Once again, Rotary passes out dictionaries

Alison Bryant and the members of the Irvington Rotary Club spent Valentine’s Day working on their Dictionary Project in the Irvington Public Schools.
Specifically, Bryant and her fellow Rotarians, including Cassandra Graham, Andre Robinson and Gail Beckford, visited Madison Avenue, University, Florence Avenue and Chancellor Avenue elementary schools on Monday. On Tuesday Bryant and another group of Rotarians, including Robinson, Merrick Harris, Emmanuel Jean-Noel, and Bridget Turner, visited Grove Street, Berkeley Terrace, Thurgood Marshall, and Mount Vernon elementary schools to help further the Dictionary Project.
The project seeks to promote reading, writing, and creative thinking. The reason behind the school visits this week, Bryant said, was to give each third-grade student enrolled in the township’s public school system their own dictionary.
“Educators have determined that third grade is the ‘dividing line between learning to read and reading to learn,’ ” said Bryant who is the Irvington club’s president-elect. “That is why the Rotary Club of Irvington has chosen to give the gift of words and their meaning to approximately 600 third graders.”
Bryant said the visits involved members of the Rotary Club of Irvington along with designated school representatives who went to each of the eight elementary schools in town with third-grade student populations to present the dictionaries to them on Monday and Tuesday. The visits took place between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.