Little Readers in the Prairies

Listen to this story:

Large black panels stand independently, dividing the room into smaller spaces. The murmur of voices can be heard from behind the artificial walls. Tied to each panel is a piece of green paper with a list of names identifying the people behind them — Emerson and Téa. The other set of names, Mary and Neo, are accompanied by paw prints. A peek over a panel reveals a child with an open book, and a dog with open ears.  

Emerson and Téa are students who visit the Winnipeg Humane Society weekly. They’re here for See Spot Read, a program where children read to dogs to gain confidence and improve their literacy skills. See Spot Read is one of many programs working to improve Manitoban children’s literacy skills, which have been getting worse year after year.   

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened this problem, as Manitoban children’s literacy began declining faster than it had before the pandemic. In 2016, 18 per cent of grade eight students in Manitoba failed to read at the standard reading level. This number increased to 19.7 per cent in 2019 and further to 22.1 per cent in 2023, according to the Pan Canadian Assessment of Reading, Mathematics, and Science. This number is four per cent higher than the national average of 18.1 per cent.   

From 2018 to 2024, I worked in Winnipeg schools. I spent the first four years assisting teachers before earning my teaching degree in 2022. During that time, I often heard from more experienced teachers about the increased challenges that came during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Students weren’t receiving the same educational or social opportunities. Both soft and hard skills took a hit.   

Since the COVID-19 protective measures lifted, many things have seemingly returned to normal, but literacy levels have not. Throughout the pandemic, many young children spent more time on screens daily, which cut into reading time and limited passive literacy building. When children begin going to school, it can be difficult for struggling readers to catch up to their peers once they fall behind. With anxieties around reading increasing and literacy skills declining, the issue remains: What is Manitoba doing to improve children’s literacy?  

Combatting Screens   

Throughout the pandemic, people spent more time in front of screens. (The Last Dance was fun, but did we all seriously watch Tiger King?) 

Two hours is the recommended daily screen time limit for children. Statistics Canada reported only 29.1 per cent of children in Canada stayed under that amount of time in 2021 — a decrease of 10 per cent since 2018.   

While I was teaching, screen time for students increased with access to technology. For instance, I’ve had middle school and high school students choose to read on their phones over a physical book. Some of these students were reading books on their devices, while others scrambled to switch apps when I walked within ten feet. It wasn’t subtle.  

Having students use a personal device for reading was a way to limit the supplies students touched and shared during the pandemic. Phones made it possible to do research for an assignment without using a laptop that other students touched. During independent reading time, I always counted students reading on a screen as a win. At least they were reading.  

However, what a student gains from reading information on a page compared to a screen varies a notable amount. The Public Library of Science did a study which examined middle-school-aged children’s brains to measure differences in brain activity when knowing or not knowing the answer to a prompted question. They found that even when questions were on similar subjects and had similar sentence structure, children consistently found a deeper connection to information read from a printed source.  

This isn’t to say we should only have children read from textbooks and destroy the boreal forest making copies, but students should have a healthy relationship with reading from a physical source.  

Distractions from personal devices also hinder literacy from a young age. Many children between the ages of 18-36 months spend more time on screens than is recommended. This results in children missing opportunities to passively practice speaking and hearing new words to add to their vocabulary. On a daily average, children who are above the recommended screen time and aged 18-36 months are speaking 843 fewer words out loud and taking 194 less turns in conversations with others, according to a study published in the Journal of American Medical Association Pediatrics.  

Being engaged in conversation is critical in developing literacy and vocabulary. When teaching through the pandemic, I often heard experienced teachers say they can tell which kids are missing social interactions at a young age through the way they speak. These literacy and speaking skills can be hard to recover once a child has fallen behind.  

Children who are being spoken to, not just overhearing words, during their first two years of life are developing better vocabulary skills, according to Psychological Science. These children will have an easier time learning new words in the future through contexts such as reading.  

With the effect screen distractions have had on children’s literacy, it’s easy to see how it led to a school cell phone ban in Manitoba last fall. While we can’t redo a child’s past, some Manitoban programs, like See Spot Read and United for Literacy’s Kent Road School program, are helping students improve literacy and social skills in a safe setting to get their literacy back on track.  

