Dr. Bill Bassett and the Wallkill East Rotary Club made lots of Pine Bush third-graders happy today.

Dr. Bassett handed out dictionaries to each third-grade student at Circleville Elementary School and Pakanasink Elementary School, part of the Dictionary Project, a nearly-30-year-old project to help improve literacy in students. He will do the same at EJ Russell and Pine Bush Elementary on Friday.

Dr. Bassett explained to the students that Rotary is a service organization, helping those in need in their community. They became involved with the Dictionary Project because one of the service areas they are involved with is the youth of the community. Another is education.

“We talk about youth with a focus on education and literacy,” he said, which is why the group provides the dictionaries to all Pine Bush third-grade students. In third grade, students work on their dictionary skills. They are distributed in October so students have them to work with throughout the school year. The dictionaries are theirs to keep, something that made many very happy. Some students shared that their siblings still have the dictionaries they received when they were in third grade years earlier.

The Wallkill East Rotary Club has been providing this service to our district since the spring of 2008. That year, they returned in the fall to give dictionaries to the new third-graders and the tradition began! Since 2008, the Wallkill East Rotary has distributed nearly 4,000 dictionaries.

Their first assignment was to write their names in their dictionaries. The second assignment was to find the word service and determine which of the 10 definitions describes what the Rotary does.

Each of the classes thanked Dr. Bassett and the Rotary for their new dictionaries. They promised they would use them and take care of them diligently and have them for many years to come.