Sabbathday Lake Grange last week presented a dictionary to each third grade student at Dunn School in New Gloucester.
The Grange brought the dictionaries to the school Wednesday, Jan. 21, as part of its work with The Dictionary Project and its Word for Thirds program. Through the tireless efforts of the Grange’s network of more than 300,000 volunteers, America’s oldest rural and agriculture organization has presented third grade students across the nation with more than 100,000 dictionaries.
A dictionary is one of the most powerful reference tools young children will be introduced to during their schooling years, Grange President Steven Haycock said. Its usefulness goes beyond just providing correct spellings, pronunciations, and definitions; it is also a companion for solving problems that arise as children develop their reading, writing, and creative thinking abilities, he said.
“It is amazing to see the smiles on the children’s faces when we present the with dictionaries,” Haycock said. “It gives them a sense of pride when they have a dictionary to look up words on their own. It promotes learning and helps mold their self-confidence and independence.”
The Sabbathday Lake Grange raised the money for the dictionaries by holding a raffle at its monthly public suppers June through October.
The Grange, headquartered nationally in Washington, D.C., and in Augusta at the state level, partnered with the Dictionary Project, a 501A?©)(3) nonprofit organization, in 2002. The goal of the program is to assist third grade students to complete their school year as good writers, active readers, and creative thinkers by providing them with their own personal dictionaries. The dictionaries are a gift to each student to use at school and home for years to come. The organization has presented more than 1.8 million children with dictionaries.
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