How Rotary in Peterborough focuses on children’s literacy

It has 1,000 illustrations, 10,000 entries and 20,000 definitions printed in full colour. The D4L promotes British English and encourages children to widen their vocabularies and improve their life chances.

As part of Rotary’s work, helping children to improve their personal literacy, Peterborough Ortons club purchased 160 dictionaries to distribute to local schools. Rotarians visited the Year Six classes at Werrington Primary School and presented each child with a copy of the dictionary.

The staff and children wanted to hear more about what Rotary does and are keen to continue to support our international aid project ShelterBox. Similarly, dictionaries were presented to children at the Ravensthorpe School leavers assembly. As 27 different languages are represented at this school the dictionaries will be invaluable.  As a memento, each dictionary had the child’s name inscribed on the inside cover.

The Peterborough School also has benefitted from receiving copies of the books.

Rotarians from the Peterborough club took the remaining dictionaries to Fulbridge Academy where they were presented by the club President. These will be placed in classrooms as reference books.

As literacy is one of the main Rotary International areas of focus, half of the funding needed to purchase these dictionaries was obtained in the form of a grant from Rotary’s own charity (Foundation), the remainder being raised by the local club.

In Huntingdon, Rotarians in the Cromwell club funded D4Ls for Thongsley Fields Primary School. These copies will be held in the school library for all to enjoy.

Note: each D4L has a user’s guide, parts of speech, hints for writing English, English today, and a history of our language also recommended web sites. Parents note – whilst the dictionary includes the vocabulary of the Internet age all the ‘rude’ words have been removed!