Rotary dictionary project promotes literacy locally

As part of their ongoing commitment to help students become good writers, active readers and creative thinkers, the Peninsula Rotary club gives each fourth grade student at our local schools a personal dictionary every year. Interaction with the children is always fun and you just don’t know what sort of questions they will come up with. The dictionaries are a gift to each student to use at school and at home for years to come.
The dictionaries are child-friendly, with more than 32,000 entries, parts of speech, punctuation and pronunciation and dictionary guides. They also include a reference section containing information about the solar system, international flags, U.S. presidents, civics sign language, Braille and more. Students benefit from an increased self-reliance and resourcefulness inspired by the maxim, “look it up,” and many students use their dictionaries past the fourth grade. And they all love trying to pronounce the longest word in English (well over 100,000 letters!) The teachers also enjoy this added teaching tool and encourage the children to use it often.