1.

IN`TRODUCTION

Do students fully understand what they are reading? Are they able to express verbally or
in written communication what they have read? Professional teachers need to guide students to
become independent and effective in our fast-paced, fast-growing society. To do this, we need to
start with a basic skill that is used throughout life; and that skill is reading comprehension.

One of the most important aims in education is the student’s reading comprehension to be
developed. Seemingly, the goal of the curriculum emphasis on students’ constructing knowledge,
higher order thinking skills and information processing skills (Tavera & Casinillo, 2020).

Reading comprehension is a critical learning skill for all students (Clarke, Truelove, Hulme, &
Snowling, 2013; Wong, 2011), as it is “the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing
meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. Understanding word’s
meaning, analyzing the authors points of view and aim for writing and gaining knowledge of new
words are all very important reading skills that support reading comprehension (Ruiz, 2015).
Students need reading comprehension skills to successfully accomplish the educational goals and
expectations, which are required in the classroom settings. For example, having the ability to
understand textual information play a critical role in helping learners to quickly locate information
that is pertinent to the text, exclude information that is irrelevant to the text, and identify the
important information to focus on.

Without a doubt, the ability to comprehend written and spoken languages as well as to
communicate ideas and concepts are vital in one’s growth and progress. Access to knowledge in the
various disciplines is made possible through comprehension and communication and through the
mastery of the several study skills, habits, and attitudes, one can develop the enthusiasm necessary
in the continual persistence of learning (Shippen, Houchins, Crites, Derzis & Patterson, 2010).

The reading problems that negatively impact students’ comprehension could include one or
more of the following: inappropriately use of prior knowledge, lack of vocabulary, difficulty of
reading fluency, limited knowledge of common text structures (Graham & Bellert, 2005), difficulty
making inferences (Hall, & Barnes, 2017; Jiménez-Fernández, 2015; Sencibaugh, 2007), and
unfamiliarity with the appropriate strategy needed to gain meaning from a text (Woolley, 2008).

Therefore, one that is unable to comprehend and communicate well in any forms is deprived of
a wonderful learning experience in the life as a person (Cimmiyotti, 2013; Shin, Davison, Long, Chan,
& Heistad, 2013; Quirk, & Beem, 2012).

Not being able to successfully comprehend can prevent students from learning, retaining
information that they read, and graduating from school, which will negatively impact different
aspects of their lives later on (Hoeh, 2015; Mason, 2004). Reading difficulties negatively impact
different aspects of students, including their educational progress, self-esteem, attitudes about
reading and learning, motivation to read, career choices, social-economic status and expectation for
future reading success (Sloat, Beswick, and Willms, 2007; Woolley, 2011).

Not only is reading comprehension a valuable skill for learning in school, but in order to
successfully interact in everyday life, individuals need reading skills to read and understand labels,
directions, job application forms, and newspapers (Chatman, 2015). Also, individuals need reading
skills in order to be able to have and maintain a job and successfully engage in different daily
activities (Hoeh, 2015; Mahdavi, & Tensfeldt, 2013), and live independently (Hoeh, 2015).

Hence, to improve the learners’ academic achievement, students should be exposed to a

particular form of teaching strategy or intervention (Adewale, 2014; Casinillo & Guarte, 2018; Suarez
& Casinillo, 2020).

Indeed, the Department of Education (DepEd) in the Philippines provides a standard tool to
measure and describe students’ reading performance in a classroom-based assessment, that is,
Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI). Phil-IRI refers to the revised assessment tool
composed of a set of graded passages administered to the whole class and to individual students,
which was designed to determine a student’s reading level.

In any school, the information gathered from Phil-IRI will be an aid for school leaders and policy
makers in education for appropriate reading activities and to improve the student learning
achievement. Based on the result of the Phil-IRI, the identified problems in any school is the poor
reading comprehension of the students (Luciano, 2019). Hence, teachers were trying to understand
the knowledge acquisition and looking for the best techniques and strategies for the students to
learn effectively particularly in reading comprehension (Tavera & Casinillo, 2020).

Teaching reading comprehension can be done through explicitly teaching students how to utilize
particular strategies in order to improve their reading comprehension skills (Stetter & Hughes,
2010). Several reading comprehension strategies have been administrated as effective tools for
improving students’ understanding of written materials. These strategies include, but not limited to
graphic organizers (DiCecco & Gleason, 2002), collaborative strategic reading (Vaughn et al., 2011),
peer-assisted learning strategy (Rafdal et al., 2011), story-mapping (Zahoor & Janjua, 2013), and self-
questioning (Rouse, Alber-Morgan, Cullen, & Sawyer, 2014).

