Third grade students at Washougal elementary schools were presented their very own dictionaries by representatives of the Camas-Washougal Rotary on October 13 and 14.
Rotarian Molly Coston told Hathaway students that club members believe dictionaries are an important resource for all students to have, even in this age of technology. Coston explained that she always has a dictionary handy at home. “I use it to look up words for spelling and then I’ll look to see other words around it that I might not have known about,” she said.
Coston handed out books with Rotarians Linda Haines, Meridee Pabst and WSD Superintended Mike Stromme. To demonstrate a bit of fun student can have with a dictionary, Stromme challenged Hathaway principal, David Tudor to see who could find the word “friend” first. Tudor won the challenge, to the cheers of his students, and then read the definition to the group. Strommed encouraged the students to be good friends.
Similar presentations to third grade classrooms took place at Gause and Cape Horn-Skye elementary schools and at public and private schools throughout Clark County. “The students love receiving their dictionaries and having that valuable resource to call their own,” said Gause third grade teacher Jim Schroeder. “Not only does it help them with spelling and word meanings, but they also discover that there is much more in dictionaries than that, such as information about US Presidents, maps, and other countries. They are always surprised to discover that the longest word in our language has over 1900 letters!”
According to Coston, Rotarians chose to distribute the books during the month of October in honor of Noah Webster, one of American’s founding fathers and whose name is synonymous with “dictionary” in the United States, because he was born on October 16, 1758. He published the American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828 which is now known as the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
