A donation of knowledge

Rotary clubs give dictionaries to schools

Friday, Oct. 26, 2007

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photos by Darwin Weigel Calvert Elementary School third-graders Allison Gallo, 8, left, and Cortiana Claggett, 8, look through the new dictionaries they received Tuesday from the Rotary Club of Prince Frederick. The Prince Frederick club, as well as the Rotary Club of Northern Calvert, are giving dictionaries to all the third-graders in the county. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Donated dictionaries were geared toward students. Click here to enlarge this photo The Rotary Club of Prince Frederick’s Stovy Brown gives a brief lesson out of the dictionary the club handed out Tuesday to Calvert Elementary School third-graders. The Prince Frederick club, as well as the Rotary Club of Northern Calvert, are giving dictionaries to all the third graders in the county.

At Appeal Elementary School on Wednesday morning, more than 100 third-graders walked from the cafeteria back to their classrooms thumbing through their new student dictionaries. Some were pointing out words while others were looking at the alphabet in American Sign Language.

‘‘It’s amazing,” said Appeal third-grader Arley Shepherd, 9, of the longest word that appears on the last page of the dictionary.

Students at Appeal, much like students from Calvert Elementary School the day before, were in disbelief that a word exists containing 1,909 letters.

This scientific formula, which as a single word takes up the same amount of space on paper a third-grader would use to write a book report, caught the attention of students at all the elementary schools in the county as Rotary members handed the dictionaries out.

Members of the Rotary Club talked with students about the different uses for the dictionary but students at Calvert Elementary School seemed more interested in discovering the dictionaries on their own.

‘‘As soon as they find the longest word, it’s over,” said Calvert Elementary School third grade teacher Joella Botts.

Students smiled and anxiously showed classmates different things they found in the new dictionaries published by Dictionary Projects Inc.

The Rotary Club of Prince Frederick donated about 1,000 dictionaries to third-graders in the county according to the club’s president, Carol Lehman.

Eugene Karol, member of the Prince Frederick Rotary and also a member of the Calvert County Board of Education, traveled to many of the elementary schools over the past week talking with students and handing out dictionaries.

‘‘It gives me the opportunity to get out there and see just how wonderful these kids are,” Karol said.

This is the third year the Rotary Club has provided this service to the schools.

‘‘It’s a very great thing to have right now,” said Erika Williams, 8, of Calvert Elementary School.

E-mail Gretchen Phillips at gphillips@somdnews.com.