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The Rotary Club of San Diego Paradise Valley (RCSDPV) spearheads its own literacy project every year in the south bay region of San Diego. Usually occurring in the Spring time, we target elementary schools in the local community that satisfies either of the following conditions: if the school resides in a low-income or underprivileged community. The identification of schools take place in late January. This Rotary Club continues to put on its annual dictionary project in an effort to provide an additional resource to both schools and students alike in their path to higher education. From years of experience, club members have learned that something simple as a dictionary will go a long way. Research has indicated that 3rd grade is the appropriate grade level to which the students have grasped most of the fundamentals of reading in order to begin choosing genres they are interested in. As a commonly held belief of low-income schools is that they lack the appropriate funds for books, supplies, etc. to keep their schools running and successful, providing free dictionaries to the students will contribute to an increase in literacy levels for the students. As they begin advancing their writing and reading skills, a dictionary will come in handy to make sense of unknown words or to spell the words correctly, allowing the student ample opportunity to widen his/her vocabulary and reading comprehension. The need for more resources was illustrated to Rotarians this past Literacy Project at Integrity Charter School. A 3rd grade teacher had mentioned that the students had a class assignment that required the use of a dictionary and to which there were only 10 dictionaries to go around in a class of 30. Ms. Bernardino had expressed her gratefulness for the dictionaries to come at the right time. This has demonstrated a need to continue this project through the years to come. The students of Integrity even utilized the dictionaries to write letters to our club expressing their thanks the service we provided to them.
The method to which the schools are picked are usually by the city the school resides in. If the city has a majority of its residents that are of low socioeconomic status, then it would be safe to identify the local public schools to be one of low-income. Once a list of schools are identified, they are then presented to the club and a budget is allotted and created for the Literacy Project. A vote is then put to the club of which schools we would like to service in accordance to the budget. Once the schools are chosen, the dictionaries are ordered, this usually occurs in mid to late February. The Literacy Projects usually take place in March or April, depending on the 3rd grade class's availability. Rotarians then dedicate a meeting to labeling the dictionaries with the Rotary Wheel as well as with the Four Way Test. This past year we were able to service 5 classrooms of 3rd graders at the schools of Integrity Charter School and Lincoln Acres Elementary School. Rotarians then plan to take time off from their busy schedules during the day to come to the selected schools and distribute out the dictionaries. We explain to the kids what the Rotary organization is all about and what the 4 way truth test consists of. We emphasize the good work the students have already done and to remember the "Rotary Wheel" as they grow up.
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