A Muslim-themed Dewey Decimal Treasure Hunt (Free Worksheet)

Do you remember learning about the Dewey Decimal System when you were a child? This is a method of classifying books with the use of call numbers so that they can more easily be found in libraries.

There are many resources available on-line to teach kids about the Dewey Decimal System, including videos and various lesson plans and activities of interest to teachers, librarians, and homeschooling families.

A while back, I created a Dewey Decimal “Treasure Hunt” worksheet with Muslim children in mind, thinking that it might be appropriate for use in combination with these other resources. Feel free to download the PDF file and print it out for your students:

Free PDF Worksheet: Dewey Decimal Treasure Hunt

Activities like this are best done in an actual library, but in this age of the Coronavirus, it is best to work online until the dangers of going outside have passed. Kids may work alone or in (virtual) teams. As they will soon find out, religions such as Islam have been relegated to the slim “other religions” category, which is an interesting topic for discussion.

According to Wikipedia:

Treatment of religion

The subject of religion has been very heavily favored toward Christianity, with nearly the whole 200s being used for Christianity, and only the 290s being used for all other religions, of which there are thousands. While Christianity is a popular religion with 33% of the world subscribing to it, Islam has a very large following as well and has only DDC 297 to work with. The entire 200 section has been largely the same since DDC 1, and it would likely be a large undertaking to completely rewrite this section, particularly for individual libraries to adapt to. Despite topics such as Islam having only a single digit associated with them, there is adequate room in that number, due to the ability to expand beyond the decimal point.

Although you may wish to consult this list of Dewey Decimal classes, I purposely did not include an answer key for the free worksheet, as I feel this would defeat the purpose of a treasure hunt. I would also prefer that students compare their answers and discuss why they chose the numbers they did. Along with the above, this could stimulate some interesting conversations about the Dewey Decimal System and how easy, difficult, or intuitive it is to use. Has the system adequately kept up with changes in culture and technology? What changes or additions would students make to the system?

If you are looking for other activities of this type for Muslim children (including fun writing activities), subscribe to the blog for new posts, as I will eventually upload other worksheets and resources, including a free printable Ramadan Diary with writing prompts for each day of the month.

In the meantime, please let me know if you found the treasure hunt activity useful.

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