COMMITTEE NEWS
THE DICTIONARY PROJECT
As many of you know, at the November Board Meeting, the Board voted to support Rotary International's on-going commitment to literacy and join District 75 10's support of The Dictionary Project.
The Dictionary Project is a community-based service that is already underway in Rotary Club in all 50 states and in several Clubs in New Jersey, including many Clubs in District 7510. The Dictionary Project has the goal of presenting a personal dictionary to every third grade student in the United States. The project has been expanded in several places to include giving a dictionary or a thesaurus to older students, and as appropriate, giving a Spanish English dictionary to students who come from homes in which Spanish is the first language.
This is a wonderful project because it provides an opportunity for some of our members to be involved in a hands-on project that does not require an inordinate amount of time, is relatively inexpensive, and provides a perfect opportunity to make the efforts of Rotary visible in the community. Most significantly, it is good for students and has a track record of being well received all over the United States.
In January, members of our Club, working in teams of two, will be visiting 11 third grade classes in five schools. During these visits, 460 third grade students will be given a personal copy of A Student's Dictionary, which is an age appropriate dictionary that includes 33,000 of the most commonly used words in the English language, the Declaration of Independence, the United states Constitution, maps of the seven contents, information about the 50 states, biographies of the 43 presidents, and facts about the planets and the solar system. Additionally, the teachers will be given a Spanish English Dictionary to be distributed to families whose first language is not English.
Each book will have a bookplate with the Rotary logo indicating that the dictionary is a gift from the Rotary Club of Princeton. The Rotarians will ask the students to personalize their dictionaries by writing their names on the bookplates, and they will orient the students to the contents of the dictionary. Additionally, the Rotarians will provide the students with some basic facts about Rotary and what our organization does both in our community and world wide.
Both the Superintendent of Princeton Regional Schools, Judy Wilson, and the Principal of the Princeton Charter School, Charles Marsee, were delighted to learn that our Club will be initiating The Dictionary Project.
Our Dictionary Project has been fully funded by several generous Rotarians including Nick Carnevale, Dewey Clark, Don Conover, Lewis Edge, Jerry Essig, Cindy Love, Cindy Ricker, and Karen Woodbridge, all of whom we thank for their commitment to this project. Additionally, we thank Barbara Essig for designing the bookplate and Ahmed Azmy for agreeing to print multiple copies of the bookplate for each book.
We hope to be able to continue the Dictionary Project every year as our part toward the goal of putting a Dictionary in the hands of every third grade student in the United States.
-Marcia Bossart