‘Something for the rest of your life’

Third-grade students at Wedgwood Elementary School had special visitors on Dec. 16, when school Superintendent Dr. Eric Hibbs and representatives from the Washington Township Rotary entered their classrooms with some pre-holiday gifts.

The students – as well as every third-grader enrolled in the township’s six elementary schools – are recipients of brand-new dictionaries, thanks to the Rotary. The organization has made the donations in the schools for 19 years, according to a school district press release.

Rotary International is an organization of businesses and professionals who offer humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations and help build goodwill and peace in the world. 

The township Rotary purchases the dictionaries from the nonprofit Dictionary Project (www.dictionaryproject.org) with the goal of helping students use them to become good writers, active readers and creative thinkers.

Hibbs helped make the presentations at Wedgwood, stressing that the dictionaries’ purpose goes beyond definitions and spelling with historical information; multiplication tables; a list of presidents with biographical information; and other features.

“Keep this somewhere so you can use it when you’re doing work at home or at school,” Hibbs told the students. “I still have my childhood dictionary sitting on my desk. This is something you can use for the rest of your life.”