Here's a piece from Edutopia about reading to dogs. The Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System has a similar program.
Gone to the Dogs
Reluctant readers thrive when they read with Rover.
by Burr Snider published
5/29/2007Becky Bishop had a problem. As the community-minded owner of a dog-training facility in Woodinville, Washington, Bishop was in the habit of taking her trained therapy dogs to hospices to cheer up terminally ill patients. Over time, however, she found that the visits were depressing the dogs.
Then someone told her about a program just getting under way that pairs dogs and reading-challenged elementary school children; the dogs act as nonjudgmental listeners to help kids get over their fear of reading out loud.
"I started going to a library on Saturdays where the kids would come to read to dogs," Bishop says. "As soon as I brought my dogs around, they just lit up, and, of course, the kids did, too. All these parents began coming up to me and telling me how their kids had been such hesitant readers until they started in the dog program, and how enthusiastic they became. It ended up being such good therapy for me that I decided to start a nonprofit to spread the idea."
That was in 2000. Now, Reading with Rover, Bishop's organization, consists of some seventy-five dog-and-trainer teams that regularly go into libraries, bookstores, and schools in several Seattle-area districts to work with children who struggle with reading.
Read the rest here.
Comments