A 2016 Facelift for Dewey

“Mrs. Hembree, can you help me find the wolf (substitute any animal) books?”

“Did you look on the poster to find the number?”

“Yes, but I can’t find the number on the shelf, can you help me?

Sound familiar?  I moved to a different school this fall. The library has a big collection and is very well organized. We have a big poster with all the important animal Dewey numbers listed in alphabetical order. Yet questions about how to find books happen daily in my library and I’m willing to bet it’s happened in yours.

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We have signs with numbers on the edge of the shelf.  However, when you are 8 or 9 years old, trying to find a book with Dewey numbers extending two and three numbers past the decimal point is….well….pointless.

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They can’t find the numbers on the spine and give up. Even our parent volunteers find it difficult to shelve the books sometimes.

 Student frustration with finding the books they want to read is the major reason I switched to genre shelving in my fiction area.

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It’s also the reason why last year in my former library I switched to a subject/theme organizational system in the picture books.

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I plan to do it again in my new library, but that’s a project for next year. When I do, it will be modeled after the method the King County Library System is now using with their picture books in the 48 public libraries in the system. Their changes came after research with parent focus groups to determine how parents think books should be organized. After analyzing the results, the picture books are now arranged by categories and have as many face out books as possible.

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 If it works for the largest library system in the country, I think it can work in my elementary library. While this bird walk into the KCLS shift may seem irrelevant, seeing the books on the shelf this way actually helped me take action on doing something about the non-fiction problem.

Back to the non-fiction books. I’ve never touched or messed with the non-fiction books.

Until now.

I’ve read countless blog posts and articles about librarians who ditched Dewey completely. I may not like Dewey 100%, but I do like the basic organizational system. In many ways it really works.  I wasn’t ready to destroy a system that had its merits. I just wanted to re-vamp it, but I didn’t know how. 

Then this fall I read a blog post on the Wrinkle in Tech blog by Mrs. J who simplified Dewey with a whole number dewey system. No more decimal points! She’s made terrific signs to use to lead students to the area they are looking for. We exchanged a few emails as I asked some more clarifying questions. I thought I had an answer to my dilemma. I bought the signs on TpT and started adopting this method in certain sections. Yet, I still had the animal problem.

When students go to the shelf to find books on panda bears for example, they expect that all the panda bear books will be together, as in next to each other. Not some here and some more 5 books away farther down the shelf. After all, isn’t that the point of the numbering system? It’s what the kids think. Of course, that’s not how it works in reality. I still needed to figure out how to keep the animals together on the shelf. I went back to the drawing board and dug deeper in my research.

To my absolute delight, I found a 2013 blog post Mammals: A Dewey “Do-over” by Sarah Ducharme on her Try Curiosity library blog. She figured out the solution, that is so obvious. Hallelujah! She organized her land mammals by animal and changed the call number to reflect the area and subject of the book.

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Generalized books on multiple mammals are 599, but all land mammals are 599.1 plus the animal name. For example, 599.1 ELE (elephant) All the elephant books have the same call number and are placed on the shelf next to each. Instead of having to remember an author’s last name, a student can search for a book on the shelf in alphabetical order by animal. You can read a more detailed explanation of Sarah’s system here. It’s simple. It makes sense. It meets my objective of making it easier for kids to find books on the shelves independently.

Winter break gave me some time to think about how I could interweave these two systems in our library. It’s also when I walked into the KCLS library and saw their complete changes. In addition I was reading Passionate Learners: How to Engage and Empower Your Students by Pernille Ripp for a book study group.  In chapter 2, I read this:

“Once again, reflection is where we begin. Ask yourself, would you like being a student in your own room.”

I want our school library to be a place where students can successfully and easily find the books they want. It’s not a book depository that must uphold the merits of an organizational system developed in 1876. My students are frustrated by our system. That part is obvious. If I was an elementary aged student, I wouldn’t like how complicated it is to find a book in the library when it’s so easy at a bookstore. Pernille’s two sentences cemented my belief that change was not only important, it was necessary for students to be successful library users.

