This study explored the use of animal-assisted therapy with students identified with a learning disability and limited reading success. Initially, reading progress was defined as the participants' comprehension rate obtained from an oral Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) passage. The nature of the Informal Reading Inventory requires the introduction of more difficult reading passages as the student's comprehension rate increases, potentially masking the overall effect of the intervention. Due to this factor and erratic student performance, which is a common characteristic of students with learning disabilities, obtaining consistent comprehension rates was difficult. Therefore, progress was defined only as total amount of time the student was engaged in reading under each condition. A reversal replication, single case design was implemented to determine the effects of reading to the therapy dog on the students' reading progress as measured by total amount of time read. The analysis indicated a statistically significant increase in the total amount of reading time as determined by the participants in the presence of the therapy dog. Positive student feedback about their experience reading with the therapy dog supported the effect of the intervention on reading progress.

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Reading is a fundamental skill in our modern society; being able to read with comprehension and fluency is an important skill in all core academic subjects. Reading teachers are charged with the task to analyze student data in order to drive their instructional decisions. Informal Reading Inventories (IRIs) are one type of an informal reading assessment that teachers can use in the classroom to learn about student reading behaviors and drive instruction. Informal Reading Inventories assess fluency and comprehension. Research suggests that fluency and comprehension have a reciprocal relationship; meaning, if you improve one skill, you improve the other skill simultaneously (DeVries, 2011). This study explored how pre-service teachers, college students in an education program, and in-service teachers, veteran teachers, analyzed data from various IRIs. This study also explored how three separate IRIs, the Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI), the Basic Reading Inventory (BRI), and the Analytical Reading Inventory (ARI), compared to one another. There were four participants in this study: two undergraduate students in an elementary education program reading class and two veteran classroom teachers. This study found that the grade level readability of the passages are inconsistent with the reading level they claim to be. An inconsistency like this is something to note as many teachers only use these resources on which they were trained during their college education. This study also found that the length of the IRI passages had an effect on the student’s words correct per minute (WCPM); the longer the passage, the lower the WCPM. This is probably due to the fact that students need more time to process a passage for the sake of comprehension.