Nebraska Educational Telecommunications Bridges Language Barriers for Elementary School English Language Learners

Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET) paired with Lakeview Elementary in Lincoln, Nebraska to help improve students’ reading abilities as English Language Learners (ELL) while still embracing their native languages through a creative reading and translation project. The project was funded by a Ready To Learn grant and combined the efforts of NET, local preschool teachers, and students and teachers from Lakeview.

More than 45 percent of Lakeview students are ELL, so many of them face different challenges when learning to speak and read in English. This project gave students the opportunity to translate a series of books into five languages that are spoken at the school including Kurdish, Arabic, Vietnamese, Spanish and Albanian. The translated books were distributed during the course of the past school year along with original English versions so each student could experience the story in English and their family’s first language.

In addition to this, second grade reading buddies at Lakeview were paired with preschool ELL students to help them with additional reading practice. Brittany Shackleton, preschool family educator at Lakeview, said, “My students were noticing how pictures match words and developing early reading skills and it increased their love of reading. They wanted to read.”

The teachers’ efforts at Lakeview, along with home visits, strengthened the connection between the school, its students and their families while also promoting reading at home. NET developed small group lessons to incorporate into the reading project and introduced some of PBS KIDS' apps to coordinate with lessons in the books. The station is proud of their success with Lakeview students and hopes to continue working with them while sharing the project with other schools across the state.