By Mary-Justine Lanyon
Dictionary: a book or electronic resource that lists the words of a language (typically in alphabetical order) and gives their meaning, often also providing information about pronunciation, origin and usage.
Third-graders across the mountain will have richer vocabularies, thanks to the local Rotary clubs and Soroptimist International of Rim of the World. Members of these service clubs recently distributed dictionaries to the students in the mountain’s three elementary schools.
While distributing them, the clubs’ members asked the students to write their names inside the books – which are a gift and theirs to keep. That news astonished many of the children.
Some teachers ask the students to keep the books in school for the time being so they can use them in their in-class writing. Others allowed the students to immediately take the books home, where they will be useful as many students do not have computers at home.
The adults also had the children look up words, with the first to find the word enthusiastically calling out the page on which it was found. That student then read the definition of the word.
The students were excited to find an American sign language page in the back of the book, as well as the Braille alphabet.
Rotarian Stanley Oswalt passed out thesauruses to the fifth-graders.
The third-graders were not the only lucky recipients of a gift. The fifth-graders received a thesaurus. Many of them knew the difference between a dictionary and a thesaurus.
They also looked up words in their new books and read out the synonyms and antonyms (and many knew those words and what they mean).
One teacher noted she had created a worksheet for her students, which will help them better understand how to use the thesaurus.
“I truly appreciate the support and guidance that the Rotary Club provides for the students and staff of VOE,” Bethany Negersmith, principal of Valley of Enchantment Elementary School said following the distribution.
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