This is very sweet, “Dogs make good listeners for Fort Pierce readers.” Kids get to practice their reading skills by reading to therapy dogs.
“What I like about the program,” said 8-year-old Kayleigh Kenslea of Port St. Lucie, “is that I can read to a sweet dog named Chance without being judged.”
According to event coordinator Dot Blair, the county’s literacy promoting program has 27 certified dogs and about 2,000 children participating.
Link courtesy of fark, where, unfortunately, I also ran across a less-heartwarming story about children and reading – a link to this (glitchy) CNN story about a study showing that only 12% of DC school children in the 8th grade are reading at grade proficiency. Even fewer are grade-proficient in math.
The therapy dog organization that Boris & I belong do does a lot of work with the NYC schools and setting up times for the kids to read to the dogs. I’d participate if it weren’t at 7am, or some ungodly hour like that. My friend the third grade teacher thinks it’s the greatest thing — apparently it really works well.