There’s nothing like a new year to begin a new system. Not to be overwhelmed by the vastness of animals, I started small with the pet books. All the cat, dog, horse and other small pet books are together in 636 with a whole number dewey system. I typed up new call numbers, changed the numbers in the catalog and got to work re-labeling and shelving books.

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Furthermore, I decided that pigs, sheep and cows would be removed from this section and shelved with the other land mammals.

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Yes, they are farm animals, but it’s 2016. We live in a suburb near a large metropolitan city. My students don’t think of cows, pigs and sheep as being anything other than a mammal. I doubt more than a few have ever seen a farm, let alone know what animals live on a farm. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen quizzical looks from students when they see cows near the pet section. The farm animals were moving.

Here is the final result of stage one of our revamped Dewey project. I’m not sure if the sign at the top is what exactly what students will find useful, but it’s a start.

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Now I can’t wait to see what the students say! Check back in the next few weeks. As I move through other areas, I will publish more photos and share student reaction to the changes.

 

A Night Divided

 

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Gerta went to bed Saturday night, but woke up the next morning with a grim sight outside her window. A barbed wire wall divided her city in half. The realization stunned her as she remembered her father and brother were on the other side of the wall. How would they come home to Gerta, her mom and brother? Why would anyone want to build a wall in the middle of her beloved city? What was going to happen to her family?

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The Berlin Wall is the topic of Jennifer Nielsen’s new middle grade historical fiction book, A Night Divided. The story is set in 1961 when the city of Berlin was separated in half by a wall that would last for the next 28 years. This concrete wall is considered by many to be the symbol of the Cold stemming the mass defection of citizens from communist East Germany to the west.

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The book is well researched and brought back memories of one of the most frightening days of my life.  I was 18 years old and an American Field Service exchange student visiting Berlin with other members in my group. West Berlin was a vibrant city with museums, shopping and discos. Bright neon lights lit the downtown at night. We didn’t have a bored moment as we tried to experience all that West Berlin offered. This video shows what life was like in West Berlin at that time.

The organizers of our trip also wanted us to experience the other side of Berlin behind the huge wall that divided the city. Being the naïve and self-absorbed teenagers we were, few of us realized the history lesson we were about to learn.

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We crossed at Checkpoint Charlie, the main crossing area for westerners. It was a particularly intimidating experience as we had to give up our passports, sit in a room and then wait for our number to be called. These were the days before modern airport security checks, so being so screened with such severity was frightening to us. The freedom I took for granted as an American suddenly had new meaning.

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Entering East Berlin was like stepping back 30 years into postwar Germany. I’ll never forget the images of gray that permeated the city. Gray concrete buildings. Gray streets. Gray cars. Drab clothing on people who seemed to carry defeat on their shoulders. It was common to see World War II bombed buildings still empty and never re-built. It was like going from technicolor to black and white.

Courtesy Britannica Images

Courtesy Britannica Images

All of us had the opportunity to have lunch with an East German family. Mine shared how their family had been divided by the wall and they had no idea when they would see their loved ones again. After being nearly hit by a car who tried to hit me and a friend as we walked on the sidewalk, I wanted out…..now! It took some convincing, but we postponed our return a couple hours and went to an East German play. I appreciated seeing communism hadn’t completely squelched the arts. Still, like the rest of the group, I couldn’t leave fast enough. We made it back before the midnight deadline and embraced the freedom afforded to us because we were American.

A Night Divided brought back all of these memories. After hearing Jennifer Nielsen talk her process in bringing this part of history to life, I felt compelled to make a trailer for her book. The images and words were bubbling inside me needing to be released. In the weeks since, my students and I have had many lively conversations about the wall and this part of history few westerners talk about anymore. Usually historical fiction is not the genre students clamor to read. Yet the 20 hold slips of students who want to check out this book from our library tell me that Jennifer got it right. Find A Night Divided at your local library or favorite bookstore. Recommended for ages 9+ Visit Jennifer Nielsen’s website and find out more about this and other books she has written.

