher who could be an alien, a dad who looks like he could crack up a room of stern principals, and mysterious Miss Maya. Really, it’s a book that shows how an illustrator can work magic on an already excellent story.

I used this book to tutor a cousin who had difficulty reading and made some activity sheets for him. I’ve uploaded them here and if you can put these to good use in your classroom or for your daughter/son/nephew/niece/child-in-need, feel free to do so!

---

#4 Anluwagi is Tagalog for carpenter or “panday” in Cebuano. It’s written by Genaro R. Gojo Cruz. Children’s books by Filipino writers abound where the world of the story is decidedly middle to upper class. Genaro’s stories stand out because his stories tend to revolve around the social milieu of the working class Filipino. Certainly, there are other books out there doing the same thing but I admire how he doesn’t make a spectacle out of poverty or disaster. The focus is still on characters, on people, and what they do given the circumstances.

Anluwagi is about a carpenter who lives in the slums. Although I grew up in a barrio, the neighborhood carpenter was to us also a significant member of the community as he was a skilled artisan. It’s because of this background that I can understand the son’s admiration and desire to be just like his father. I like how this story ends so much when the father tells his son to be an architect instead. It is soooo Filipino – the parent dreaming bigger dreams for his/her children – but it’s said so subtly, so offhand by the author speaking through the father. Yet it means so much and it’s moments like this in a book written for children that convinces me adults should be reading children’s books. For adults who had parents like the anluwagi in the story, this book will evoke nostalgia and I think, help them understand their parents better, after all these years. This book might even make them cry!

---

This book is part of the Batang Historyador series sponsored by the UNICEF.

#3 Si Pitong, Noong Panahon ng mga Hapon is the book that first got me really excited about children’s books. I’m a social studies teacher so you can infer easily enough why. Add to this the fact that Augie Rivera actually wrote an entire series of books reimagining the experiences of children throughout Philippine history. There’s Diwayen who came from a time before the Filipino nation was born, followed by Segunda from the years spanning Spanish colonization, Juanito from the American years, Pitong from the Japanese invasion, and Jhun-Jhun who speaks from the years under Martial Law. There is just so much you could do with these stories in your classroom whether in the elementary, secondary or even university level. You can talk about symbolism. You can even talk about the story’s limitations as I once did about how the guerillas are downplayed in Pitong. These books are just begging to be read and put to good use in any classroom.

---

This story was written by May Tobias-Papa and illustrated by Isabel Roxas.

#2 Araw sa Palengke is a pretty straightforward story about a little girl accompanying her mother to the market but it is rich with illustrations that are abuzz and alive with the bustle of the typical Pinoy palengke (tiangge in Cebuano). The main character is brimming with curiosity and the illustrations are right there with her in its playfulness. It’s a book that children can easily relate to and it’s accessibility allows any creative teacher to build activities around the story. Given the potentially heavy topics in my fourth and third choices, Araw sa Palengke is a fun read to balance things out and liven up the mood.

#1 Bear by Himself is actually not written by a Filipino writer but it was impossible not to include it in my top five. To this day, it is the children’s book that means the most to me. I am forever grateful to the ambivalent random universe for throwing this beautiful book my way one fateful Booksale hunt.

This book is perfect for introverts! I wish I had come across it earlier as a child so I could have accepted my need for bouts of solitude sooner. It’s another testament to why adults need to read children’s books. My copy is actually no longer with me. I donated it to a book drive for Mangyan kids around two years ago. I know I love a book to death when I feel a great obligation to give it away in the hope that it finds its way into the hands of a child who needed to dwell in its world as much as I did.

So that rounds up my top five books at twenty-five. If you’re an adult reading this, I hope you will find it a duty to spread the love of book reading to the children in your lives. These books are readily available online or in the bookstore nearest you if I’ve somehow managed to convince you books matter! You can also borrow my copies. It would be my pleasure to lend them to a fellow reader!

Feel free to share your own list of favorite books in the comments below or better yet, make a post about it, too.

---

This post was written as part of the National Children’s Book Day 2015 Blog Tour. Want to come up with a list of good Filipino books for the children in your life and the child in your heart? Check out the Philippine Board on Books for Young People’s FB page for more book recommendations!

Xilef Reading Activity Sheets

These are activity sheets I made for my cousin when I tutored him using the children’s book Xilef. We were practicing his reading skills because he was identified as a slow reader by his teacher. Feel free to use this for your child’s learning.

This is Xilef and I talk about it a little bit in this post.

Xilef is a story by Augie Rivera illustrated by Beth Parrocha-Doctolero. It won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 1999

Before Reading
We’re Cebuano so the vocabulary flash cards here have Cebuano translations.

Unlocking of Difficulties

Activating Background Knowledge and Motive Question

Companion Questions to What do you know about aliens?

Are they like us or are they different from us?
How can you tell if someone is an alien?

I have a book about a boy who may or may not be an alien. His name is Xilef. Look, this is him (pointing to the cover). Tell me what you can see. What’s going on in this picture?

After Reading

It’s that time of year! National Children’s Book Day is here!

I feel like a vegetable right now from all the work that’s swamped me in the past week and more. But I’m looking forward to next week because it’s that time of year when we celebrate children’s books in the Philippines! As part of the month-long celebration of National Children’s Book Day, I will be participating in a blog tour organized by the Philippine Board on Books for Young People, the National Book Development Board, and the Department of Education.

