CARDINGTON- The Cardington Rotary Club has been distributing dictionaries as part of the Third Grade Dictionary Project since 1995. Again, this year dictionaries were distributed to third grade students in the Highland School District, (130) the Mount Gilead School District (68) Gilead Christian School (18) and the Cardington-Lincoln School District (70). Students in the Northmor School District received dictionaries from the Galion Rotary Club.
Distributing the dictionaries was Cardington Rotarian, Gill Ullom, chairman of the project.
Offering their comments were Highland students: “I thought it was very cool,” said Coke. “I was excited to get it so it can help me read,” said Colton.
”I liked the sign language in it’,” said Spencer. “I like that you can learn new words,” said Addison. “I liked the periodic table,” Raygan noted. Haileigh said, “I liked all the long words that even my dad didn’t know!”
Courtnie Howell, the Highland Schools Special Education Secretary, and Gilead Christian School’s Jenn sent the following quotes along from students. River: “It is very exciting. It has a lot of cool stuff in it and I love it.”
Joel: “Thankful.” Holden: “Very excited and happy because I wanted a dictionary like this before. It has all the words, sign language, things for the blind people and a map.” Liam said, “Happy!”
Cardington-Lincoln’s Dawn Ruehrmund, third grade teacher, said the following students commented : Ali Kirkpatrick:”It’s good that it has sign language. I have a grandma that’s deaf.” Camden Crone said, “You can learn the longest word in English.”Brooklyn Eastep noted, “I will use it in school to learn new words.”
Cardington-Lincoln third grade teachers are Dawn Ruehrmund, Sydney Tucker, Katie Kinsel and Michelle Coughenour.
There was no response from Mount Gilead and Northmor Schools.
A mission statement from the National Rotary Club states, “ The goal of this program 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.”
Ullom encourages the students, “to keep your dictionaries at school.”
