Dartmouth’s third graders will soon be able to enhance their vocabulary thanks to an initiative from the Grange.

The Dictionary Project is a nonprofit organization that was started in 1992 by Annie Plummer of Savannah, Georgia, who provided 50 dictionaries to children attending a school close to her home. She continued giving this gift each year, raising money to donate 17,000 dictionaries for children in Savannah in her lifetime. Since its implementation in 1995, The Dictionary Project has provided over 18 million children with dictionaries all over the U.S.

The Dartmouth Grange has 312 dictionaries ready to be distributed to every single third grader in the district. Any extras will be donated to classrooms and libraries, said Dartmouth Grange Chair of Home and Community Service Elizabeth Newton.

“The belief is that [third grade] is the dividing line between learning to read and reading to learn, and that’s why we do third grade,” Newton said.

The Dartmouth Grange is not the only organization to take up The Dictionary Project. It is sponsored nationally by the Grange, as well as other community-oriented organizations such as Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, Elks Lodges and Lions Clubs across the country. To date, more than 9,600 organizations are involved in The Dictionary Project, said Newton.

The Grange personalized its involvement in the project, not only providing each third grader with a dictionary of his or her own to keep, but also included a bookplate that shows it was donated by the Grange in memory of Winifred Manley, a former secretary of the Dartmouth Grange, commemorating her “Service to the Grange and the Readers of Dartmouth.”

Although no dates have been finalized yet, Newton says that the organization is working closely with Superintendent Bonny Gifford to be able to distribute dictionaries to every single third grader in the Dartmouth school district. After holding their meeting, members of the Grange prepped books for distribution, adding a letter from the Grange in each dictionary along with the book plate.

Newton hopes to have two members at Joseph DeMello Elementary, James M. Quinn Elementary and George H. Potter Elementary, to help distribute the dictionaries.