Also, numerous classroom-based reading comprehension assessments have been used by

teachers to measure the students’ reading understanding of academic material as well as measure
the effectiveness of a particular instructional method or teaching strategy. That data collected by 5
classroom assessment provide teachers with an opportunity to (a) develop the most appropriate
instruction for students, (b) make a better determination about what lesson would be more
effective to teach, (c) determent what supportive material to use during their lessons, and (d) what
challenges the students may have. Cloze procedure (Ahangari, Ghorbani, & Hassanzadeh, 2015),
informal reading inventory (Burns and Roe, 2011), retelling procedure (Hagtvet, 2003), think aloud
(Spinelli, 2012) are some examples of these classroom-based reading comprehension assessments.

Lots of strategies and techniques were introduced and practiced in the classroom, but there are
few that could give more relaxing and enjoyable for both the teacher and learners to learn
effectively. The use of context clues is one of the most effective ways in developing and enhancing
reading comprehension because it helps the reader to figure out the meaning of unknown words
and strengthens learners’ vocabulary (İlter, 2019; Mauliza et al., 2019; Putri & Fitrawati, 2019).
Context clues are hints found within a sentence, paragraph, or passage that a reader can use to
understand the meanings of new or unfamiliar words. The use of context clues was highly related to
overall reading effectiveness (Putri & Fitrawati, 2019). Context clues are the words and sentences
that surround a word and help explain the words meaning. It also helps the reader figure out the
meaning of an unknown word.

Antonyms, synonyms, stated examples, contrasts and restatements all function as context clues
(Humes, 1978). Context clues are hugely important because their comprehension and effective
usage leads to academic success. They can strengthen the learner’s vocabulary, reading
comprehension and make learners a better writer (Al Jumaily, 2021).

Improving all students’ reading skills in order to narrow the reading achievement gap is one of
the essential goals of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA).
Closing the gap can be done through requiring and encouraging schools to integrate high standards,
high quality instruction, and teaching with research-based material and assessments (International
Literacy Association 2016; Richburg-Burgess, 2012).

Educators need to provide instruction to students in elementary and middle school to improve
their reading and comprehension abilities before entering high school. One can only assert that
improving reading comprehension skill in younger people will improve literacy rates as time
progresses.

Academic success also requires students to be able to understand, analyze, and apply
information they gathered through their reading (Clarke, Truelove, Hulme, & Snowling, 2013). The
importance of being able to understand written materials increases significantly in all academic
areas as students move from one grade to another (Clarke, Truelove, Hulme, & Snowling, 2013;
Wong, 2011).

Many traditional approaches to teaching content-area subjects do not account for what is
understood about the construction of knowledge, the learning process, and critical cognitive actions
that must take place for meaningful learning to occur (Craig et al., 2018). To construct knowledge (as
opposed to memorizing someone else’s understanding of it), learners must understand the
information in relation to what they already know and to their own experiences (Karim et al., 2010;
Ren & Zhao, 2020).

With the exception of specific facts, knowledge of information is relative and never static. One’s
understanding is constantly changed as information is viewed from different context and in relation
to other background knowledge or new information. Though knowledge of facts may be right or
wrong, recalled or forgotten, understanding of facts (e.g., how they relate to a specific subject) is
also continually changing, and thus is also relative and never static. In the classroom, the role of the
teacher is to facilitate students’ constructing (and reconstructing) of meanings so that their thinking
becomes increasingly clear (Kuter & Özer, 2020).
 Taking much consideration the knowledge dimension of the pupils, the goals of the curriculum
should be more emphasis on students’ constructing knowledge, more depth, less superficial
coverage, more emphasis on archetype concepts, patterns, and strategies, more emphasis on
developing relational understanding and knowledge connections to real-world contexts, more
student elaboration, and more emphasis on developing effective habits of the mind, higher order
thinking and information processing skills, and learning strategies. Particularly, the “Rainbow Sticky-
Note Semantic Mapping” procedure incorporates a number of subtle techniques that serve to
facilitate student construction of knowledge. Semantic mapping (also called semantic webbing) can
be a powerful technique for students with mild cognitive disabilities (Cassiano et al., 2020; Liu et al.,
2020). This routine facilitates activation of background knowledge, anticipation of upcoming
learning, student self-evaluation of existing knowledge about the topic, meaningful structuring of
both existing and new knowledge, and understanding of interconnections and relationships among
various important concepts and facts.

According to Casinillo (2019) and Casinillo et al. (2020), there are some factors affecting their
learning experiences that leads to low academic performance. In the study of Govindaraju and
Venkatesan (2010), poor teaching strategy, difficulties in learning and low performance results to
school drop-outs. Hence, strategic intervention must be implemented to develop students’ interest
and progress their level of achievement.

