Third Grade students at the Penn Kidder and L.B. Morris Elementary Schools and St. Joseph Regional Academy in Jim Thorpe received brand new dictionaries which were donated by the Rotary Club of Jim Thorpe as part of a national program know as "The Dictionary Project".

The program provides dictionaries, which are an essential tool for a quality education, to students to keep as their own essential reference books. Most students do not own a dictionary or have access to one in their home.Why give the dictionaries to third graders ? Third grade represents a critical juncture in a child's education in that this is the year that a student makes the transition from "learning to read" to "reading to learn" and it is important for them to be able to read and write well in order to share knowledge effectively.Giving students dictionaries is like giving them a set of keys to unlock all of the information that there is to be learned from reading subjects that will introduce new ideas to young learners.Since 1995, over 9.8 million children throughout the United States have received dictionaries thanks to The Dictionary Project.The Rotary Club of Jim Thorpe has been involved with the program since 2003 and has donated a total of 1,350 dictionaries to Jim Thorpe area schools since then with this year's contribution amounting to 216 books.The dictionaries were personally delivered to the three schools this past Tuesday by Rotarians Ronald Sheehan and Randall Smith demonstrating Community Service in Action.