Room 14 Dewey Detectives

The Dewey Decimal system is a way of sorting nonfiction books. I don't expect my students to memorize specific numbers; that's what the online catalog is for. I do, however, want them to understand how certain topics go together. At least according to how Mr. Dewey thought they did.

Each table of fourth graders got a stack of books from a "hundreds." They had to work together to figure out how the subjects could be classified under one major label. Can you solve the puzzles?

• 500s: planets, electricity, magnets, weather, dinosaurs, bugs, ecosystems, animals
• 700s: movies, art, photography, music, sports, jokes, crafts
• 900s: maps, ancient civilizations, countries, states, wars, explorers

Here are the successful Room 14 students:

Room 15 Dewey Detectives

The Dewey Decimal system is a way of sorting nonfiction books. I don't expect my students to memorize specific numbers; that's what the online catalog is for. I do, however, want them to understand how certain topics go together. At least according to how Mr. Dewey thought they did.

Each table of fourth graders got a stack of books from a "hundreds." They had to work together to figure out how the subjects could be classified under one major label. Can you solve the puzzles?

• 500s: planets, electricity, magnets, weather, dinosaurs, bugs, ecosystems, animals
• 700s: movies, art, photography, music, sports, jokes, crafts
• 900s: maps, ancient civilizations, countries, states, wars, explorers

Here are the successful Room 15 students:

The next week, using what they knew about the categories, each group had to assign a stack of topic cards to the correct "hundreds." Room 15 did a great job; even if the students had something in the wrong place (like dinosaurs in the 900s), they were able to explain their reasoning (dinosaurs lived a long time ago, in ancient history). I love that they were using their brains!

Bark, George!

harpercollins.com

Kindergarten kids listened to Bark, George by Jules Feiffer this week. They got a huge kick out of this story about a dog who doesn't bark ... instead, he meows, quacks, oinks, and moos!

To support their retelling skills, students colored the characters so they could bring them home and share story to their families. (You can click on the link to access and download more copies.)

Here are some of the kids with their creations:

And here are more students dancing to the follow-up video "What Does the Fox Say?"

Grade 2's Unfortunate Letters

Second graders are reviewing how call numbers help us find books in the library.

We read The Z Was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg, which features the letters of the alphabet meeting sad fates. The students had to guess the action happening to them, which started with the same letter; for example, the F was flattened by a foot and the Q was quartered.

 Then the kids created their own version of the book, as well as their personal call number.

Three of These Things with Room 2

A big part of information literacy is being able to recognize patterns and to categorize facts, sources, etc. We're starting to work on these skills in first grade.

Students each got a card (thanks, Target dollar section!) and had to find at least one other person whose card was the same in one way:

Students went through lots of examples of same and different, we watched some Sesame Street videos, and then the kids worked on their own "Three of these things" artwork.

Here are some examples ... can you tell which doesn't belong??