The purpose of this manuscript was to describe information about an animal-assisted therapy, specifically the Reading Education Assistance Dog (R.E.A.D.) program. In this manuscript I provide information about R.E.A.D. programs in general. Next, I share perspectives solicited from R.E.A.D. participants, specifically teachers, parents, students and…

In 1996 President Clinton established the America Reads Challenge Act (1997), which included a commitment that every child will read independently and well by the end of third grade. This initiative was predicated on links between achievement and poverty (Riley, 1996, 2002) and that children reading below grade level in the early grades perform…

The present study investigated the reading attitude of struggling elementary students at risk for reading failure. Twenty-nine first-grade and 32 second-grade struggling readers were given the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (McKenna & Kear, 1990). First-grade struggling readers favored more academic reading activities while second-grade…

The authors--a second grade classroom teacher and a university professor of education--decided to collaborate. Melanie wanted to find out if she could help her students increase their reading and writing comprehension by presenting a sequence of events in an activity (for example, the steps in building a house) and then have the students write the…

Parents make powerful contributions to their children's early literacy learning in school. The purpose of this study was to design, implement, and evaluate the efficacy of the Words-to- Go parent involvement program as part of a larger effort to reach out to parents in early literacy. Quantitative data from surveys and qualitative data from focus…