Dog ears okay in Bulldogs literacy program

SCHOOL pupils received an insight into the life of elite footballers when they met with Western Bulldogs players this week.

Children from eight of the city’s primary schools met AFLW footballers Rylie Wilcox and Sarah Hartwig on Monday 2 March at the Ballarat Library as part of the club’s Bulldogs Read program.

About 150 students are taking part in the program, which encourages reading and writing with young people.

Wilcox said she would have enjoyed being part of Bulldogs Read if it had been available to her.

“It’s pretty cool how we get to come up here and just see all the kids,” she said.

Hartwig added: “It’s such an interesting and exciting thing for a kid to do. I would have loved something like that when I was younger.”

Campbell Waring, the Western Bulldogs’ Ballarat engagement manager, said having the footballers attend the program promoted literacy.

“It’s great to have those role models who can pass on those positive messages about reading and writing,” he said. “But also, hopefully, for other questions that they ask them here today, they can just work out that they’re normal people, but they just play really good footy.”

He said it was a unique program now in its 11th year that the Bulldogs only offered in Ballarat.

Pupils wrote a number of book reviews as part of developing their reading and writing.

“So last year we had a record of 453 book reviews for the 150 students,” Mr Waring said.

“It’s a bit harder to actually quantify, but we measure some of their book reviews at the start of the year and the words that they’ve used and how long they are compared to the end of the year.

“You see the expressive words and things like that have changed. So we really see some great improvement and great development with the students in their reading and writing and they’re learning all the time throughout the year.”