PAFE's puppies encourage reading

This year, one of the Panhandle Alliance for Education’s increasingly popular initiatives, the beloved Ready to Read program, delivered 236 puppies to delighted first graders.

PAFE’s early childhood literacy incentive program provides each first grader in the Lake Pend Oreille School District with a plush puppy as a reading companion.

And kids love them! Plus, prizes are awarded as they read books to their buddies.

“Students love reading to their puppies because they provide an interested listener for them to read aloud as they are practicing new phonics and decoding strategies,” said Johanna Soderberg, first grade teacher at Northside Elementary School.

Adoption day looks very different from school to school but they all share one thing. Handing out puppies is a thrilling moment for our youngest readers — eager, upturned grinning faces, outstretched hands, lavish hugs, and no shortage of smiles.

“We love this program because it reaches every first grader in the district and since it has been going so long, even our junior and senior high students remember with fondness their puppies from first grade,” said Heather Lowman, PAFE’s program director.

Evidence of success is hard to deny, Lowman said. “Anecdotally, teachers and parents were telling us that their students were much more excited to read than ever before. But, the IRI results were also showing amazing growth with our first graders as well.”

One of Soderberg’s first graders said, "It makes you want to be more active with reading."

Ready to Read got its start in 2012, when Carolyn Whalen, a true visionary, wrote a teacher grant called “Learning with Lucky” for her first graders at Northside Elementary School. The highly successful program was expanded four years later to the entire district.

In 2022, PAFE chose to adopt Learning with Lucky as an annually funded program. That same year, the Coeur d’Alene-based non-profit Learning with Lucky, which provided all the materials, closed its doors, so PAFE began sourcing its own materials, rebranding it as Ready to Read.

Due to its unique incentive structure, the program’s biggest reading benefit is to student growth, but PAFE measures success in other ways: building connections and relationships within the community.

“We love the connection we build with the teachers. And getting to know each school and first grade teacher throughout the district has helped PAFE be a better advocate, cheerleader and supporter,” Lowman said.

“This program asks the teachers to do extra work to implement and maintain it, but all the teachers I have talked to say it's worth it,” she said.

The evidence is clear. The Idaho Reading Indicator test scores of LPOSD first graders are consistently higher than the state of Idaho average.

    Hope Elementary first grader Sarah Service celebrates during puppy adoption day with Wampy, the Clark Fork Jr/Sr High School mascot.