January 28, 2021 – Committed to continue inspiring educators amidst the pandemic, regional directors and field officials of the Department of Education (DepEd) will spearhead this year’s DepEd Teaches episodes to discuss their respective strategies in attaining excellence in the distance learning environment.

“The sharing from our Regional Directors, exemplary Superintendents, principals, fellow teachers, and even supervisors that will be featured in the forthcoming episodes will inspire you all to find ways of ensuring that learning happens even in very trying times,” Undersecretary for Curriculum and Instruction Diosdado San Antonio said.

Launched in December 2020 during the mid-year In-service Training (INSET) Week, DepEd Teaches is an online program featuring episodes that focus on steps and initiatives in overcoming the challenges in providing education in the new normal. Directors under the Curriculum and Instruction strand of Central Office were featured in its first five episodes.

In the program’s fifth episode on Thursday, OIC-Schools Division Superintendent of School Division Offices of Angeles City Ma. Irelyn Tamayo tackled “Designing Lessons to Achieve Learning Standards for Distance Learning Modalities.”

She underscored that SDO Angeles created Learning Activity Sheets (LAS) anchored on instructional design and targeted the development of the six cognitive processes or dimensions (remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating). The LASs are also based on the MELCs and served as supplementary materials for the modules provided by Central Office and Regional Office.

“Our activities do not center [only] on remembering, understanding, and applying, but we take our learners to the higher-order thinking skills. In some of our activities, our learners are [free to] justify their decision or course of action and [allowed] to generate new ideas, products, or ways of thinking or viewing things, and these are evaluating and creating, respectively,” OIC-SDS Tamayo explained.

She also emphasized the importance of teachers’ involvement in the instructional design process, which helps in their mastery of learning standards and the subject matter.

In her discussion, she shared that SDO Angeles envisions to create remarkable learning experiences for their students, as well as prepare instructional materials that will result in the acquisition of knowledge, concepts, ideas, as well as the application of lifelong skills.

Meanwhile, the next two episodes will still discuss topics on K to 12 Curriculum and Planning, with Navotas OIC-Schools Division Superintendent Alejandro Ibañez to present “Selecting teaching strategies and tasks relevant for learning delivery modalities” and Region IV-A CALABARZON Director Wilfredo Cabral on “Preparing and utilizing learning materials appropriate to the learning modalities.”

On the other hand, episodes 8 to 10 will center on “The Learner and his Learning Environment” with Regional Directors Gemma Ledesma (VI), Francis Cesar Bringas (CARAGA), and Gilbert Sadsad (V) as scheduled resource persons.

“We look forward to more of you, fellow teachers, spreading the news that there’s a channel, there’s a platform where we can continue to interact and learn together so that the policy initiatives will be translated into effective practices to ensure that learning will continue and our learners will become ready to be competitive in this so-called 21st Century Industry 4.0 and new world,” Undersecretary San Antonio ended.

Catch the livestream of the episodes on the official DepEd Philippines and DepEd Teaches Facebook pages every Thursday.

Interested participants can register here for Episodes 5-7: https://tinyurl.com/depedteachesEP5-7/

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