By ALEX COSTELLO
Six fourth-graders enrolled in the new program are reading to trained therapy dogs to help improve their confidence in reading aloud.
�The whole philosophy behind it is that to become fluent readers, children have to read out loud,� said Mary Prieston, the speech and language teacher at School 4. �But when children aren�t confident in their reading, they don�t want to read aloud.�
According to Prieston, the idea behind the program came from research that has shown that children feel a great deal of anxiety when reading aloud to adults. They feel slightly less nervous when reading aloud to their peers � and they feel no anxiety when reading to animals.
�It�s just to create a very non-stressful situation where they�re still reading aloud,�
Prieston said. �And they start to associate reading aloud as a pleasant experience.�
Students leave their class and go to the school�s reading room to read to one of the dogs, brought in by trainer Florence Scarinci, who is also a librarian at the Nassau Community College library. Scarinci brings in either Penni or Coach, both of whom she rescued from a shelter.
�I was always interested in doing therapy with a dog,� said Scarinci. �I never had the right dog until I had [Penni], because not every dog is good for it.�
A volunteer with Bideawee, the national animal welfare organization that sponsors the program at no cost to the district, Scarinci has had Penni act as a reading dog for about three years. �This is rather new programming for therapy dogs,� she explained. �Penni began in nursing homes and a school for deaf children, and then Bideawee was able to institute the reading-to-dogs program, and I thought that would be natural because I�m a librarian.
�And seeing children read is very rewarding to me,� she added.
The children read to the dog one at a time so as not to make one another anxious. The only people in the room are the student reader, Prieston and Scarinci, along with one of the dogs.
The program is just over a month old, so it is still too early for Prieston to determine whether it is succeeding. It is a pilot program this year, and all six participants were students of Prieston�s whose parents signed them up for it. Next year, however, Prieston hopes to expand the program to encompass all of either the fourth or fifth grade in School 4. She and Principal Joanna Kletter are still working out the details.
The students who read to the dogs claim that because of it, their reading at home and in class is easier. �It�s awesome because it�s easier to do,� said Christiana Crawford, one of the fourth-graders. �I care about pets.�
And Scarinci, who had worked with students in similar programs in other schools with her dogs, said that she saw improvements in the students. �Was it because of the dog? I can�t say,� she said.
�I can tell you there was one little girl who was almost pathologically shy, and by the end of the year, she had a role in the school play. So the dog might not have been the entire cause, but it certainly was a piece of it.�
Comments about this story? ACostello@
liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 207.
