'Running and Reading Program' is in Schools Across Canada

Posted by Susanna McLeod Feb 16, 2009

Anything that encourages kids to read is a good thing, and a program that encourages exercise and then puts a good book in their hands is bound to be successful. The Running and Reading program is now operating in schools across Canada, even in our local area. Aimed at "economically challenged" kids whose schools have been forced to cut back on gym classes, arts and reading classes, the program operates as an after-school series.

The Running and Reading program is "...taking children on an 'adventure' that improves their physical, mental, emotional and social health, and increases their love of reading, thereby positively impacting their literacy skill level." The local news featured a neighbourhood school with kids running every direction in the gym, laughing and getting good exercise. The next segment showed the boys and girls reading and taking delight in the words, enjoying and absorbing the stories. There wasn't an unhappy face in the crowd, only smiles and giggles, and a true interest in the books. It looks like such fun and is bound to have a more positive, lasting impression of the joys of reading than the mesmerizing reading of texts, line by dire line, that bored kids to death in other eras.

Books are a fascinating link to our past, the direct observation of the present, and an imaginative link to the future. No matter what technology brings, reading, holding a book in one's hands, and absorbing the messages word by word, is a wonderful experience in which everyone should be able to indulge .