Third-grade students at Phantom Lake Elementary School are the recipients of new dictionaries this week thanks to efforts by the Bellevue Overlake Rotary Club. Rotarians visited the school Tuesday to hand out the dictionaries to 52 students.

Bellevue Overlake Rotary Club was the first Rotary club in the area to purchase dictionaries for third-grade students. It was such a great literacy project that it quickly spread and became known as the Dictionary Project in District 5030, which includes many Rotary clubs in the area. Each year our Rotary club gives dictionaries to every third grader at Phantom Lake Elementary School.

According to Rotary information, the project began because in the third grade, students are beginning to learn word and dictionary skills. By giving each student a dictionary to own and take home, the children have the resource in their home to develop important word skills required of all students in the state.

While dictionaries are useful to all students, they are considered even more important to English Language Learners and students living below the poverty level. Having the dictionaries on-hand means that parents and guardians are in a better position to assist with their child’s homework and the child can become more competent learners.