 

Fair is Not Equal

 Pre-"WHOOSH!" lukexmartin via Compfight

As I scanned the room, I could see that every hand was in the air. I had asked my students to raise their hand if they had ever said or heard someone else say, “That’s Not Fair!” No surprises to my eyes, or to a parent volunteer in the room who said, “I hear it everyday at my house”. What is fair or not fair, was the topic of Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s book for week 3 for the author study in The Global Read Aloud.

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In this very amusing book, the characters whine about the unfairness of not having something another character has. The koala bear is unhappy about always being on the bottom tree-limb bunk, a child is angry because he can’t have a pet giraffe, a girl is sad because she has to wear glasses and the pig is angry because the bird took all the wings. The babies are crying because nothing is the same. Every situation is unfair, unfair, unfair.
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Or, is it?

Krouse’s book is the perfect introduction about the definition of fairness vs. equality. Is fairness when everyone has the same thing? Is it good when we are always treated equally?

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We talked about the definition of equal means that everyone gets exactly the same thing. For example, everyone get a fork to use to eat their food, or everyone gets a bandaide for their cut. These examples work until we think about the people who use chopsticks to eat and they have been given a fork to use. Is it fair or equal that the utensil they received is exactly like everyone else’s when what they really need is a pair of chopsticks?

Fairness on the other hand is when everyone gets what they need in order to be successful.

This definition is not easy to understand at first. In class, I used the example of eyeglasses to illustrate the concept. I wear glasses to see and in every class, there was at least one or two students who also need glasses. We need glasses. If we don’t have glasses, we can’t see.  Then I posed the question, “Would it be fair or equal, if every student in class was told that they also had to wear glasses because I wear them?” We talked about their answers and they began to understand the difference.

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Then I handed out a bandaid to each student. I asked them to point to a part on their body where they have been cut in the past and needed a bandage. We pretended to put the bandage on that part of their body to illustrate that it was fair for each person to put the bandaid on different parts of their bodies because it was where they needed it. However, then I asked them to put the bandage on the back of their hand in a place I decided what right. The students quickly understood that this situation was equal, but not fair because they couldn’t put the bandage where they needed it.

At the end of the lesson, I followed up with the sentence that I will always be fair in how I treat students, but it won’t always feel equal, and that’s okay. Next week, we will learn about punctuation marks with the book Exclamation Mark, and slip in a favorite Halloween book as well!

Next week is also a Global Read Aloud Random Acts of Kindness week. Amy Krouse Rosenthal wanted to contribute to events for GRA15 and came up with the idea. You can read more about it on the GRA blog post here. Amy has videos with kindness ideas you can try at home and at school. What kindness will you spread? If you are a student, make sure you talk to your family and have them part of the conversation. Please use the hashtag #GRAK15 to share your ideas and acts! Leave a comment and let me know how it goes!

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What do you see?

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For week 2 in the Global Read Aloud 2015 we read Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld (illustrator). Is the illustration a duck or is it a rabbit? It really depends on your point of view and what you see. This funny picture book helps children understand that there are two sides to every story and sometimes we need to look at another point of view. Here’s a video with a short version of the book.

thX32D94U2After we read the book, we gathered data about how many of us saw a duck or a rabbit and the reasons why using evidence from the text of the book.

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Then the students colored their own paper if they thought it was a duck or a rabbit.

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We also tweeted with our friends in Klein, Texas as our classes tried to figure out if the drawings were ducks or rabbits. Because the intent of the Global Read Aloud project is to build connections around the country and globe, I have started a Cougar Ridge Twitter account. We talk about our lessons with other library classes. Follow us at @CRidgeLibrary
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With the third graders, we took it up a notch and studied some common optical illusion drawings. Sometimes it is not easy to see the two views of a drawing.

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In the drawing below there is an old man and a young man. I could not see the young man and it took numerous students coming forward to try to explain how to see the young man. To be truthful, I was ready to give up, but the students wouldn’t let me. Finally two students helped me break through my optical illusion block.  My cheer of “I see it!” made everyone laugh! Can you see both?
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I was thrilled when after our lesson students found the optical illusion books to check out! I would also like to thank Kelly at http://thefirstgradefairytales.blogspot.com for the Duck! Rabbit! lesson ideas posted on Pinterest. Next week we will be reading about what is fair in the book That’s Not Fair!