Youngsters eager to enjoy Elks Lodge's gift of dictionaries

Date: 1/24/2024

AGAWAM — Students in Tara Witte’s third grade classroom at Sapelli School were eager to grab a book from the box delivered for them. But these weren’t just any books, they were new dictionaries.

The dictionaries were among 262 delivered to third graders in Agawam in early January. The most current paperback dictionary editions were donated in early January by the Westfield-West Springfield Elks Lodge 1481 as part of the Dictionary Project.

The lodge annually donates dictionaries to third graders at 21 schools in Agawam, Southampton, West Springfield and Westfield, as well as the Southwick-Tolland-Granville and Gateway regional districts.

The project began in 1992 when a woman in Georgia gave 50 dictionaries to children who attended a school near her home. The idea caught on and the Dictionary Project was established in 1995 as a nonprofit charitable organization. Four years later it began distributing dictionaries to third graders across the country.

Since then, more than 31 million children have received dictionaries as individuals, businesses, and civic organizations in communities adopted the project. One of those is the national Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and its lodges, which joined as a sponsoring organization in 2004. During the past two decades, the Elks have provided more than 5 million dictionaries to students nationwide.

Patricia O’Connor from the Elks lodge gave a brief presentation to the Agawam School Committee at its Jan. 9 meeting. She said the dictionaries will assist students in improving their communication skills — to become better writers, active readers, creative thinkers, and resourceful learners — by providing them with their own personal printed reference source.

She said dictionaries are given to third graders because they are at the age at which dictionary skills are usually taught.

“It’s a time when students transition from learning to read, to reading to learn,” said O’Connor, who has worked in the Agawam schools as an administrative assistant for 30 years.

She told the committee that there are some who question the need for dictionaries with the current technology that’s available — suggesting kids could just look up words on their Chromebook computers.

“Besides the fact that a physical book is much more easily transported and does not require internet capabilities, using technology as the primary source of information can create learning limitations and allow for greater distractions,” she responded.

O’Connor added that research shows that students who read printed books, as opposed to ebooks, experience less mental fatigue and significantly lower levels of eye fatigue.

“They retain more information, and score better on comprehension tests,” she added. “I, for one, have never seen a child who did not get excited by receiving a new book of any kind. Placing an influential book, like a dictionary, into a child’s hands is a very powerful thing.”

Witte said her students were thrilled to receive the dictionaries.

“For many of them, this is their first experience using a paperback dictionary versus the internet,” she said. “Students are excited to find the meanings of unknown words, use the dictionaries to help them with spelling, and to discover new words.”

She added they are “great student dictionaries” because students can “meaningfully navigate” them.

“Historically we see that students really love being able to take ownership of their learning with their own personal dictionaries rather than the shared dictionaries in our classrooms,” said Witte.

O’Connor explained to the committee that the dictionaries donated this year to Agawam schools have a retail value of $3,146.

“This is a gift to each Agawam third-grade student to use at school and at home for years to come,” she said.

Following her presentation, O’Connor said this year the Westfield-West Springfield Lodge will distribute 1,177 dictionaries, at a total retail value of $14,268, to local third graders. During the past 20 years the lodge has donated approximately 23,000 dictionaries. At today’s prices, she said the current retail value of those donations would be $276,000.

O’Connor, who also serves as secretary for her lodge, said most of the funding for the dictionary program comes from member donations. The dictionaries are purchased through the Dictionary Project, which is based in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Westfield resident has been a member of the Elks for 18 years. This is her second year as the chair of the program.

“I took it on when the previous chair was unable to continue,” she said. “I believe very strongly in the Dictionary Project.”  

For more information about the Dictionary Project, visit dictionaryproject.org.