Colorado: A defining moment
by Ed Hughes
The Rotarian
Loveland Rotarian Bruce Grauberger tells third graders that their dictionaries can help them pronounce words. Photo courtesy of Ed Hughes.
T hird graders get more than pages of words when the Rotary Club of Loveland, Colo., USA, gives them dictionaries, a project that’s been going on for the past eight years.
They also learn about Rotary and the definition of words like truth and beneficial. Loveland club member Ted Nutting, for example, told students at Carrie Martin Elementary about The Four-Way Test in November and asked if they knew the meaning of beneficial, the fourth criterion in the test. Not a single hand rose in response.
“Then look it up when you get your dictionary,” Nutting suggested.
“It means ‘helpful and favorable,’” Kimberly Dreyfuss told her classmates after she flipped through her new dictionary.
Loveland club member and project coordinator Lee Bashor says that since the effort started in 1998, the club has distributed 9,400 dictionaries to third graders in the Thompson School District. The money for the dictionaries comes mainly from an annual fundraiser.