West End Rotary donates dictionaries to third-graders
Nick Farkas, a third-grade teacher at Pleasant Valley Elementary School, and third-grade students Tristany Folio, left, and Rilyn Serfass, show off their new dictionaries. The dictionaries were donated by the West End Rotary. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Third-graders at Pleasant Valley Elementary School received a gift recently that could expand their vocabulary, and maybe their futures.
The West End Rotary donated 300 dictionaries, so that every single child in the third grade can have one. They’ve been making the donation every year since 2004, said Honi Gruenberg, chair of the Dictionary Project for the West End Rotary.
“The Dictionary Project’s goal is to assist all students to become good writers, active readers and creative thinkers by providing students a gift of their own personal dictionary,” she said. “West End Rotary felt it was important to give our students a step up in their learning and to help them develop research skills while enjoying learning lots of additional information, which is included in the dictionaries.”
Pleasant Valley Elementary Assistant Principal Sabrina Albright said, “PVE is very grateful for these donations. The students are thrilled to get the dictionaries each year.”
Gruenberg said the dictionaries are made available through The Dictionary Project organization, which has a dictionary specifically designed for third-grade students called “A Student’s Dictionary.”
“The dictionary features vocabulary useful to third-grade students, as well as supplemental information including the Constitution of the U.S., the Declaration of Independence, brief biographies of all of the U.S. presidents, world maps and information about all 50 states, countries of the world and planets in our solar system, sign language, Braille, and the longest word in the English language,” Gruenberg said. “The kids especially like guessing how many letters are in the longest word.”
She wouldn’t say just exactly how many letters that is, but did say “it’s somewhere between 1,500 and a million.”
The Rotary began giving out the dictionaries 15 years ago, because their president at the time was working with Rotary Clubs throughout the country to provide dictionaries to students, Gruenberg said.
The dictionaries are made possible through money raised from the Rotary’s community events. Many members also celebrate their birthdays by donating a case of dictionaries, she said.
Albright said the dictionary donation is a great tradition.
It “provides a print resource for students to use as a reference for many of their learning needs,” she said. “Even though students have been raised with Google, it is great to teach them how to use tools like dictionaries to find the information that they need.”
The dictionaries are used in class throughout the school year.
“The dictionaries are well-loved/worn by the end of the school year,” she said. “They are extremely useful, and we hear that many of our students utilize them beyond third grade, throughout their education.”
In addition to the dictionaries, the Rotary also raises money to help keep children in the West End warm. Project Warm provides new winter coats to children in need.
Proceeds from the Rotary’s annual Designer Purse Bingo help fund Project Warm, the Dictionary Project, as well as providing funds for its essay contest, scholarships to summer Rotary camp, and more, Gruenberg said. The next Designer Purse Bingo is set for Jan. 26 at the West End Fire Hall on Route 715 in Brodheadsville.
For more information about the event or about the West End Rotary, go to www.westendrotary.org.
