Nebraska Reading Program Teaches Interactive Listening

May 24, 2018, 6:45 a.m. ·

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Prime Time reading class at Charles Washington Library in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Jack Williams, NET News)

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A reading program that’s been around for more than a decade in Nebraska is growing, boosted by parents and children who have seen the positive results. The program is a little different than most and focuses on critical thinking skills and reading interaction. Prime Time reading is about more than just story time.


On a Saturday morning at the Charles Washington Library in North Omaha, volunteer Janice Collins-Brooks, Ms. Janice to most of the kids sitting on the floor in front of her, settles into a role she’s had for a long time.

Collins-Brooks and her reading partner, Karen Mallory, show up here like clockwork. They read books to kids between 6-10 years old, and their parents or guardians. But that’s not where it stops. The twist here is they expect the kids and parents to be able to interact about what they’ve heard, talk about the plot and characters and use their critical thinking skills to discuss the book. There’s no passive listening.

“We’re not really teaching them how to read, but why to read and how to pay attention to the details of the story so when they’re in class and their teachers are asking them questions about a story, they’ve been through Prime Time and so they’re used to doing this,” said Erica Hamilton, Prime Time coordinator for Humanities Nebraska. “They’re used the critical thinking skills, they’re used to being able to take a text and apply it to situations or really dig into the meat of the book and talk about the issues involved in it.”

Prime Time coordinator Erika Hamilton of Humanities Nebraska (Photo by Jack Williams, NET News)

The six week program happens in the spring, summer and fall in libraries, elementary school and community centers across the state and comes with a free meal. Hamilton says reading, of course, is fine and encouraged.

“But then the big part of Prime Time, what makes it Prime Time, is the discussion that follows. We don’t want parents to sit back and just watch their kids go. We want them to be involved too,” Hamilton said. “We want them to answer questions too. And so there’s a lot of back and forth between the facilitators and the kids and the parents, answering these questions and applying the books to their lives.”

As the kids listen to a story from Ms. Janice, Edith Sherrod watches. Her three sons have gone through the program several times. Two have graduated from Prime Time. Her youngest son is still in the program.

“Everything is about reading and understanding comprehension, and I see that in their grades. And they’re always above their grade read(ing) level,” Sherrod said.

Reading at the Sherrod home has become something the whole family looks forward to, valuable interaction between kids and parents.

Edith Sherrod, Prime Time parent. (Photo by Jack Williams, NET News)

“We have the time to sit down and say okay, let’s see what we’re going to learn today. We don’t do it every day because sometimes it’s hard to do every day, but every other time,” Sherrod said. “At least twice a week. And sometimes we don’t read books, but we tell stories.”

Sherrod’s son Anthony, 14, is headed to high school later this year. He volunteers for Prime Time and still remembers the skills he learned in the program.

“We would always read the books and we’d always talk about how this affected this, what was the outcome and what was the theme of the story. That really helped me develop my reading skills later on,” he said.

It’s no secret that children learn most of their language and reading skills before third grade, something Dr. Mitzi Ritzman, an associate professor in the department of special education and communication disorders at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, studies every day. She’s observed the Prime Time program along with her students since 2007. She says parent or caretaker interaction is one of the most critical parts of the process.

Former Prime Time student and current volunteer Anthony Sherrod. (Photo by Jack Williams, NET News)

“We can look at literacy development in the same way that we look at language development,” Ritzman said. “So we know that language development starts to occur before kids actually begin talking and the child environment and caretakers really play an important role in encouraging those precursors like speech and language.”

In North Omaha, the stories and interaction have been happening for more than a decade. Erika Hamilton, with Humanities Nebraska, says the program is expanding. Along with Omaha and Lincoln, Prime Time reading also takes place in Grand Island, Norfolk, Lexington, Fremont, Millard and Bellevue. There are also bilingual programs. She says the feedback from parents has been positive.

“We have a lot of families who when they take their surveys, say they never really talked about books, they just set it aside,” Hamilton said. “But after Prime Time, their kids want them to ask questions. And so the parents are becoming more involved, not only in the reading, but in having a discussion afterward at home.”

A ten-year impact study in Louisiana, where the program started in 1991, found that students who participated in the program in their early elementary years did better than their peers on standardized exams. Prime Time is now offered in 40 states.


Editor's Note: By way of full disclosure, Humanities Nebraska provides funding to NET for humanities reporting.