DAVENPORT — On May 13 the fifth-graders at All Saints Catholic School in Davenport completed the challenges set forth for them by the Paws to Read program and Zoe, a border collie and certified therapy dog. Students were challenged to read a minimum of three books each month in order to earn class paw prints to post on a giant bone.
Each Friday, for 50 minutes, Zoe and Elise Ward of the school visited the fifth-grade classrooms. Students read with Zoe and recorded the titles of their books on slips of paper. Teachers witnessed an increase in confidence and reading skill among the students in addition to a renewed love of reading with Zoe present.
As their last paw print was obtained May 13, Zoe threw a promised pizza party for the fifth-graders for working so hard all year. All participants received certificates with the logged number of pages they read over the academic year. The top three class readers were Vy Dinh (8,820), Payton O’Neil (7,210) and Lisa Truong (3,010). The class read a total of 43,203 pages from October 2010 to April 2011.
