Humane society encouraging literacy confidence in children with Tales for Tails

Donating books about animals for elementary school students up to Grade Six can give young readers a chance to work on literacy skills by reading to an animal.

The Humane Society of Kitchener Waterloo Stratford Perth (KWSP) is looking for donations of books for their Tales for Tails program. The books must be for readers between kindergarten through to Grade Six and have an animal theme.

Educators part of the humane society will then review the books to make sure they match the requirements and will take the books to schools part of the Waterloo Region District and Avon Maitland District School Boards. The students can pick a book and read to Scout, the organization’s education bunny.

"It's just a program to help kids build their confidence and their literacy skills,” said Cree Toner, community program supervisor. “It's not necessarily a program that’s going to teach them how to read, but the idea is that they can have a safe and non-judgemental environment with the animal and then reading to the animal will help them feel more confident as a reader and that'll carry into the classroom and also just more confident as a person too."

Toner said that in addition to providing an environment for students to work on their literacy skills without the fear of judgement, compared to reading out loud in front of the classroom, Tales for Tails provides social benefits for the animal and the child.

"From the animal's perspective, it's really nice to get to be around children in a calm environment. Some of our other school presentations, the animal might be in front of like 40 students at a time, which is great, but then that one-on-one interaction is really nice for both student and animal,” she said. “It's also really nice for kids that might not have pets at home to get that one-on-one interaction with animals too, especially if they haven't spent a lot of time around pets, they don't maybe feel as comfortable.”

Educators part of the humane society are also working on making books specific to its own work.

"Both of their animals actually came from our animal shelter so we're wanting to expand on that relationship through those books and teach them what the humane society offers and the importance of the human-animal bond," Toner said.

Books can be dropped off at either humane society centre, including Stratford Perth’s on 124 Griffith Rd.