Community Projects
The Dictionary Project:
The Dictionary Project is designed to aid third grade teachers in their goal to see all their students leave at the end of the year as good writers, active readers and creative thinkers. Our purpose is to provide third grade students in the community with their own personal dictionary. The dictionaries are for the children to keep, so they can take them with them into the fourth grade and use throughout their school career.
A dictionary is perhaps the first and most powerful reference tool a child can own. Its usefulness goes beyong the spellings, pronunciations and definitions it lists. It is a companion for solving problems that arise as a child develops his or her reading, writing and creative thinking abilities. Students benefit from an increased self-reliance and resourcefulness inspired by the maxim "look it up".
Teachers benefit by knowing that their students have consistent access to a tool for homework and in class explorations. The Dictionary Project is an opportunity for children to expand their vocabulary and for many to actually own a dictionary.
The Constitution Project:
For the third year, the Ellis County Republican Women’s club will be providing pocket-sized copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence to approximately 2,800 fifth-graders in Ellis County to help celebrate the TFRW Constitution Day Project on September 17.
“We had such a positive experience with the Constitution Day Project for two years that there was no question this year about continuing the program. The students were so excited to see volunteers from the community come to their schools and teach them about these important American documents. We also had tremendous feedback from our volunteers who found the event to be very rewarding.”
The highlight of the Constitution Day event again this year will be a short, non-partisan educational program for each 5th grade campus in Ellis County. Most schools prefer to have assemblies so all fifth-grade classes can participate together. Students will learn how these historic documents came to be and will receive their own copies to keep so they can follow along with their class studies. Elected officials, retired teachers and administrators, officers from police and sheriff’s departments, and other members of the community will be on hand to participate in the program again this year.
Donations to help with the cost of this program are still welcome. 100% of donations for the Constitution Day Project will go toward the cost of purchasing materials for the students. Please make checks payable to ECRW-PAC. Mail to: Tommie Worthy, 202 FM 55S, Italy, TX, 76651, referencing Constitution Day. For more information, call 972-627-3447 or e-mail tommieworthy2@windstream.net. Pol. Adv. paid for ECRW-PAC.
Literacy Project:
Members distributed the book, "Refined by Fire", authored by LTC (Ret) Brian Birdwell & Mel Birdwell to all the public schools in Ellis County this year. In February, the club was honored to have Mel as guest speaker where she gave a very informative review of the book. Her donation of the books to the schools was greatly appreciated by the club. Since the book was published, Brian is now serving as SD22 State Senator.