3rd Grade Students Enjoy Gift of Dictionaries, Rotarians Enjoy Presenting!
The two Rotary clubs of Detroit Lakes presented Dictionaries to over four hundred 3rd Grade Students in DL, Audubon-Lake Park, Waubun-Ogema-White Earth, & Frazee-Vergas in early November. This program has been one of the local Rotary service projects for the past 8 years.
The Dictionaries Project goal is to assist all students in becoming good writers, active readers, creative thinkers, and resourceful learners. The Project helps the kids develop a passion for learning with a book of their very own. Dictionaries provided to the 3rd grade area students are so much more than a place to look up words or learn how to spell a word. They contain information on all of the US Presidents, the Fifty States, Planets and Solar System, sign language and so much more.
The local efforts are being spearheaded by... The local efforts are being spearheaded by Mike Stearns (DL Breakfast Rotary) and Jessica Burhans (DL Noon Rotary), with assistance from a large number of additional members of each club. The annual project is made possible with the support and involvement of 22 teachers from 7 different grade schools, in four school districts.
The young students are so excited when they receive them. Often times we hear “Do I really get to take this home”. “My brother or sister have one and now I get one of my very own”
“This is the best gift ever. I can’t wait to use it” and “Do I have to wait until the end of the year to take it home?”
The idea for the Dictionary Project began in 1992 when Annie Plummer of Savannah, Georgia, gave 50 dictionaries to children who attended a school close to her home. Each year she continued to give this gift, raising money to help give more and more books so that in her lifetime she raised enough money to buy 17,000 dictionaries for children in Savannah. This was adopted and expanded by others to additional cities and other states. Since 1995, over 31 million children have received dictionaries in communities throughout all 50 US states.
The program is implemented in the third grade each year, since this is the age at which dictionary skills are usually taught. Educators describe third grade as the time when a student transitions from learning to read, to reading to learn.
At one time Rotary discussed discontinuing this program because of the growth of using the internet and other technology, but I truly think kids are so excited about a book, because their world revolves around technology”, commented Jessica. Many of the teachers reinforced the need for the books, as one indicated: “the kids really love them, and they are very useful tools for the classroom”. It turns out that there are also a number of students that do not have as frequent access to internet as do others, so a physical book can be very important to them.
As it turns out, the Rotarians are just as excited about handing out the dictionaries, as the kids are with receiving them. As one Rotary member commented, “seeing the smiles on the kids’ faces when they realize the book is their very own, makes it a very rewarding experience for us all”.