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Avenue A kids can picture success

Visual dictionaries given by club help pupils, many bilingual, learn new words.

The Avenue A Elementary school gym brimmed with excitement Friday as nearly 100 students wearing broad smiles pored through the pages of dictionaries.

That’s right, dictionaries.

Except these books weren’t your run-of-the-mill resource. The hardback Firefly Junior Visual Dictionary, given to every English Language Learner (ELL) in the school, contains 320 pages of color photos – matching pictures to the words the young students
are trying to learn.

The Hutchinson Rotary Club stepped up to the plate to address a need in the local school district by donating the books after school officials recently cited the changing demographics at the school, including a growing population of non-English-speaking students, as the likely cause for Avenue A’s dip in state assessment scores.

In a school where the majority of pupils are Hispanic and 92 percent are economically disadvantaged, the school has struggled to meet standards set by No Child Left Behind. Adequate Yearly Progress results from the 2007-08 school year showed the school’s
scores 10 points below the state goal in reading and math, a significant decrease from the previous year, when scores were about 10 points above the state goal.

“We saw the need at the Avenue A school,” said Jimie-Wray Mead, Rotary board member in charge of community projects. “And we knew they needed more help from the community.”

David Flowers, USD 308 superintendent and Rotary Club member, said he got the idea from a similar effort by the Rotary Club in Fargo, N.D., where he used to live.

“We had a few books in the (Fargo) district, but when the children checked them out, we often had trouble getting them back,” he recalled. “The children and their families found them to be a very valuable resource.

“Making the picture and word connection is important for those learning the language.”

As the Avenue A students waited anxiously Friday to receive the dictionaries personalized with their names and the Rotary Club signature, Principal Beth Redinger asked them, “What is so special about you?”

“We’re bilingual!” several of the students shouted.

“That’s a very cool thing to be,” she said. “Avenue A has sparked an interest in the community.”

Pointing to the group of Rotary Club members, she said, “More importantly, they’re interested in offering support to you here as a group.”

The students’ names were called, and, one by one, each student received a visual dictionary, high-fiving and shaking the hands of the Rotary Club members.

Taking their seats back on the gym floor, the students were abuzz.

The learning had already begun. Wide-eyed students laughed and looked over detailed pictures of dinosaurs, traffic signs, musical instruments and even the space shuttle.

The class of first-grade ELL students peppered their teacher, Angie Wills, with questions.

“Where do we live? Here?” Cristian Flores, 6, asked Wills as he pointed to the United States
on a map of the world.

“Yes, right here,” she said. The questions kept coming, mostly “What is this?,” as Wills tried to keep up.

“Those are your veins. They circulate blood to your entire body,” Wills told one girl, who in turn pointed to the picture and
explained it to another student.

“That’s your heart,” she said, pointing to a picture of the organ. “It pumps blood to your body.

“Those are glands that help you cry. Under your armpit, you have those glands.

“That’s your eardrum. You know when you go to the doctor, and he looks in your ear? That’s what the inside of your ear
looks like.

“That’s the sun, and that’s the moon. The sun is like a big ball of fire.”

Wills said the visual dictionaries were “awesome,” and she was pleased with the students’ reactions Friday.

“It’s definitely going to help with their vocabulary,” she said.

“How many of you think this is going to help you out?” Redinger asked the gym full of students, watching their hands
shoot up into the air.

“How many of you wish you would have had this sooner?” she asked, prompting their hands to rise up again.

“Me, too,” she said, before the students gave a standing, cheering ovation to Rotary Club members and hugged their
books tightly as they left the gym.

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