The Words: Troy Rotary Club donates dictionaries to TES students
Published 3:00 am Wednesday, January 13, 2016
The Troy Rotary Club had a few words to say to Troy Elementary School Student Council representatives Tuesday.
The Rotarians were at the school to present “A Student Dictionary” to all third grade students.
“The Troy Rotary Club is donating the dictionaries to your school to help support education and to help each of you become better students and citizens of the world,” said Rotarian Kathy Sauer. “This dictionary is yours. You may write your name in it. You may mark in it and even turn down the corner of pages to mark something that you would like to go back to later. It’s your book.”
Sauer introduced the dictionaries with some fun word find games.
She challenged the students to look up the word “international” because Rotary is in international organization.
There was a lot of turning of pages to find the “i” and then a lot of finger sliding before the students found the word. However, most of them already knew the definition of the word, international.
Sauer challenged the students with other word finds that further introduced them to the dictionary.
Troy Rotary Club President Ed Hedden asked if it were easier to find words on their smartphones than in the dictionary. The answer was a resounding, “yes.”
The students located the pages with the states and their capitals and the page with the United States Constitution. They were astounded to find the longest word in the world — a word 1909 letters.
They laughingly tried to pronounce the longest word in the dictionary and said they could never spell it. However, with their new dictionaries, they found that the meaning of that long, long word is simply that it’s a protein.
The Rotarians took the opportunity to tell the students about the Rotary Club and all the good things that it does.
Sauer said Rotary Clubs have more than 1.2 million community leaders who come together to create positive and lasting change in the nation’s communities and around the world.
“Rotary Clubs have been making history since 1905 with their programs that face some of the toughest challenges such as the eradication of polio,” Sauer said. “There are just a few cases of polio now in the entire world and that’s an outstanding achievement.”
Sauer said Rotary is committed to providing clean water to people around the world.
“Rotary supports education with projects like the dictionaries that we donated today,” she said. “Rotary is also committed to saving mothers and children and growing local economies.”
Sauer told the students that Rotary Clubs gets its funding from individual Rotary Club members and through fundraisers and contributions locally and internationally.
Hedden told the students that Rotarians have a test for verification in their lives called the 4-H Test, which asks four important questions, to which the answers should always be “yes.”
The 4-Way questions are: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concern?