Linnaean Fastener Project

Our Human Origins students were handed a bag of various fasteners (nails, staples, screws, etc.) As renowned taxonomists, their task was to develop a classification scheme that meets the established rules of the Linnaean system.

They could use whatever rationale they wanted to classify the members of the fictional kingdom, Nectii, such as form, function, or whatever they’d like, but they had to be prepared to defend their classification scheme.

They made tree charts of their classification schemes, and provided descriptive names for each category: class, order, genus and species. They also had to provide a written explanation of why they chose to categorize the objects as they did and what their rationale was for grouping some objects together and excluding others.