BURY'S bid to involve parents and even grandparents in a new storybook scheme to improve children's reading is no fairytale.

A happy ending now looks certain as a result of the Council's English LanguageTeaching Service's successful bid for extra funding to get the scheme up and running.

Thanks to a new partnership with Broad Oak

High and Derby High Schools in Bury, the ELTS has received around £6,000 through the National Year of Reading organisation.

Bury education chairman Cllr Andrea Hughes said: "Our scheme centres around involving parents and grandparents in the development of their children's reading skills in both English and their first language.

Activity

For a large number of pupils at both schools that is Punjabi or Urdu and we will be working with the English

departments to help promote reading in the home as a family activity.

"More importantly though we will also be actively involved in providing culturally appropriate materials which will be developed not just by the children but also their families."

Group of pupils at both schools will interview their family members and record their own stories. These will then be written down to be turned into children's tales appropriate for primary school age pupils.

Broad Oak and Derby High will produce up to 20 different stories each and these will then be translated into the various community languages and will be used in local primary schools.

The intention is to print up to 600 copies of the books.

Head of Bury ELTS, Mr Pinaki Ghoshal, said: "This project is a wonderful opportunity for Bury. Pupils at two of our high schools will have the chance to produce real books.

Parents and grandparents will get to see the stories about their life experiences turned into fiction and in turn younger children around the borough will have the opportunity to use

dual language books.

"In fact, one of the reasons for putting this project

together is because of the lack of such dual language books."

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