Auburn School District No. 408
915 4th Street Northeast, Auburn, WA  98002

1/28/08

NEWS RELEASE
Lea Hill Elementary School to Host Popular "Reading with Rover" Event

On Monday, March 3, to celebrate Read Across America Day, primary students in Regina Butler’s LAP program will be reading aloud to a furry canine, named Ms. Brenda.

From 8:40 a.m. to 11:15 a.m., Ms. Brenda and her guide, Mary Rutherford, will be hosting a “Reading with Rover” event at Lea Hill.

Students in each period will have the opportunity to circle around Ms. Brenda and read to her in unison from their selected book. Ms. Brenda, a Labrador Retriever, will sit in the middle of the circle and attentively listens to all the boys and girls.

Reading with Rover is a community-based literacy program volunteering in the schools, bookstores and libraries of the Puget Sound area of Washington State. In the “Rover” program, children with reading difficulties actually read stories to a dog and the dog loves to listen! A child that may be hesitant to read aloud to his peers is typically less stressed when reading to a dog, and the dog never judges the child’s reading ability. According to Ms. Butler, “This event will be one more dimension of reading kids can get excited about. I want to find things that will get kids excited about coming to school.”

Kids already have Labrador Retriever bookmarks to use in their books, which serve as a reminder to practice their reading for their upcoming reading to Ms. Brenda.

Ms. Butler thanks Lea Hill’s custodian, Angi Jefferies, for telling her about Reading with Rover. “When I found out about the program last summer, I immediately began making calls and e-mailing people to get Rover lined up in our school,” remarks Ms. Butler, “and now it is finally happening!”

For more information, contact Regina Butler, Lea Hill Elementary School LAP teacher, at (253) 931-4982.