Literacy Changes Lives: A Celebration of Literacy week at Balayang High School

Balayang High School successfully celebrated Literacy Week with the theme “Literacy Changes Our World”, through  fun-filled events such as Hula Hoop Challenge, Icebag Popping Challenge and a lot more!

The BHSians kicked off Literacy Week last November  to celebrate and raise awareness about the importance of writing, speaking and listening and to inspire BHS students to make reading a part of their daily routines. This event was made possible by the English Department, along with teachers and officers of I Speak English Club.

The English Faculty of Balayang High School

One way to promote this four foundational skills of language learning is by organizing a Literacy Week at school. Here we share to you how Balayang High School in Victoria, Tarlac celebrated their Literacy Week.

Students from Grade 7 to Grade 11  played a variety of literacy-themed games. The celebration began in a door contest where students decorated their classrooms' doors like a favorite book character, or with  something to promote reading that goes along with the theme "Literacy Changes Our World". Activities throughout the week also included declamation,speech choir, spelling bee, essay writing, poster making, quiz bee and speech contest.

Door Contest

Literacy Booths

“This is my first celebrating Literacy Week at Balayang High School and I am excited for the opportunity to spend time with hundreds of BHS students and their outstanding teachers throughout the week. I look forward to this event every year because it drags attention to the vital role of reading and literacy in every facet of our lives,"said Teresita P. Lorenzo, Principal II of Balayang High School.

Learning to read and write is a basic skill that unfortunately not all children in the world learn sufficiently. Societal change puts increasing demands on individuals' competence in using written language, so it's important that schools are able to teach such skills to all learners.In order for students to reach their full potential, they must continually hone essential reading and literacy skills.

The pics we've all been waiting for! Enjoy!

Books We Love!

Poster-making

Declamation

Our students co-hosted the event

Poster-Making

Quiz Bee

Spelling Bee

Speech Contest

Scrabble! Our Cup of Teaching.

I believe that students would benefit from playing some scrabble. Using scrabble game in improving students literacy, numeracy and all that. That being said, vocabulary is the basic element of a language. It is commonly defined as all the word used by the speakers when using their language. According to Richards (2000:255) suggest that “vocabulary is a core component of language proficiency and provides much of the basis for how well learners speak, listen, read, and write”. It means without knowing and having enough vocabulary, someone or language learner will be difficult to understand the other language skill such as speaking, reading, writing, and listening. Vocabulary is one of the items that have to be mastered first by the students in learning English, because no one can speak English if they have limited vocabulary and without a proportional amount of vocabulary any one will get trouble in the process of learning English.

Teaching is a people profession that demands a large amount of time being dedicated to personal interaction. Positive teacher-student interaction has a very crucial role for effective teaching and learning to take place (Arthur, Gordon, & Butterfield, 2003). There are many important factors including productive Teaching and learning. Positive teacher-student interaction can be defined by shared acceptance, understanding, affection, intimacy, trust, respect, care and cooperation (Krause, Bochner, & Duchesne, 2006).

It's fortunate that in some of our vacant periods, we can play this game to somehow meet students’ developmental, emotional and educational needs. I recall, two students approached me, they were cheerful while revealing to me they have adapted new words and that they will make note of it. Glad hearing that, I understood even how minimal beneficial things matter to these learners.

Here sharing a pic during those days when our learners are unloaded, while we are on less paper work mode, at least on lunch breaks :)

Featured Students of Balayang High School

Shekinah Balbin Barroga - Good Hearted Woman

As I began teaching in Senior High School this year, I figured it would be inspiring for students of Balayang High School to highlight all if not some of them who are leaving good impact on their companions, peers, fellow students and even teachers like yours truly regarding character and esteem. Character, not only knowledge is the thing that makes an awesome student. What your choice of words says about your personality. NO ONE DOUBTS that the words we write or speak are an expression of our inner thoughts and personalities.

I have been blessed to meet many of the future leaders in my classrooms and in BHS's hallways, and I greatly treasure the relationships I have with these intelligent and inspiring people.

Shekinah Balbin Barroga

Hello there! So… you’ve landed on my blog, looked around a bit, and are wondering, “Who in the world is this gal?” 

The Bible speaks very highly of those who had faith. There are many servers of women of faith, and I can learn much by face-to-face talk in school with Shekinah.

Well, allow me to tell you a little about herself with,

10 things you should know about 

Shekinah Balbin Barroga

1. What is your grade level and graduating year? 

Presently I am at Grade 9. I will be graduating from senior high in 2021.

2. What does success in the classroom mean to you?

When I gain a lot of learning in the classroom,  this means success to me.

3. What do you plan on doing after K12?

I would like to go to college and to get a degree in education. 

4. What is your favorite memory in high school?

Whenever I am with my friends and teachers.

5. What is your proudest moment?

When I became a leader of Young Sister for our church.

6. What is one thing that you gained during your life at Balayang High School which you feel was of great value?

 I know that everything comes in to serve a purpose. I like giving advice to my friends and classmates. And for the spirit of generosity, every so often I offer monetary aid to students that don't  have a single cent to spend for food. 

7. What do you want to learn more about?

I want to learn more about humility, and to accept my mistakes and learn from it. 

8. Who are your heroes or role models?

My co-believers in Christ.

9. What are you good at that nobody knows?

I am fond of writing stories and inspirational poems.

10. Do you have any projects that you are working on/have worked on that is being supported by any organization?

Being the leader of Young Sister in our church, I teach new songs thrice a week. I also serve as emcee.

