Rotary donates dictionaries to students

Van Wert Rotary Club information

A dictionary is an essential tool for quality education. Children cannot do their best work without one. The goal of the Rotary Dictionary Project is to assist students in becoming good writers, active readers, creative thinkers, and resourceful learners by providing them with their own personal dictionary.

The dictionaries are a gift for each student to use at school and at home for years to come. Educators see third grade as the dividing line between learning to read and reading to learn, thus the desire of the Van Wert Rotary Club to get a personal dictionary in the hands of each third grade student.

Rotary believes that by giving dictionaries to third grade students, it will help these young citizens to achieve the most important goal of all: literacy.

The Dictionary Project is doing work in 50 states and in many places around the world with 14,893,294 having been distributed to date.

In the day of online dictionaries and smartphones, is a paper dictionary still necessary?

The answer, surprisingly, is “yes.” Approximately 77 percent of children have Internet access at home, but this does not mean that they have access on a 24-hour basis. Computers are often shared and not available at a minute’s notice. A paper dictionary can be kept in a student’s desk, a backpack, and at home and be available anytime or place.