Integrated Animal Assisted Education & Reading Remediation at The Calais School

[0:01]At the Callais School, the presence of our animal assisted intervention dogs offers students companionship and support as they work to improve vocabulary, comprehension, and memory skills. Under the guidance of a teacher or reading specialist, our dogs also work with students on skills such as decoding and fluency. Dogs are non-judgmental listeners, and students find reading aloud to a dog much easier than reading in front of their peers or other people. Our animal assisted education program recently added a fun extension project called Be a reading kid and is partnered with the American Kennel Club to help motivate students to read more in and out of school. There's a special nook we call the canine reading corner where students read aloud to the dogs and partake in interactive discussions with the handlers. With each session, students are becoming stronger readers, while enhancing their expressive language ability, increasing their self-confidence and love of reading.