At yesterday's Chinook School Board meeting, the first literacy status report of the 2016-2017 school year was presented.

A new program is being further introduced into the division for grades 1-3 called 'Saskatchewan Reads', which looks to be fully implemented by the end of this school year.

The program has the ability to help students and administrators alike, as seen in the in-depth document here.

Kathy Robson, a curriculum coordinator with the School Division, explains the saying "practice makes perfect" certainly comes into play when looking to improve reading skills.

"We know that reading is like anything - the more you practice, the better you become. Reading independently is one of the things that impacts their reading levels the most.

By focusing on independent reading and letting students choose what they want to read, that motivation will increase and the reading levels will improve as well," she said.

Robson says 'Sask Reads', as well as comfortable reading-specific environments, are gaining traction in the division.

"I feel like there's a real momentum within our division around reading right now. We see when we go out into the schools that there are lots of comfortable areas where kids can read.

I think our administrators have done a really great job of trying to look at their schools and figure out 'How do we make this a reading-focused school?'.

When you walk into the buildings, you can see that there is a change in our schools - momentum is definitely building," she said.

The curriculum coordinator says the ability for schools to have comfortable environments for reading has helped and looks to continue to help reading scores improve.