Reading is beautiful and allows us to broaden our horizons. We know how important it is to teach children the value of reading and we often look for ways to stimulate children's interest in print and images. But it probably never occurred to us that our dog could help us too!
Reading is beautiful and allows us to broaden our horizons. We know how important it is teach the value of reading to children and we often look for ways to stimulate the interest of the little ones towards printed paper and images. But it probably never occurred to us that our dog could help us too!
It is known that animals can promote the development of children, protect them from allergies (contrary to what the cliché dictates) and are beneficial for relieve the stress of the whole family. Well to the long list of the positive effects of pet-therapy we must also add the support that a dog can give in encourage reading.
To say this is a new research conducted by the Tufts Institute for Human-Animal Interaction in Massachusetts (USA). The experiment (for the moment a pilot study) took as a sample secondary school students who met certain parameters based on literacy skills. Divided into two groups, the children had to read aloud to a dog for 6 minutes once a week for 30 weeks, or only in class following the normal school path.
Before and after each session, the experts assessed the reading skills but also the more or less proactive attitude of the students. It was thus seen that reading aloud to a dog can help school-age children to indirectly improve their reading skills but above all to make them have a good relationship with books and school.
In reality they didn't improve the children's skills so much as their attitude, that is the help of the animal favored a better relationship with reading and more generally a profitable academic performance as well as a more relaxed approach to school.
Researchers, based on their findings, believe it may be It is useful to make after-school programs with the help of therapy dogs that they serve as original listeners for children and teenagers by providing them with greater motivation and stimulus to read. This first pilot study can also serve as a trailblazer for further studies aimed at analyzing how dogs can aid in school learning.
As Lisa Freeman stated, lead author of the study:
“One of the most important aspects to facilitate the development of reading skills it is to motivate a child to engage in reading. Our findings suggest that reading to dogs in an academic setting has the potential to provide motivation that will also help future research on human-animal interaction. "
On the importance of reading for children, you may also be interested in:
- 15 tips for reading books aloud to children
- That's why you should read fairy tales to your children more often
- Book buddies: children who read books to cats (photos)
Put your smartphone and tablet in a drawer and give it to your children an interesting and adventurous book that can also please the dog!
