Students at Brockport's Barclay Elementary School recently celebrated the birthday of Noah Webster, who worked on the first American dictionary more than 200 years ago. Tasked with using the dictionary to look up new and interesting words, the students quickly flipped through the pages until they came to a word they wanted to learn more about. Third graders wrote the word and meaning down during library class and also used it in a sentence. Staff, wearing Dictionary Detective badges, rewarded students with stickers for their word. Many students familiarized themselves with the dictionary at home and looked up words ahead of time. Prior to looking up new words, Library Teacher Suzanne Shearman read Cookies: Bite-size Life Lessons. The book, described as a "new kind of dictionary" defines mysteries such as "fair" and "unfair" and what it really means to "cooperate." November 19, 2006 |
