Rotary putting “Words” into action

Literacy is certainly one of, if not the, most important skills picked up in school and the Derby-Shelton Rotary Club is playing a key role in helping third graders throughout Derby and Shelton pick up the necessary skills by providing them with their very own dictionary. The Club is once again participating in TheDictionaryProject whose goal, “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.”

The Club has participated in this project for many years now and Rotarians visit each of the third grades in the two towns to hand deliver dictionaries to the students and to discuss the importance of reading and the role that the dictionaries can play in helping them. This year, the Club will distribute 446 of the dictionaries specifically designed for student use to students and an additional 24 to their classroom teachers. A special thanks goes to Kim Ryan Caro who is coordinating the project once again this year.