To all those cynical adults who think dictionaries have gone the way of dinosaurs, replaced by omnipresent search engines -- third graders across Lake County beg to differ.

Thanks to the Rotary Club of Polson, around 400 free dictionaries were handed out in third-grade classrooms from Arlee to Dayton in recent weeks.

Linderman Elementary School teacher Kim Norman, whose students received their dictionaries earlier this month, said the paperbacks have many virtues, and key among them is the fact that they’re “hands-on and not a screen.”

“Understanding guide words, entry words, the pronunciation key that's in there – it's not just a button where you can press it and it reads it to you,” she said.

She was already planning dictionary drills to encourage her students to use their new resource to find words like “courageous, or stupendous.” Also on the agenda is a project that requires students to find a fact, write it up and record the page number. 

“It’s beginning research skills right there,” Norman said.

“It's so much more beneficial for kids to have a book in their hands than a screen,” she adds. “The research shows that.”

Research also shows that third graders are at a key transition point as they shift from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” And indeed, the dictionaries contain much more than words. The books are also “mini-encyclopedias,” with maps, facts about presidents, sign-language guides and math conversion tables.

Dave Fansher heads up the local program and says it’s one of Rotary’s key community projects, dovetailing with the organization’s support for local literacy and basic education. He notes that teachers integrate the dictionaries into lesson plans and they report that the books get frequent use in the classroom.

The nationwide Dictionary Project began in 1992 in Savannah, Georgia, when a woman bought and donated 50 dictionaries to students at a nearby school. Within 10 years it had expanded to all 50 states.

Locally, the Ronan Grange began giving out dictionaries more than 30 years ago. Polson Rotary took over those duties in 2015. Since then, the organization has dispersed more than 3,500 dictionaries in public and private schools across the county. Dictionaries are updated annually with feedback from teachers, students and parents guiding revisions.

Polson Rotary members typically visit classrooms to distribute the dictionaries. Six were on hand at Linderman, handing out books and visiting with youngsters. For some kids, it’s the first book they’ve ever owned.

The sense of excitement was palpable in Norman’s classroom as kids shook hands with the gauntlet of Rotary members and thumbed through their new books.

“Just look at the excitement,” Norman said. “That, right there, is the value of it.”