animal assisted therapy

I’m excited to bring the Animals, Books and Children (ABC) program to our resource program this year! Currently, I am piloting the program with 1st grade students and hope to expand to additional grade levels in the future.

The ABC program will utilize Gabriel’s Angels therapy teams to help children improve their reading abilities, while also developing the core social behaviors of attachment, confidence, empathy and respect. The designated ABC therapy team (one handler & dog) read with the same three (3) children each week so that a trusting, secure relationship evolves. During a 20-minute time session, the individual child will have time to feel comfortable, work directly on reading skills, and conclude by engaging in an emotional and/or behavior development activity. A celebration ceremony will conclude each semester program duration.

This program takes place once a week in the resource room during the students’ regularly scheduled time. This is something that the students really look forward to and enjoy! Students rotate through 20 minute centers for differentiated, individualized instruction targeting their IEP goals. The 3 centers include:

1. Fluency– Students will work the dog therapy team to practice rereading previously read books to build fluency. When finished reading the book, the students will practice their sight words in a variety of hands-on activities. Each book and sight word list is customized based on student data. Students love the hands-on sight word activities from our Sight Word Intervention Bundle.

2. Phonics – Students will work with me to practice phonics skills as part of the Wilson Language System. This 1:1 time is a perfect time for progress monitoring, addressing learning gaps, and reteaching skills that the students may have struggled with throughout the week. To supplement Wilson, I use activities from our Reading Intervention Essentials Bundle.

3. Computers – Students will work on a Chromebook to review basic literacy skills or practice keyboarding skills. Some of our favorite websites include Moby Max, Starfall, Typing Club and Interactive Sites for Education.

I would love to hear how others have used animal assisted therapy in the classroom as well! Please comment below.

For more information about Gabriel’s Angels, check out their website here.

Animal characters are present in children’s lives from the very beginning on toys, books, and cartoons. Children soon learn to associate animals with comfort, play, and safety. When animals are personified, children readily understand and apply the lessons and messages from the animals. Our extensive research in animal assisted therapy along with our classroom experiences were the inspiration to creating our magical world of Astute Hoot filled with endearing animal characters to help children learn critical reading, writing and math characters.

At the start of each school year, I dress up as Hazel Hoot and read our introductory books to our students: Hazel Meets the Reading Strategy Friends, Hazel Meets the Math Strategy Friends, Hazel Meets the Writing Strategy Friends. Students are instantly hooked and can’t wait to meet each strategy animal in upcoming lessons. They get really into the read aloud and ask me questions about my roost and my animal friends such as “Who is your favorite animal friend?”, “How far did you fly from your roost?” and “Can you take letters from our class to the forest to give to the animals?”.

My students’ favorite activities are using Sally Sounding-Out Snake and Charlie Chunking Chipmunk during our word study. Using these tools not only add much needed visual support, but also dramatically increase motivation and engagement. This is so important when using systematic phonics intervention programs as they can easily become monotonous.

Just recently I was doing a fact assessment. I always remind students to double-check their answers, but they rarely do. I got out my Fiona Fact Fluency Fox puppet and had Fiona remind the kids about double-checking and what do you know, they all double-checked their answers. They listen to Fiona’s reminders more readily than mine!

As you can see, our strategy animals anchor the classroom. Our students LOVE meeting each new character and consistently use their strategies in whole group, small group and even independent work! Many parents even report learning about the strategy animals from their children at home too!

Hazel's Reading Roost_rs

Problem-Solving Pond_rs

Meet all of our strategy animals here! Bring the magical world of Astute Hoot to your classroom too by downloading our comprehensive strategy units from our TPT store or directly from our website: Reading, Math, Writing.
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