Reading plays a crucial role in a child's development in all areas, so it is important to support children in learning to read as much as possible. This is especially important for children who struggle with reading for any reason. Research shows a strong link between reading motivation and reading success. In the treatment of reading difficulties, it is important to find new innovative ways of motivation. One of these is animal-assisted interventions, which have been shown in previous studies to have a positive effect on learning to read. In Slovenia, dogs are most commonly used in reading programmes, while in other parts of the world other animals already play a role. One of these programmes is an American programme that helps readers with horses. In our empirical work, we also decided to use horses.
In the empirical part of our work, we developed the "Bralček Kopitljavček" reading training programme, which is based on the American reading programme by M. Pickel. We used this training to investigate its effectiveness in improving students' reading motivation and reading skills. The study involved one male and one female pupil from the second grade of primary school who had some difficulties with reading. Our reading training took place over two months, from the beginning of May to the end of June 2023. The training took place twice a week, with each session lasting 60 minutes. One session per week included activities with horses, while the other focussed on reading training at school. The reading training consisted of 19 sessions. Three of these were dedicated to diagnostic tests, the rest to the actual training. Through the activities with the horses, the pupils practised decoding, expanded their vocabulary, improved their reading fluency and reading comprehension. We evaluated the effectiveness of the programme by comparing the results of the diagnostic tests and examining the effects of the reading training on the pupils’ reading motivation and reading skills. The tests were conducted on the first day of the training, on the last day of the training and two months after the end of the training.
The research results showed an increase in reading motivation and an improvement in phonological awareness, decoding, reading fluency and reading comprehension. Each of the pupils showed more significant progress in a different area, reflecting the fact that the female pupils had better reading skills at the beginning of the training. Greater progress was made in the areas that were given more time during the training. The female pupil showed the most significant progress in reading comprehension and reading expression, while the male pupil showed significant progress in decoding. The analysis of the results confirmed the effectiveness of the programme and also showed that progress increased two months after completion of the training. A contribution of the research is also a designed and tested reading programme with the help of horses for Slovenian-speaking readers.
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