Rotary spreading the words

Club donates dictionaries

By: Lacey Korevec
   "Is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in the dictionary?"
   Cranbury School third-graders’ hands shot up, as they eagerly took turns asking similar questions, questions with answers that could be found in their brand new books.
   On Wednesday the Hightstown-South Brunswick Rotary Club presented every Cranbury School third-grader with a paperback dictionary to take home for personal use.
   The Rotary Club is an organization of business and professional leaders that provides humanitarian service, encourages ethical standards in all vocations, and helps build good will in the world, according to its Web site, www.rotary.org.
   The group, which is donating over 900 dictionaries to third-graders at schools in the area, gave out 76 on Wednesday to Cranbury students and teachers in the Large Group room. Rotary members Marcia Alig, of Princeton Junction, and Richard Braude, of South Brunswick, handed the books out and then spoke to students about how they can use them.
   Afterward, Cranbury School Vice Principal Christine Capaci asked students to look up the word "gratitude" before thanking the Rotary Club members.
   "I don’t know if I have ever seen in my life so many people excited about a dictionary," she said to the students. "You have a lot of exploring to do."
   Mr. Braude said the books did not cost the club much, but that its an important service project that is being done by the club on a national level.
   "It’s not an expensive project at all," he said. "Each book costs us a dollar and change."
   Ms. Alig said she thinks the project will become an annual event.
   "I think it gives them the opportunity to have their first reference tool in their hands, to learn a little bit about Rotary," she said.
   As students filed out of the room, and began heading back to their classes, many of them continued to flip through pages looking for new words.
   "I think it should give them a sense of power that they can manipulate words and look up something they don’t know and learn about it outside of the classroom," Ms. Alig said. "It’s the first step to becoming an independent learner."