1000 books give literacy boost

The Dandenong West Primary School shelves have $16,000 in new books.
The Dymocks Children’s Charities (DCC) Library Regeneration program and the Andrews Foundation delivered the nearly 1000 picture stories and novels on Friday 1 September.
Ninety-six per cent of the 306 Dandenong West students have a language background other than English.
The program aims to help improve the students’ literacy skills, promote daily reading for pleasure and encourage all the students to participate in the Premier’s Reading Challenge next year.
Teacher Kathy Watson said the donation would provide a greater diversity of texts for students.
“We’ve purchased multiple copies of the same title so it’s going to mean that students can have greater access to book club books,” she said.
But it’s not just students who’ll benefit. Ms Watson said parents and preschool-aged children would also have access to the books.
“We are hopeful that in the future we will have a new library that will accommodate these books so that our whole school community can access this generous donation,” she said.
“When I applied for this grant we said ‘where are we going to put these books’ and my reply was ‘that’s a problem we want to have’.”