Kent Road School’s After School program  

Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur are three of the Pokémon names engaging students in United for Literacy’s program at Kent Road School. Students often ask, “Are we doing Pokémon today?” as Pokémon trading cards are used as a tool in the program’s latest literacy activity.  

The program is run by United for Literacy, a charity organizing literacy programs across Canada. Hannah Newbury created the Pokémon card literacy activity as the Elmwood Intern for United for Literacy. In her role, she collaborates with resource teachers to provide extra one-on-one reading assistance for students while also planning and running the school’s literacy programs.  

“I was really happy with that lesson,” said Newbury. “They’re engaged with most activities, but I hadn’t really seen kind of that level of excitement from the kids before.”  

The activity begins with the elementary-aged students randomly picking a Pokémon card from her hand. The students then write down information about the Pokémon’s name, type, and statistics in their journal and answer questions about the cards. At the end of the lesson, they get to keep the card for themselves.  

Using the students’ interests as motivators to read is a common theme throughout the program. Each session ends with organizers spreading books across a table. After the students are done with the final activity for the day, they can take a book home.   

“We give them the books they’re interested in, and they get to pick. Even if it might not be exactly at their reading level, if they want to read it, that’s a better motivator than something that will be easy to read,” said Newbury.  

United for Literacy’s Kent Road School program runs out of the school’s art room once a week. Teachers suggest students to the program based on their literacy skills. The after-school program starts with a snack before getting to the literacy activities.  

“We always start our programming with snacks for the kids because it’s hard to learn on an empty stomach,” said Sandra Ross, the United for Literacy Community Coordinator for Manitoba.  

While eating their snacks, the students will often engage in a game to improve their literacy. For instance, one of the program’s volunteers will stand at the front of the room and play a game of hangman, resulting in words like “Spider-Man,” “Flash,” and “Batman” spreading across flipchart paper at the front of the room.  

After the warm-up, the children engage in more reading and writing activities with the staff and volunteers.   

Ross identifies social skills as a barrier to reading — one that she relates to the pandemic.  

“It takes a little bit for them to find that it’s a safe environment, a safe space to feel that they’re confident and actually letting their guard down and learning,” said Ross.  

Through the literacy program, the students are also developing social skills.  

The grade four and five students in the Kent Road School program would have been around grade one during the remote learning periods in 2020 and 2021. 

“They’re getting to meet people that aren’t necessarily in their class,” said Michelle Sacco, principal of Kent Road School. “It helps when they’re going to grade seven because they’re with so many different people.”  

Students not having a chance to develop sight words is another barrier Ross sees in developing literacy skills.  

Sight words are words your brain recognizes right away and doesn’t have to decode due to repeated exposure. Mastering sight words helps students become stronger and more efficient readers. Students who were learning online didn’t have as many new experiences and exposure to sight words outside their home.  

Along with the after-school program, Newbury hosts a morning program with children and their parents in the area. The program focuses on the children’s literary, numeracy, motor, and social skills to help prepare them for kindergarten. Newbury also provides families with activities to continue working on these skills at home.  

The Kent Road School program began in 2015 and receives funding from the Manitoban Government to run the program in the Elmwood area.   

“Elmwood is kind of a have-not community, there’s no resources for the Elmwood community for parents,” says Sacco. “If they want to play soccer, they got to go to Bonivital [a soccer club that plays out of St.Vital], if they want anything they have to go outside here.”  

The scheduled extra help gives students assistance in a way that works for them. While students may ask questions in class, it’s common for the students who need the most help to ask for it least.  

“[We] had a kid that was reading at about a grade one level,” said Sacco. “They got some support at school and then they were going to the literacy program. By the end of the year, with all the interventions that they were having, they were reading at about a grade five level. They had jumped the four years in one year. That’s exponential growth.”  

Reading to Others and Traditional Practice  

The concept of reading to someone else to improve reading skills is common practice in early years education. As a substitute teacher, I’ve had classes with younger students pair up with older students, so the older students could help the younger ones read.  

Once, when I was a subbing in a grade eight class, the students were tasked with helping the kindergarten students read. I quickly realized my job was walking around and making sure the older kids were listening instead of scrolling on their phones.   