Welcome to my Second Field

Each day, each child, each subject brings with it an immense number of variables and possibilities. To me, this is what makes teaching so amazing, yet so daunting. Teaching cannot be scripted. Quite to the contrary, even the best planned teachers have to “wing it,” each and every day because of the nature of our jobs.

Likewise, teaching would lead to at least one person feeling I’d improved his or her life in some little way. What better way to do that than to teach? 

Welcome to my second field...

My Students Journal

My Students Journal (on updating mode)  will re-direct you to another web page.
Please click this link.
Thanks for dropping by.

About Me

Grateful, excited and looking ahead for what's next.

Ciel was a PR and communications professional in UAE before she became a teacher.  Ciel had over two decades of executive management experience in the corporate world, most of it in Communications and Public Relations. Throughout her career in the corporate world,  Ciel had worked with a number of high profile clients both locally and internationally.

Coming into teaching as a mature individual with 20+ years in the corporate sector,  "I finally achieved my childhood ambition as an English teacher. I left the corporate world to teach and pursue my love of teaching."

" As a mother of two grown kids, it is important for me to have a work-life balance. I care about those special moments between loved ones and work."

"The benefits of being a teacher and a mother and the impact you can have are too great."

"In my corporate jobs, I used to write press releases, for various industries in UAE such as hospitality, food, fashion, technology and business , with a strong emphasis on launching restaurants and building brands, as well as media outreach."

At forty-something, Ciel finds teaching as her second field. Thus inclined to teaching, she studied Master in Education and Professional Education to cope with the young one's needs to grow to be an informed member of the society in which they live....

 As a senior high school teacher now, she aims to teach life lessons while also teaching English.  Ciel shares thoughts on education, classroom encounters, teacher innovation and insight, and experiences of a public senior high school teacher.

She believes that an influential teacher  never stops teaching, even outside of the classroom. This is her journey...

Her other blog can be seen on foodtimesme.blogspot.com. You can reach her at writermamateacherfromtarlac@gmail.com

Future journalists of Balayang High School hone their skills for MSPC

I was appointed  to train our senior and junior students about editorial writing in preparation of the municipal schools press conference to be hosted by Balayang High School from August 2 - 3, 2018. These young journalists are already providing important leadership in our profession and they have an extraordinary opportunity and extraordinary examples to shape journalism in their careers.

Equipping these learners with the skill in writing editorials, below are essentials they need before the the Municipal Schools Press Conference (MSPC). Best of luck to my trainees namely Jamaica Patron, Elena Ramos, Jacquilyn Escobar, John Russel Jacinto, Joyce Ann Polido, Princess Ann Garabiles, Cherry Racuya, Denise Balana and Shella Mae Nacario.

Our students will be competing in various categories with English and Filipino divisions:

Editorial writing
News writing
Sports news writing
Feature writing
Cartooning
Copyreading and headline writing ( skipped this year)
Collaborative desktop publishing


The Philippine government institutionalized campus journalism training in the school system with the Campus Journalism Act of 1991.

Tips on Writing Newspaper Editorial Format

An editorial is a newspaper article that expresses one's opinion. An editorial can be about any topic, but is usually written about an issue that deals with our society. To build credibility, the opinion in the editorial must be backed up with facts and evidence to substantiate your opinion.

The facts and evidence must be gone through extensively to find the point of view you want to argue. With a point of view through an editorial piece, issues are given solutions that could be rendered to solve the actual problem at hand. A newspaper editorial may seem hard to write; but, initiative and passion about an issue gives you, the writer, the inside knowledge of making editorial writing easier.

Steps for Writing Newspaper Editorials

There are several different steps you need to follow in order to be successful when writing an editorial:

Choosing a Topic

The topic you choose is the most important part in writing a newspaper editorial. The best topics are those that are current issues among our society. If the topic is a current issue that everyone is already interested in then your editorial piece will engage reader’s attention.

If the topic you choose is an ongoing issue in our society, make sure to use the most recent information. However, you can use older information as sources to help prove your case. Do not make your editorial a controversial topic, unless that is that is your whole reason for writing it in the first place.

Choosing Your Opinion

You need to ask yourself, are you for or against the issue you have chosen as your topic for your newspaper editorial piece. You can not be on both sides of the fence when writing an editorial piece. The purpose for the editorial is to give your opinion, the writer’s opinion. With this in mind you must give a strong opinion, if not readers will not be as inclined to see your point of view.

Outline Your Editorial

Oh, the dreaded outline. With any type of research paper you have to do an outline. This is one of the biggest tips on writing newspaper editorial format that you should always follow. With an outline you know where you stand on the issue. The outline helps you, the writer, get your thoughts and opinions in order. The outline also helps you discover any swaying of opinions you may have missed by just diving head first into writing.

Writing Your Article

The first step to writing your newspaper editorial is to pick a headline that grabs reader’s attention. If you grab their attention from the very beginning they are more inclined to keep reading. Your opinion on the topic should be addressed in the introduction to your new editorial.

Newspaper editorials should have at least three arguments. These arguments of course should be backed up with facts and evidence from your research of the topic.

Other tips for writing editorials are:

Use statistics to help prove your argument.
Make sure your strongest argument is left for last.
Do not be passive in the arguments that come before the strongest. If this happens you are most likely not going to have readers reading your entire newspaper editorial.

Conclusion of Article

In a newspaper editorial, and with most anything else you write, your conclusion should sum up all the information you wrote about. The conclusion should be tied up into a neat little package so as to let readers get a recap of all the facts that you presented in your editorial.

Your conclusion should also have a few solutions you think would help with the issue at hand. You are getting the reader to engage in asking him or herself questions on how they stand on the particular issue in our society.