Rotary, Connexus and AHEF Team Up to Give Students Dictionaries

For the seventh straight year, all third grade students in the Anoka-Hennepin School District received a free dictionary through a national project designed to help students became good writer, active readers and creative thinkers. it is funded locally by the  Anoka-Hennepin Educational Foundation(AHEF), Rotaries and Connexus Energy. Tess Degeest, the AHEF executive director, and Phil Knutson, a member of the Anoka Rotary, delivered books to Crooked Lake Elementary School. When DeGeest asked how many of the students didn’t own their own dictionary, a lot of hands went up. “Well you are going to get one today; it’s yours, you can do whatever you want with it, ” DeGeest said. Linda Smith, a third grade teacher, said the dictionaries the students received are the best thing for third grade students and providing each student their own dictionary really makes a difference. Students were very excited about their gift. Students in Jill Wellman’s class said if they didn’t know the meaning of a word, now they can look it up in their own dictionary, they can look up spelling and pronunciations of words and the dictionary has interesting facts. Knuston said about 3,000 dictionaries were distributed throughout the district. Participating Rotary Clubs were from Anoka, Coon Rapids, Blaine, Ham Lake, and Ramsey.