The Rotary Club of Aiken, Rotary Club of Aiken Sunrise and Rotary Club of North Augusta team up each year to distribute dictionaries to third graders in Aiken County’s schools.
At Warrenville Elementary School on Friday, third graders gathered in the cafeteria to receive their copies of the reference book.
Aiken County Public School District Superintendent King Laurence, who also is the Sunrise Rotary Club’s vice president, spoke to the children. They also heard from the Sunrise Rotary Club’s president, Denise Broome.
“The dictionaries that we give away aren’t just words, pronunciations and definitions,” said Laurence prior to the assembly. “There is really a lot of neat information in them. They have maps in them, and they have the presidents in them. One of the things we always point out to the kids is the longest word in the English language.”
Warrenville Elementary Principal Charlene Heard appreciates what the Rotary Clubs do for her school’s third graders.
She said she believes the dictionaries “will enhance their learning.”
When students look up something, they “do use technology a lot,” Heard continued. “But sometimes it’s just as easy to pick up a book and utilize it in that way. That is the type of skill that we are still teaching them. When they are writing, they can use a dictionary to figure out what a word means and if they’ve spelled it correctly.”