Tifton 2021-22

Dictionaries for 3rd grade students in Tift County schools

Dictionaries / Thesaurus books were purchased from The Dictionary Project. The mission statement from the dictionary project is below. Rotarian club members coordinated with all local 3rd grade schools in November to distribute the dictionaries directly to students in the classroom. The project was completed in November.

The goal of this program is to assist all 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 to 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, so we encourage our sponsors to give dictionaries each year to children in the third grade.

This was a literacy project in Tift County. Beneficiaries were all 3rd grade students in the County. 624 dictionaries were ordered, and all were distributed to students and or teachers in the classroom. Rotarians were scheduled to go into each and every 3rd grade classroom in the Tift County school systems. Rotarians used this opportunity to directly and individually pass out a dictionary to each student. Rotarians, who spoke for 10-20 minutes in each classroom, provided a short background on Rotary and spoke with students on the importance of reading and before distributing the books. Then, Rotarians illustrated to the children how to utilize the books using examples of a word and asking all students to locate that word in the dictionary. Rotarians interacted with the students, moving around the classroom, and assisting in locating the word. The “dictionaries” also contained other information such as a thesaurus, list of presidents, and other useful information. Children were asked to identify the longest word in the dictionary and had fun guessing what that word was.

Tifton 2019-20

10+ members of the Rotary Club of Tifton participated in a Dictionary Distribution Project in November 2021,
giving out 624 dictionaries to every third grader in Tift County. Assistant District Governor Marion Curry had applied for and received approval of a District grant to purchase the dictionaries, and club publicity chair Bonnie Sayles agreed to coordinate the project. Sayles recruited members to talk to classes about Rotary Club International, literacy, and the features of the dictionary.

Initially, club members met with representatives of the Tift County Foundation for Educational Excellence and Literacy Volunteers of Tifton–Tift County on Nov. 1 to discuss the project, kicking off Family Literacy month. When the books arrived, student volunteers from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, guided by the Literacy Volunteers director, counted out the books for each of nine schools and attached labels designating them as gifts of
the Rotary Club. Liaisons with the Education Foundation arranged the days and times with the teachers and principals of each school and took pictures on distribution day.

Club members were assigned schools to visit, and the visits kicked off on Nov. 11 and continued through Nov. 19. Club members spoke individually to students in each classroom, describing the features of the dictionary, which is called a “Gazetteer“ because of its added features. One child pointed out to his classmates that the books contained American Sign Language; another exclaimed over the periodic table. A third child pointed out the longest word
and shared the definition of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, a word you say when you don‘t know what else to say. Another child was happy to see Roman numerals in the back of his book.

This dictionary, ordered from www.dictionaryproject.org, defines literacy as “the ability to listen, speak, read, write, view, represent, compute, and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function in the family, in the community, and on the job.“ Members shared that definition with the students and encouraged each student to find one new word to share with their classmates and teachers after the Thanksgiving break.

Tift County school superintendent Adam Hathaway is determined to have all third graders reading at grade level.

The Rotary Club of Tifton spent about 30 hours in November helping the community reach that goal!