10 new books acknowledging Aboriginal culture

Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of learning and local kids recently had the opportunity to learn and tell their own stories about Aboriginal culture, significant places and people and the importance of getting back to Country.

Students from year 3 and 6 have been working with their teachers to produce ten published books that explore Aboriginal culture – from art and dance, to Dreamtime stories, to learning about why we need to respect our ancestors. This ha been part of the Tools, Totems and Tucker Enviro-Stories program.

Borenore, Euchareena, Parkes East, Forbes and St Lawrence’s school students were lucky to have had books published through the Tools, Totems and Tucker Enviro-Stories program.

The published books have been printed and distributed to the schools involved and will be sent out to hundreds of schools in the regional area to add to their library.

Not only have the books been printed, they have also been made into flipbooks that anyone can read online. These flipbooks have been specially designed for use on classroom smartboards.

For that extra knowledge, you can download the multi-touch iBooks for iPads. These books contain additional technical information and photos to help describe some of the things that are mentioned in the stories. These books can be used in the classroom and at home to help kids learn more about farming.

Enviro-Stories is an education program that inspires local literacy by helping to connect students with their local environment (such as a farm, bushland, school, community, the list is endless) and then supporting the writing of a narrative that will engage and/or educate other students. You can read more than 250 stories that have already been written by kids, for kids on the Enviro-Stories website.

This is the sixth year that the program has been running in central west NSW. This year the Central West and Central Tablelands Local Land Services generously supported the program.