News : Dictionary Day! Tilford 3rd graders receive donation from Vinton Kiwanis Club

Third grade students in Tilford Elementary laughed together, as they read a book that is not normally considered to be funny: A dictionary. This happens about this time every year, as the Vinton Kiwanis Club members distribute dictionaries to the students. Tuesday was Dictionary Day at Tilford, where Vinton Kiwanis Club President Christine Kelchen and member Lexa Speidel visited the school to hand out the dictionaries. The Kiwanis members pointed out several of the unique features in the books, including information about Iowa and other states, the list of U.S. Presidents, a page teaching how to express the letters of the alphabet in sign language. Another page that makes students laugh is the page that contains the longest known word in the English language, which uses more than 1,900 letters and fills most of a page in the book. The local effort is part of the Kiwanis Club's partnership with The Dictionary Project. The book the local members hand out in VS elementary schools is "A Student's Dictionary." The Dictionary Project's mission statement includes the belief that 3rd grade is the"dividing line between learning to read and reading to learn," so they encourage sponsors to give dictionaries each year to children in the third grade. See photos of students reading their dictionaries HERE.