Sharpsburg/Aspinwall Rotary treats students to ‘throw-back’ dictionaries

Tawnya Panizzi
Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2019 1:10 p.m. | Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2019 1:10 p.m.

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Kerry Schenker, president of the Sharpsburg-Aspinwall Rotary, distributes dictionaries to O’Hara Elementary School third graders.

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Sharpsburg-Aspinwall Rotary Dictionary Chair John Arch presents Hartwood Elementary School third graders with their new dictionaries.

Third-graders throughout the Lower Valley are learning to access knowledge at their fingertips — not through Google, but the old-fashioned way.

Sharpsburg/Aspinwall Rotary members for the 12th consecutive year distributed dictionaries to students as a reminder that the ability to use books and reference materials is vital.

“Even though computers are so common in today’s age, the ability to use dictionaries is extremely important as students work through the educational process,” Rotary member Bill Crooks said.

He and other members visited Kerr and Hartwood elementaries in Fox Chapel Area School District to hand out the thick books. Those visits followed distributions at O’Hara, Blessed Trinity Academy and Christ the Divine Teacher Catholic Academy. Fairview Elementary and Fox Chapel Country Day School are up next.

There will be 500 books delivered in total.

“The student’s dictionary is a special one designed and compiled with the interests of third-graders at heart,” Crooks said. “It contains words that they might be expected to use.”

For example, there are 170 pages of materials that are usually “fascinating” to youngsters, Rotary member John Arch said.

“After the Z words like zucchini and zygote, the dictionary features the longest word in the English language,” he said. “It consists of 1,909 letters. It is an enzyme found in the digestive tract and is unpronounceable except to chemists.”

There are special sections for other big words, names of large numbers, the planets and the periodic table.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and a brief biography of all U.S. presidents are included, as is a short synopsis for each of the 50 states.

The book ends with the letters for American sign language and the alphabet in Braille.

Arch said more than 6,000 dictionaries have been given out over the past decade.

“The children are so excited to get their books,” Crooks said. “They are so enthusiastic.”

Tawnya Panizzi is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tawnya at 412-782-2121, ext. 2, tpanizzi@tribweb.com or via Twitter @tawnyatrib.