Dewey Decimal Order

5LM and 5O students have adopted shelves to take care of through the end of the year. Before they signed the adoption certificates for their new charges - whose names include Bella, Blob, Bubbles, and Sheldon - we had a "shelf parenting" class: Dewey Decimal review!

Test yourself ... do you know how to read call numbers? Try these quizzes created by other librarians at Quia:

Ordering Dewey Call Numbers

Ordering Decimals 

Dewey Decimal System 3

After we discussed the elements of a call number, students then put themselves in order, first in small groups, which you can see in the pictures. Then the entire class had to reorganize into one long line of call numbers.

Reading the numbers after the decimal point tripped up some students, but once they grasped the concept of going by tenths place, then hundredths, etc., (i.e., 529.235 comes before 529.4, even though 235 is a higher number than 4, because .4 can be read as .400) everyone was ready to hit the shelves.