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"WHAT ARE ALL THESE DOGS DOING AT SCHOOL?": Using Therapy Dogs To Promote Children's Reading Practice
Childhood Education, Spring 2005 by Jalongo, Mary Renck
Describe a program in which struggling readers read aloud with a dog and its handler, and you will hear such questions:
"You're joking, right?"
"Reading to a dog? Is that sort of like talking to your plants?"
"Do you mean that the dogs are supposed to get smarter if you read to them?"
After some explanation about the uses of therapy dogs in other fields, however, the underlying concept becomes a bit clearer:
"Most young children seem to have a natural affinity for animals, particularly dogs. It's not unusual for my kids at home to cuddle up with the family pet while reading."
"I suppose it builds motivation and interest in many reluctant readers to have a four-footed reading buddy."
"It might be less stressful for a child to read aloud to a dog than to a teacher or a peer. After all, a dog won't judge or correct you."
"Why not? I'm sure that people were skeptical at first that dogs could give independence to people with disabilities, anticipate seizures, or comfort hospital patients. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense, but the program would have to be carefully planned and evaluated to sell my principal on the idea!"
This article discusses how registered therapy dogs can motivate and support children as they practice reading aloud in the company of the dog and with the support of the dog's handler. It also offers practical advice to educators, librarians, administrators, and community members seeking to implement such a program in their communities.
THERAPY DOGS AND BEST PRACTICES IN READING
The use of registered therapy dogs in reading activities with children must be consistent with "best practices in literacy instruction" (Morrow, Gambrell, & Pressley, 2003). The most comprehensive of these programs is Reading Education Assistance Dogs, or R.E.A.D., which is implemented by the Intermountain Therapy Animals (www.therapyanimals.org).
Collaboration Among Personnel and Appropriate Reading Materials
Ideally, the dog handlers collaborate with the teachers, reading specialists, and librarians to understand the child's interests and identify books at the correct reading level. Often, the child arrives at the session with several appropriate high-quality books that the team recommends for the particular child; this careful match between book and child, as well as the opportunity to choose, are supported by reading research (Allington & McGill-Franzen, 2003). Providing struggling readers with texts that are "considerate" of their reading challenges is a critical variable in promoting vocabulary growth (Swanborn & de Glopper, 2002).
Supervised, Enjoyable Reading Practice
R.E.A.D. recommends that 20 minutes be set aside each week for struggling readers to practice reading aloud. Using the standard 180 school days, or about 40 weeks, this adds approximately 14 hours of supervised practice in reading aloud. This may not sound like much; even in a 90-minute language arts block, however, children may spend just a few minutes per day actually reading. Adult monitoring of individual children's reading is understandably limited in a busy classroom; even less reading practice may occur at home. Therefore, 20 minutes a week of enjoyable, supported practice with carefully selected materials may represent a significant increase over the amount of time that readers-particularly struggling readers-ordinarily devote to reading aloud. Enjoyment is essential because "low-ability readers learn words incidentally when they are reading for fun" and "one might consider before anything else letting them read . . . appealing texts" (Swanborn & de Glopper, 2002, pp. 113-114).
Motivation and Access to High-Quality Books
Research shows that work with therapy dogs can build motivation, maintain focus, and increase task persistence, even when other interventions have failed (Granger, Kogan, Fitchett, & Helmer, 1998; Gunter, 1999; Heimlich, 2001). In the R.E.A.D. program, once a child reads 10 books, the child earns a book stamped with his or her favorite therapy dog's paw print. These "pawtographed" books, both fiction and nonfiction, go home with the child and "put books into children's hands" (Neuman & Celano, 2001, p. 8).
Social Support, Stress Reduction, and Enhanced Self-Esteem
The presence of a calm and well-trained dog offers a unique form of social support (Beck & Katcher, 2003) and invites peer interaction (Katcher, 1997). Additionally, medical evidence indicates that therapy dogs can reduce stress (Odendaal, 2001); when children were asked to read aloud under three conditions (to a peer, to an adult, and to a therapy dog), the presence of a therapy dog reduced children's blood pressure and heart rate to normal levels and diminished other observable signs of anxiety (Friedmann, Thomas, & Eddy, 2000). Working with animals is remarkably effective with students who have attentional difficulties, disruptive behaviors, or a general lack of interest in reading (Katcher & Wilkins, 1998; Kaufmann, 1997). Evidence is growing of the positive effects that companion animals, particularly dogs, have on children's behavior (Jalongo, Astorino, & Bomboy, 2004; Podberscek, Paul, & Serpell, 2000).
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