After I told one student to put their cell phone away, I glanced back to see if they were listening, otherwise I’d need to take their phone away for the remainder of class. They met my eyes from across the room, extended their index finger, middle finger, and thumb to create a gun shape, pointed it in their mouth and pulled the trigger.   

Rude.  

Children reading to an older student or adult may not be the best strategy for struggling readers literacy, as they may make the child feel insecure by ignoring, interrupting, or correcting the child while reading. These interruptions can hinder a child’s confidence while developing an association of reading with making mistakes. Therefore, some programs choose to have students read to an animal as opposed to a person.  

See Spot Read

The Winnipeg Humane Society’s See Spot Read program offers students the opportunity to read to volunteers and their therapy dogs to gain confidence in their literacy skills.  

“What we want to do is give students a chance to gain confidence with their reading without feeling like they’re being looked over, because there’s always a lot of pressure,” said Naomi Nykyforuk, Education Programs Lead at the Winnipeg Humane Society.  

The free program runs for ten-week sessions. The students in the program are typically in grades two to six and go through pre-assessments and post assessments with their teachers to measure their growth in the program.  

See Spot Read sessions involve six students, three therapy dogs, and one “den leader” who directs a literacy activity. For half an hour, three of the students are paired with the dogs while the other three students do the literacy activity.  

Den activities include games and crafts that improve literacy. They are developed alongside Sylvan Learning — a tutoring company with locations around the world — to help achieve learning outcomes set by the program.   

As for reading to a dog, time spent with a dog was more effective at reducing anxiety than a comfort object like a fidget toy or personal item. Stressful tasks can be helped with the presence of a dog — as shown in a study by the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. It claims a child who has an unstructured interaction with a dog after a stressful task will show reduced anxiety and more affection than if they didn’t.   

Nykyforuk said some of the students come in to the See Spot Read program afraid of dogs. Through the program, students can grow confidence, face fears, and/or improve literacy, all of which the program sees as a success.  

A motivating part of the program for students is helping the therapy dogs develop their vocabulary —  just like the students are.  

“These dogs can learn up to 150 words,” said Nykyforuk. “They think that they’re helping these dogs and that helps boost their confidence and they get [to] practice reading aloud, which improves their literacy. They feel like [they’re] not being judged because it’s just a dog.”   

See Spot Read runs its sessions out of the Winnipeg Humane Society’s headquarters and through local libraries like the West Kildonan Library and Sir William Stephenson Library. The partnership gives students a place to meet with the dogs close to their schools.   

Before entering the program, dogs are assessed on their comfort around children.  

“In order to be a part of our therapy dog program, we assess if they can handle people touching them, if they can handle young kids pulling on them, wheelchairs, or things like that,” said Nykyforuk.    

In an article for A Reading Teacher, teachers and students filled out a survey after attending a program where the students read to dogs. Students revealed a rise in reading confidence through the survey. Their teachers also noticed increased confidence and more willingness to read.  

“We like to say that they’re all good listeners,” said Nykyforuk. “We like to give as many dogs the experience to do it as possible, and they all are really great.”  

For Nykyforuk, the program is an opportunity to teach. She originally attended the University of Winnipeg to become a teacher, but found other opportunities to pursue her passion for education.  

“It’s like I get to teach, but I get to have a different class every time,” said Nykyforuk. “I really like it here. I like the animals, I like teaching, and I like being able to customize all my own programs.”  

The Future of Reading in Manitoba  

For students across Manitoba, literacy skills are decreasing more drastically than before the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing gaps in literacy education that were already present. Before the pandemic, Manitoban students were still testing below the average of other students across Canada, going back to the first Pan-Canadian Assessment Program’s country-wide assessment in 2007.  

The pandemic may have been a way for Manitoban literacy programs to identify these gaps and barriers and make changes and developments to programming.  

COVID-19 will not be the last barrier for children in Manitoba developing literacy, as the world becomes more digital and screens become more tempting. As Emerson and Téa continue reading to their canine companions, they’re receiving the benefits of creative approaches, fresh philosophies, and a better understanding of how to improve literacy in Manitoba.