KSA School: A gift of dictionaries for the third grade

Courtesy photo/Kearns-Saint Ann School

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SALT LAKE CITY — Every year the South Salt Lake Rotary Club visits the third grade at Kearns-Saint Ann School and presents each student with a new dictionary of their own. This year was no exception.

They began with information about Noah Webster, who at 43 years old started writing the first American dictionary. He did this because Americans in different parts of the country spelled, pronounced and used words differently. He thought that all Americans should speak the same way. It took him over 27 years to write his book. When he finished in 1828, at the age of 70, Noah’s dictionary had 70,000 words in it.

Each child put his/her name in the dictionary, then took a few minutes and looked up several words and read the description. The students also discussed what else the dictionary had to offer by looking at the table of contents.

Once a group photo was taken, the children put their new dictionary down on their desks and gave the South Salt Lake Rotary Club a big round of applause.