BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – A small seed was sown in 1992 in Savannah Georgia when a lady named Annie Plumber gave 50 dictionaries to children who attended school close to her home. That seed grew and soon its branches spread to civic clubs and non-profit organizations like Rotary who embraced the idea and today it has borne fruit in 15 countries around the world. 18 million dictionaries have been distributed free of cost and St. Kitts is now being included in the distribution.
Thanks to the Rotary Club of St. Kitts, with sponsorship by the Christophe Harbour Foundation, the branches of the ‘Dictionary Project’ have reached to St. Kitts and distribution of dictionaries began this week to all Grade Three students in Primary Schools around the island.
Why Grade 3? Educators believe that this stage marks the student’s transition from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’. The goal of this project envisages even greater long term benefits. It wishes to see the students becoming good writers, active readers, creative thinkers and resourceful learners by providing them with their own personal dictionary.
On Monday 14th October 2013, the Dictionary Project was launched in St. Kitts at the Conference Room at the Open University at the Gardens to mark the beginning of the distribution to all the Primary Schools in St. Kitts.
Present to witness and learn about the project were the Principals of the Primary Schools along with key stakeholder personnel. They were: Director of the Dictionary Project - Rotarian Mr. Gordy Nichols; Mr. Bill Lee of the Christophe Harbour Foundation; Past and Present Presidents of The Rotary Club of St. Kitts – Mr. Earl Kelly and Dr. Louisa Lawrence; Chief Education Officer – Ms Clarice Cotton, and others who participated in the symbolic handing over ceremony – Mr. Anthony Wiltshire, Principal of Bronte Welsh Primary School and three of his Grade 3 pupils.
The Project was regarded as being highly important reaching to the heart of meaningful education, and was expected to have short and long term effects on the students’ education and on the nation.
Director of the Project, Mr. Gordy Nichols brought warm greetings to the School Principals from the members of the Rotary Club of St. Kitts. He gave a history of the Project and expressed his pleasure at being able to initiate the first year of the Project:
“We are pleased to welcome you, your teachers, staff and all students of your third grade to participation in this, our first year of ‘The Dictionary Project’.
Indeed this special Caribbean edition of the Dictionary makes it more than a ‘wordy’ book; it can be seen as a significant learning tool. From the Table of Contents of this 447 page ‘Dictionary and Gazetteer’ we find that it also includes:
• Nine Parts of Speech
• Punctuation
• Weights and measures
• Words for Large Numbers
• Roman Numerals
• Continents
• Facts about Countries in the World
• Planets
• Braille
• Sign language
• Multiplication Table
• Periodic Table of Elements
• Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States
Even in this age of Technology, the book will be a welcome supplement to text books in all subject areas and should become a student’s companion, always usable when electricity, wifi and internet are not readily available.
Appropriate words of appreciation were said by Chief Education Officer Clarice Cotton and words of commitment to Service by the Rotarian Presidents. Later a symbolic presentation took place to Headmaster Wiltshire and his three Grade III students from Bronte Welsh Primary School.
Since the launch, members of the Rotary Club of St. Kitts have been visiting the Primary Schools around the island and making presentations, ensuring that every Grade III child owns one of these “dictionaries”. Prior to the launch the names of the children were collected, thus each child gets a book bearing his/her name. The book will remain in the child’s personal possession throughout his/her life.
The Schools were not left out. A book was donated to each Third Grade Classroom and these were symbolically received by CEO Cotton, presented by Rotarian Clive Ottley at the launch.
Rotary has also used the opportunity to further introduce its Four Way Test on the page bearing the name of the student. The Rotary Club of Liamuiga had initially introduced the Test to some schools by presenting plaques which were mounted at well-used areas at the schools
The Four Way Test is regarded as an important addition to the moral and ethical standards of the school and nation. It reads:
Of all the things we speak, say or do:
1. Is it the truth?
2. Is it fair to all concerned?
3. Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
The ‘Dictionary Project’ has only been introduced to three other islands in the Caribbean thus far. They are St. Lucia, British Virgin Islands and St. Maarten. The Rotary Club of St. Kitts hopes it can expand this Project to Nevis in the very near future.
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