Brownville Elementary third-graders gain lots of words
BROWNVILLE — Grade 3 students at the Brownville Elementary School now have thousands of words and accompanying definitions at their fingertips, along with other assorted facts. The pupils do not need to worry about charged laptops or cellphones to access this information, as each of the nearly 50 youngsters now has their very own dictionary thanks to Valley Grange No. 144 of Guilford.
For more than 20 years the Valley Grange has put dictionaries in the hands of area third-graders via the Dictionary Project’s Words for Thirds program, which has given out nearly 36 million copies worldwide. The goal of this program is to assist all students in becoming good writers, active readers, creative thinkers, and resourceful learners by providing them with their own personal dictionaries as gifts. Educators see grade 3 as the dividing line between learning to read and reading to learn.
The local program has expanded over the years to now include four districts and in two decades the Valley Grange has presented over 4,000 dictionaries.
RURAL FREE DELIVERY IN SCHOOL — Brownville Elementary School third-graders Victoria Gray, left, and Lillian Niles come forward to take out a pair of letters from the mailbox with Valley Grange Program Director Walter Boomsma on the morning of Oct. 29. The letters contained the words patron and husbandry and the students looked up the definitions in brand new dictionaries each of the nearly 50 youngsters received from the Valley Grange.
The 2024 presentations began at Brownville Elementary on the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 29 with Valley Grange Program Director Walter Boomsma stopping by. Later in the day Piscataquis Community Elementary School third-graders traveled to the Valley Grange across town at the corner of the Guilford Center Road and Butter Street. Programs will be held in the weeks to come in RSU 68 and AOS 94 schools.
Boomsma brought four replica farm tools used by the Grange in its meetings, the spud (a weeding blade), shepherd’s hook, pruning hook, and the owl, and explained the role of each farming tool. He said the pruning hook is used to get rid of bad stuff, such as the dead parts of a tree, and asked the third-graders to think about what they could take away from school.
Responses included cheating, running in the halls, hitting, and lying.
STAND IN SHEEP — Third-grader Beth Stonier is gently led by Valley Grange Program Director Walter Boomsma with the shepherd’s hook in a demonstration of the replica farmer’s tools used by the Grange during an Oct. 29 visit to Brownville Elementary.
Boomsma had a mailbox with the flag up placed at the front of the classroom and he said the students likely were not familiar with the term Rural Free Delivery. He said the Grange began during the second half of the 19th century.
“Farmers got tired of having to go to the post office to get their mail,” Boomsma said, which meant they had to leave their crops and livestock to travel to get their mail. So the Grange helped implement rural free delivery to have items be brought directly to the farmers.
Boomsma said the flag was up, so the students had mail. Lillian Niles and Victoria Gray were chosen to come up and take out an envelope. The contents were the words patrons and husbandry.
FIRST TO FIND THE WORDS — Brownville Elementary third-graders race to find definitions the quickest with their brand new dictionaries given by the Valley Grange on Oct. 29. For more than two decades, the Valley Grange presented dictionaries to more than 4,000 third-graders across the region.
“If we have a word and don’t know what the words means, what do we do?,” Boomsma asked. “You could look it up in the dictionary if you had a dictionary.”
The third-graders were then each given a brand new copy, or a tool they can use as Grange members utilized implements themselves.
Boomsma said Grange members are “Patrons of Husbandry.” They support farmers and others such as the grade 3 students by giving them dictionaries.
Commonly known as the Grange, the official name of the social organization encouraging families to promote the economic and political well-being of the community and agriculture is The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry.
Boomsma asked the pupils what the population of Maine is, with the answers varying greatly from 1,000 to well into the millions. “The problem is you are all guessing,” he said before showing them a list of state populations in their dictionaries.
The third-graders also raced to see who could find several words first, including steward.
“We from the Grange want each of you to be a good steward, so what that means is watch over your dictionary,” Boomsma said.
After the presentation Brownville Elementary Principal Carol Smith thanked the Valley Grange for the organization’s long-running support.
“It’s exciting to watch kids find the definitions and population and things they don’t think about,” she said.