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!