Thoughts about sorting and categorizing objects, events and ideas

Can you picture Dimitri Mendeleev sitting in front of his TV watching Sesame Street, or playing the game Apples to Apples (a game in which kids and adults consider which 2 of 3 items are most alike)? There are lots of games like it that can be used, deliberately, strategically, to teach complex critical thinking skills. Clearly clustering, cataloguing, sorting, lumping (and discriminating) multidimensional objects and events requires critical thinking skills especially when explanations of the whys and wherefores are required as part of a solution. Since most forms of sorting games are fun why not use them much more in teaching thinking skills in subjects that can vary from history (historical events, historical figures) to science.

This is the 140^th anniversary of Dimitri Mendeleev’s presentation of his famous table (Periodic Table) to the Russian Chemical Society. He arranged the 63 then known elements into rows and columns by atomic weight. His table contained many blank spaces and with his organizational scheme he could predict the existence and properties of then unknown elements. His sorting ‘experiment turned out to be just right. It was brilliant and creative chemistry thinking. In a world of razzle dazzle science the act of categorizing elements seems like a fairly low level activity but with huge possibilities for teaching about systematic thinking.