Students give rave reviews to donated dictionaries
Third-grade students at Pinehurst Elementary School in Debbie Deidrich's class spent time writing thank you letters to the Kellogg Elks Lodge No. 1841 for its donation of personal student dictionaries.
Photo by MOLLY ROBERTS
PINEHURST — An old proverb said, “Give a child a book, and you teach them for a day. Teach a child how to use that book, and you will teach them for a lifetime.”
That might not be the exact proverb, but it works in the case of third-grade students in Debbie Deidrich’s class at Pinehurst Elementary School (PES). The students received personal student dictionaries from the Kellogg Elks and loved them so much that they have written and sent thank you letters with their favorite part of the book and what they have learned from it.
“When I first passed out the dictionaries, the kids couldn’t put them down. I didn’t really tell them what to do with them, just that they were theirs to keep,” Deidrich said. “I had first imagined using them for language arts, which I do, but they were fascinated by the maps, sign language, roman numerals, and all the other resources.”
Last fall, the Kellogg Elks Lodge No. 1841 purchased and delivered personal student dictionaries to third-grade students at PES, Silver Valley Christian Academy, and Canyon Elementary School as part of the nationwide Dictionary Project.
The Elks joined this program in 2004, and more than 600 Elks Lodges have donated more than 1.2 million dictionaries to third-grade students nationwide.
In the classroom, students wrote about their favorite parts of the dictionary, which included the longest word in the English language, which consists of 1,909 letters, and is a Tryptophan synthetase A protein, an enzyme with 267 amino acids, while other students learned how to write their names in braille or spell them out in sign language.
“I wasn't sure how they would take to a physical book when it's so easy to click a computer key and find anything you want on the internet,” Diedrich said. “But these books are something they can hold in their hands. We do work on finding words and definitions, but I think the real value of the dictionaries is that the students have the chance to take charge of their own learning. If the Elks hadn't given us the dictionaries, the students would definitely have missed out.”
Before teaching at PES, Diedrich spent her career in two public French Immersion elementary schools in Eugene, Ore., and outside Washington, D.C.
“I love being able to communicate in two languages — reading, writing and speaking,” Diedrich said. “My husband and I moved here (where he grew up) and last year, I worked as a substitute. When the third-grade position opened up over the summer, I decided to apply.”
Diedrich also gets support from her sister-in-law and retired PES educator Christy Woolum.
“The students are especially lucky to have my sister-in-law in the classroom twice a week, offering writing enrichment activities to small groups. She picked up on their excitement around the dictionaries and decided to have them write thank-you letters.”
She continued, “For me, this is as good as education can get: Community participation in schools, a retired educator volunteering in the classroom and coming up with a writing project, and most importantly, students excited about what the world has to offer."