The Rotary Club of San Juan Island presented free dictionaries to all third grade students at Orcas Island Elementary and Orcas Christian School.

Rotary Members Barbara Fagan and Mike Griffin distributed the dictionaries to the students of teachers Martha Inch and Sharon Harvey at Orcas Elementary.

The Dictionary Project is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to assisting students to feel empowered to learn through reading. The dictionaries are developed expressly for the third grade level reader and are revised every year. With sponsors like Rotary International, over 2 million dictionaries were given as gifts to students in the 2007-8 school year.

Principal Tom Gobeske of Orcas Elementary School watched as students eagerly explored their new dictionaries, searched new words, discovered maps, tried the alphabet in sign language, and discovered the longest word in the English language.

San Juan Island Rotary meets every Wednesday at Downrigger Restaurant at 8 a.m in Friday Harbor.