On Friday, October 3, 2014, members of the Rotary Club of Fort Myers South visited several Lee County schools today to distribute dictionaries to all third graders. Each year, all of the Rotary clubs in Lee County provide every third grade student in Lee County schools with a dictionary.
This year, Rotary Club of Fort Myers South was assigned Colonial Elementary, Heights Elementary, Orangewood Elementary, Ray Pottorf Elementary, Tanglewood Elementary, and Treeline Elementary. Before the dictionaries were distributed to students, volunteers met at the Lee County School District office to uncase the dictionaries, apply the Rotary 4-Way Test labels, re-case the dictionaries, label the boxes for the destination schools and place them on pallets for delivery.
“Handing out the dictionaries this year was a lot of fun, we started a little after 8 a.m. and by 10:45, we had distributed one dictionary to each third grader in Lee County,” says Jim Applegate, dictionary project chairman for Rotary Club of Fort Myers South. “The children at each location were so excited and asked a lot of questions, while constantly thanking our Rotary members profusely,” he adds.
During the dictionary distribution, Rotarians gave a brief introduction to Rotary before handing the dictionaries to third graders.
“I have been told by some of the teachers that for some students this is the first book they have ever owned. It is a joy to see the excitement on their faces when we hand them their very own dictionary,” Applegate stated.