It started with a Juice Box

To continue with How to do Dewey for First grade and beyond.
The lesson is called, "Don't ask me where the Dinosaur books are..
    500's Nature, math and science. Most of the books in 500's in an elementary school library are about nature; outer space, the weather, habitats, plants, and animals. Students rarely check out the math books, though math is part of nature, so 500's are Nature. If it's found in Nature it's in the 500's.
   600's Technology or The Pencil. I hold up a pencil. "Do pencils grow on bushes? No, no pencil bushes outside, somebody had to make the pencil." What else is in technology?  Planes, trains, automobiles, farming and agriculture, medicine, cooking and pets!  Whoa pets?  Yes pets go in 600's because while there are wild dogs and cats, these wild animals don't have a human around, feeding and caring for them. (The sign on the pet shelf is a dog with a red pet dish. Somebody a human owner put the dish there, )  Cooking is how to take something out of nature, veggies and fruits, animal products and change it for human use. Same for farming, agriculture and gardening. People changing nature.
   700's Stop think about your Cultural arts classes: Art, music and P.E. Those are the fun things we do for recreation: to have fun. Origami, painting, crafts, songs, musical instruments, sports including NASCAR (!) hunting and fishing.

Look! we are almost done with the original four categories 500's 600's 700's and,
   800's Literature,  Big secret guys "Literature" includes Fiction and Everybody books. But these two sections are sooo large they won't fit on our shelves. We pull them out and move them to other parts of the library. I tell the kidlets that most adults don't know this; now they do. Go home and explain it to Mom and Dad. So what is in Literature? Poetry, jokes and riddles, plays. Pictures in  Literature include a dad and child reading together, hearts and flowers for poetry; a stand-up comic with a microphone; one of those emoticons with question marks floating around.

The pictures on the ends of the wrapped boxes in my library come from the Old Microsoft picture library. Many of the images can't be found these days, like the dinosaur one. An orange blob with a skeleton of a T rex superimposed.  I have looked for it often and often.

   The above takes longer to tell than to execute. After the talk I give students a game board divided into four sections, 500's, 600's, 700's and 800's. This game board is a PowerPoint slide, in color, with large numbers.  Students are paired the first time they play Dewey Sort. I give the pairs a zip lock snack bag with pictures, some from the boxes, some not, but on topic with each of the four sections of Dewey we are learning . The students sort and I move around the room checking and asking for explanations, why did you put the butterfly in the 500's? Why is that chef in the 600's? The basketball player in where?
As for closure for class, point to the shelf for the dinosaur books!

Shelving Signage and Dewey

I moved into a beautiful new building almost seven years ago. The library media was huge compared to the "old" one. We had new furniture, bookcases, smart boards, computers; wow it was great and still is terrific. I was not able to purchase many new books and did not want to spend part of my small budget on shelf signage.  I borrowed and idea from a friend...
I asked the school community to save and donate cardboard juice boxes. You know the kind that get taken to practice.  Volunteers wrapped the boxes like gifts with bulletin board paper. The stuff that comes in huge rolls.
1) The boxes just fit end to end across a bookcase. Most book cases are too deep for fiction books. The books get lost in the shelves. The boxes fill in that extra space and the book are more accessible.
2)My top shelves along the wall are too high for "Firstys" (First Graders) to reach. The boxes fill in that space and provide a unifying background around the room.
3) A box placed at right angles to the back of the book case is labeled with a picture and the Dewey number for the shelf contents. In Fiction the label is printed with labels with alphabet letters; Everybody has contrasting four inch die cut alphabet letters.
Cheap, sturdy, functional.

Now for the Dewey part. I start instruction of DDS with first grade. Th lesson is called :"You will never ask me where the Dinosaur books are again". We concentrate on the 500's 600's 700's and 800's. That's were most of the books are that First Grade is interested in checking out.
  500's Science and Math translates into Nature, anything found in the outside world. Space, animals, plants, weather, rocks.  The dinosaur shelf ( it used to shelves) has a picture of a dinosaur and 567.
Insect 596 Sharks 597, Mammals 599 ( three shelves full)
  600's  Technology. To explain technology I remind students that there are no pencils trees out in nature. The pencil was made, in a factory.  Yep the first shelf of 600's has a pencil on the sign. Agriculture, Farming, Pets 636  Picture of a dog with a food dish,  Now wait isn't a dog a mammal? Why yes but this dog is a pet. Some human person came along and said "Oh you nice doggy come and be my pet!" a human has changed what the dog is and does. Cooking 641.

Time to stop will finish later