Fun with Dewey!

I do a lesson on using the catalog every year with students in grades 2-5.  This year when I got ready to cover looking up books by subject (non-fiction) with the fifth grade students I decided to take a risk and show them the video, "Dewey Decimal Rap."

First, using the projector to display the catalog, I look up a book about sharks and we review where the location or call number is.  Then I showed them a web site (http://www.brooklynexpedition.org/structures/infomania/dewey/dewey_main.html) that has about 8 cartoon illustrations which give a quick overview of Melvil Dewey and how the Dewey Decimal system came to be.

Then we watched the "Dewey Decimal Rap" by the StoryYeller.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHiUQb5xg7A  The students loved it!  I know they will at least remember Melvil's name and that he invented a way to arrange books in libraries.  After watching the video the students work in pairs looking up subjects (pre-chosen by me), writing down the title and then locating the book.

Later that day I had a parent stop me in the hall and tell me that if library instruction had been that much fun when she was in school she would have liked going to the library more.  I couldn't figure out what she was talking about and then I remembered that she had been in our workroom cutting out letters when I was working with the fifth grade students!

I also explained to the students that the young man who made the video did it for a class in graduate school when he was getting his masters in library science and that he was a librarian.  One of the students wanted to know if we could get him to come to our school for a visit!