OSWEGO, NY – Once again this year, fourth graders throughout the Oswego City School District will be carrying an extra book home.
The Oswego Rotary, Sunrise Rotary and Kiwanis clubs, in conjunction with river’s end book store, have become committed to an educational project to benefit Oswego’s elementary students.
Recently, representatives of both groups traveled to fourth grades at Charles E. Riley, Kingsford Park, Fitzhugh Park, Minetto and Frederick Leighton to present the American Century Thesaurus to each student.
Representatives of the clubs visited each school building.
At Fitzhugh Park Elementary School Rotarian and Superintendent of Schools Bill Crist was joined by Chris and Cim Jones of Kiwanis.
Crist told the students, “This will be a great resource for you, not only this year as you prepare for the ELA test, but also in high school, college and beyond. Just throw it in your backpack and you will have a tool that will supply you with the opportunity build your vocabulary.â€Â
This project was started several years ago by Sunrise Rotarian Donna Kuhn as a result of a story she had read.
She said, “I was reading a letter from the Past President of Rotary International in an old Rotarian magazine. He talked about working collaboratively with other groups to benefit our communities.â€Â
Continuing she noted, “There was a brief article about a ‘Dictionary Project’ that many Rotary Clubs have participated in. I thought I would pitch the same project to our clubs and to Kiwanis. However, the Elks distribute dictionaries to third graders so I thought thesauruses could be our contribution.”
Kuhn talked to teachers and discovered that a ‘thesaurus’ is part of the fourth grade learning standards.
This was a perfect opportunity to assist the youngsters.
Kuhn indicated that Bill Reilly at river’s end book store assisted in getting the books for distribution.
Each book has a brief informational story about the donors pasted inside the front cover.
This cooperative community project was welcomed by Oswego’s fourth grade students as many were quite excited over finding alternative words to use in their writings.
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