Lewisville Morning Rotary gives Dictionaries to 3rd Graders at 10 LISD Elementary Schools

This year we are expanding our LMRC dictionary distribution to 3^rd graders in the Lewisville Independent School District (LISD) from four to ten schools. We will be placing approximately 900 dictionaries in the hands of 3^rd graders at Central, Independence, Lakeland, Vickery, B. B. Owen, College Street, Creekside, Degan, Ethridge, and Garden Ridge Elementary Schools. In addition we will be giving the third grade teachers and libraries at each school copies of both the English and English/Spanish dictionaries if they have not previously received them.

The “dictionaries for 3rd graders” has been a project of our club and other clubs in the district and nation for a number of years. As indicated earlier we are expanding our distribution to include 10 elementary schools in the LISD this year from four last year. We give out both English (for English only students) and English/Spanish (for ESL students). The dictionaries become the property of the students and they are encouraged to take them home to share with their families. To fund this project, we applied for and relieved a district matching grant which we matched Rotary International Funds with club funds earned through fund raising activities such as the Backstage BBQ Bash to enable us to purchase the required number of books to supply the ten schools from The Dictionary Project, a national organization whose sole purpose is to put dictionaries into the hands of 3^rd graders around the country.

We hand the dictionaries to the students individually and have them put their names in them immediately so they will know they are theirs. During the presentation we give some info about Rotary (usually having them look up the word in their new dictionary) and also have the students look at several interesting things (e.g. the longest word in the English language).