Each year, third grade students throughout District 427 can usually expect to receive a dictionary from the Rotary Club of Sycamore. The Rotary Club donates these to help students become better readers and writers. Due to the pandemic, however, the Rotary Club was unable to hand-deliver dictionaries this year; but that did not stop them from giving back to our students.
Instead of dictionaries, each elementary school received a grant to purchase books at the third grade level. "Teachers are on the front lines of the mission of literacy promotion in students, and we want to do everything we can to support them in this mission," said Michael DeVito, Rotary Club President.
Although this is a change from previous years, growing teachers' libraries in place of providing a dictionary to each student will further empower our students as readers.
"Our grant provides for the students to get classroom copies of some of the most recently published books," said Bob Brown, member of the Rotary Club. Reading is an essential part of a student's education, and fostering this at a young age will instill great values for years to come.
We would like to thank the Rotary Club for the grants and their generous support!
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Rotary is an international service organization with more than 1.2 million members worldwide made up of over 34,000 clubs. Our club members are the business and professional leaders of Sycamore. Literacy is one of our many focuses and during a “normal” school year we recognize monthly, outstanding students from our high school. Annually, we award scholarships to deserving high school students. We have sponsored exchange students, funded international water projects and Polio eradication, supported local events like Pumpkin Fest, provided “readers” for local elementary schools, participated in “Feed my Starving Children” mobile packing, and much more. Rotarians are people of action!