Arisi (1998) and Bunagan (2012) defined Strategic Intervention Material as meant to re-teach
the concepts and skills (least mastered). It is a material given to students to help them master
competency -based skills which they were not able to develop during a regular classroom teaching.
It consists of both learning strategies (for students) and content enhancement (for teachers). It is a
multifaceted approach to help students to become independent and successful learners (Jotia &
Matlale, 2011; Okobia, 2011). This intervention material focuses on the skill not mastered by the
students during regular class. It does not involve pretest and posttest, however it includes fun
activities. Module, on the other hand, contained different topics included in a given chapter and
intended for regular classroom teaching and distance learning. Module requires pretest and
posttest, and also includes fun activities.

Teaching at any level requires that the students be exposed to some form of stimulation or
intervention to improve learners’ academic achievement (Abad, 2005; Abdo & Semela, 2010;
Adewale, 2014; Ogbondah, 2008). Okobia (2011) noted that teaching resources means anything that
can assist the teacher in promoting teaching and learning. When the students are given the chance
to learn through more senses than one, they can learn faster and easier.

Moreover, to develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating
them, and know when to apply what they have learned. Students must develop not only the
component skills and knowledge necessary to perform complex tasks, they must also practice
combining and integrating them to develop greater fluency and automaticity. Finally, students must
learn when and how to apply the skills and knowledge they learn. As teachers, it is important that
we develop conscious awareness of these elements of mastery so as to help our students learn
more effectively. The reading program in the elementary schools of Hilongos South District
emphasizes word recognition, comprehension and acquisition of vocabulary. Unfortunately, reading
proficiency is still a perennial problem among teachers especially nowadays that learners are highly
 surrounded by high technologies which are risk factors that weaken learners’ motivation to read at
home and in school. The researcher herself observed in her own reading assessment using the
Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) that only 55% of the learners belonged to
independent level and the rest belonged to frustration level. A good climate at home and at school
can foster positive influence of the knowledge acquisition of the pupils. In fact, studies have shown
that more stimulating class atmosphere has good implications for our students (Casinillo et al., 2020;
Saariaho et al., 2019; Saputra, 2017). A negative climate may impede learning and performance, but
a positive climate can energize students’ learning (Lombardi et al., 2019; Maxwell et al., 2017).

According to Fitrawati (2009:90) basically, the main goal of reading is comprehension of what is
being read. Pam & Glenda (2008) state that reading comprehension is the intentional, active,
interactive process that occurs before, during and after a person reads a particular piece of written
text. Reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning from text. In reading
comprehension the students are able to understand what the text tells about.

Hiebert and Khamil (2005) as cited in Melwan (2014) state that students who were taught
specific types of context clues were able to use contextual analysis to unlock the meanings of
unfamiliar words. According to Troyka & Thweatt (2009) context clues can be divided into four
categories : Restatement Context Clues, for restatement context clue, look for a thought that’s
repeated in different words in the same or nearby sentence. Defenition Context Clues, a defenitions
context clue means that the word is formally defined in the same sentence. Formal defenitons are
direct and easy to spot. Contrast Context Clues, acontrast context clue means you can figure out an
unknown word when is opposie-or some other type of contrast-is mentioned close by. Example
Context Clues, We are looking at an example clue when an unfamiliar word is followed by an
example that reveals what the unknown word means.

Related to this research, there was a prior study which is quite similar to this research. The
rresearch was conducted by Melwan et.al (2014) who analyze the influence of context clues mastery
in students’ reading comprehension of descriptive text at STKIP “Tapanuli Selatan”
Padangsidimpuan. The result shows the students who were taught through the context clues had
higher reading comprehension achievement than those who were taught using the conventional
technique (using dictionary). And the research was conducted by Dita et.al (2015). who analyze the
effectiveness of using context clues strategy on reading comprehension of the first year students at
SMA Muhammadiyah 1 Pekanbaru. She found that there is a significant effect of using context clues
strategy on reading comprehension.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), less than 15 percent
of schoolchildren in the Philippines, or about three in every 20, can read simple texts in
large part due to the longest schools’ closure of more than 70 weeks as of the middle of
February caused by the COVID- 19 pandemic. UNICEF noted that even before the
pandemic more than half of 10- year- old in low- and middle- income countries were
unable to read or comprehend a simple story which is estimated to be as high as 70
percent.

Based on the Programme for International Student Assessment 2018 result,

among 79 participating countries and economies, the Philippines scored the lowest in
reading comprehension. PISA is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic
Co- operation and Development (OECD) that examines students’ knowledge in reading,
mathematics, and science. According to the results, Filipino students scored a mean of
340 points in the reading comprehension exam — the OECD average is 487 points.
Performances of both boys and girls in reading also ranked lowest among PISA-
participating countries.