motivated
Sit. Listen. Good Dog.
By Ca t h e r i n e Y aw
I
Students are encouraged and excited by the presence of the dogs at Roscoe Reading quarterly events. Their motivation has led to the involvement of over 1,300 students in 2005 to over 2,700 students in 2010.
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CAUSE
t began with a kiss, like all good stories do; only this kiss wasn’t from a frog or a prince on horseback. This “prince,” per se, was of the four-legged, furry variety. He went by the name of Roscoe Shine and, with one slobbery kiss in 2002, the wrinkly bloodhound with the velvet ears entered the lives of twenty-five fourth graders as the ultimate teaching tool.
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“Several years ago, I began bringing Roscoe, a trained search and rescue dog, into area schools to teach about safety,” said Marietta Hicks, founder of the Roscoe Reading Program, a 501(c)(3) organization. “In a roundabout way, he also taught about reading and writing. When the students asked their teacher to kiss Roscoe, I didn’t think much about it. Then came the challenge. Only when the students met their reader goals would she kiss Roscoe. That’s where the program and my passion began.” The Roscoe Reading Program is an incentive program for students in grades two through five across the Berkeley Country School District. Now in its ninth year, the program has expanded its initiative across twelve different schools within the district and involves over 2,700 students. In five years, the program has more than doubled in size and broadened its outreach to include two new schools, Cane Bay and Westview Elementary, with the start of the new school year this past August. The program improves children’s reading and communication skills by employing a powerful method:
reading encouraged by a dog. But not just any dog. Roscoe Reading Program dogs are registered therapy dogs that volunteer with their owners/ handlers as a team and go to schools as reading motivators for children. As of this school year, over twenty dogs of all breeds and sizes, including a Labrador retriever, chihuahuas, and greyhounds, travel from school to school as part of the program. Apart from encouragement of the furry persuasion, the program also utilizes stickers, pencils, and ice cream parties to encourage participation and development of a life-long love for reading. Rewards are offered by the program once every nine weeks at each school. Dependent upon grade level, students must read enough books to earn a set amount of Accelerated Reader (AR) points to reach the first level prize—an invitation to the Roscoe Reading Program ice cream party. “The first level goal is simple; we set the children up for success. Not only do the students have to read the books, but they have to prove through the Accelerated Reader tests that they comprehend the books they’ve