Hope you stay tuned for my posts on July 12, 19 and 25 when the “tour” stops over at Titser, Titser! Until then!

117 Years After Independence

All sectors of society were represented in Dumaguete City’s 117th Independence Day Celebration.

It was my second year of celebrating Independence Day as a public school teacher. It was the 117th year since Emilio Aguinaldo, the country’s first president according to historical canon, declared the Philippines free from the shackles of Spanish colonization. It is an Independence fraught with controversy – questions of legitimacy foremost among them – and the revolution that was its instrument is these days being revisited with questions of a revolution to what degree if it only served to install the local elite? It is good to be reminded of the tension with which we claim this Independence and to be reminded of how despite this claim, it has remained meaningless these past 117 years for some of our countrymen.

Drive

I am deeply afraid of boredom. It’s the reason why I choose challenging tasks over easy ones, work over idle gossip. It’s only when I’m doing something purposeful that I feel I’m sucking the marrow out of life and living to the full.

In high school, I was often bored and I dreaded it — being listless, full of pent up energy that I couldn’t channel to anything creative, absorbing, engaging. So I ended up playing computer games often and losing myself in virtual adventures and their false achievements. Or reading books, but, living in a small town, good ones were so hard to find, and when I did manage to find a book that sang or built worlds or opened a new eye in my mind finishing it was inevitable and getting to the end always left me feeling a little bit abandoned and yearning for more.

When I was in college, I threw myself at humanitarian work for four years before the eventual burn out crept in along with the disillusionment born from the knowledge of just how corrupt human beings can be.

Now, I’m a teacher and I throw myself at my work though I try to be more disciplined about my passion, understanding finally that willpower, motivation and energy are finite. I am more and more concerned about sustainability, about living like a long distance runner rather than the mad and frenzied dasher that I was in my teens.

Though I hate doing things half-assed, still. If I do something half-hearted, I always end up haunted by regret. So I continue steering the course of my life, captain of my own ship, toward rougher waters and all the time straining to keep boredom at bay.

A (school) year in pictures

A new school year is about to begin and I will be leaving my rookie year of teaching behind. But before 2015-2016 finally buries the moments of triumph and failure of 2014-2015, I am taking stock of the recent past and storing here whatever visual artifacts I managed to haphazardly take and keep.

My cubicle during one of many late stays at the faculty room.

When I try to describe my rookie year in a nutshell, I can’t help but think it has been a year of struggle both in keeping up with lesson preparations and providing timely feedback for my students. Not to mention adjusting to the bureaucracy of the public school system, navigating the intricacies of dealing with others with my sketchy emotional intelligence, and finding the intersection between my idealism and much-needed realism. I often lagged behind and it was not uncommon for my cubicle to be swamped with things to do. Even my bed was not exempt as I often brought work home and burned countless midnight candles.

No sleep on this night

Some of my friends worry that if I keep going at this rate, I might burn not only midnight candles but myself, too. I understand their worry and this is definitely one aspect I want to improve on in my second year of teaching because passion is good but sustaining passion is even better. I have to be in it for the long haul, after all!

Some people would probably think it was the contests that were most memorable…

Magdalene bagged third place at the regional spelling bee. She was in 7th grade at the time.

Clar, Vern and Brim (center) were the girls in pink who won first place.

Marc and Ram were all smiles (momentarily forgetting the butterflies in their stomachs) before the bee. The boys won first place.

…

As an alumna of the science high school where I currently teach, competing in bees and tourneys was something I experienced during my high school years, too. But this hasn’t made the process of competing any less nerve-wracking!

Contests are a good way of challenging students who are at the mastery level of their lessons, especially when students are genuinely interested in the subject because their inner curiosity will provide them with the stamina to go beyond the basics. But at the end of the day I think the student’s overall learning should never be sacrificed for the sake of a contest so I feel conflicted about joining contests in general. Keeping a balance is important. And if a student’s learning suffers, I’m of the mind that contests should be ditched! It’s the day to day exploration, discovery, and practice inside the classroom or wherever we choose learning to take place that matters.

So I treasure the activities, outputs, and projects more…

I tried my best to design as many lessons as I could where students could collaborate in hands-on activities. Sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I failed.

Absolute and Comparative Advantage activity sheets

Describing Scarcity for the Body Smart

Students play with the games they made drawing on their knowledge and understanding of basic economic concepts. In the photo, students are playing a game about substitutes and complements using the rules of domino.

Dabbling in music to learn about irony

There was some targeting of 21st Century Skills (Communication, Media Literacy, Collaboration, Research, Independent Learning), too, but I need to design and schedule my projects better so that students have more time to plan and more opportunities for deeper mastery of both skills and content knowledge.

But I hope that aside from the subject’s content, my students also discovered something about themselves — the things they’re good at, the things they’re interested in — and most important of all, the desire to keep on learning!

Even I need to continue learning…

Some of the trainings I attended this year

Tried out peer feedback to generally positive results!

…to become a highly effective teacher so that when something beautiful emerges from the woodwork…

…I can do more than merely witness the inchoate potential of what humanity’s future could be.