Once upon a time, when I first started teaching, I started building my classroom library.
I gathered books from retiring teachers and Goodwill. Throughout my career, I’ve grown my library by using Scholastic Book Club points, visiting Scholastic Warehouse sales, and shopping for specific series lots on eBay. The bins are from Dollar Tree, and they’ve held up well!
I must say – I’m super proud of my library!
My first school required me to have my library sorted by guided reading level. I get that! Students, in order to improve reading skills, should be reading books on or slightly above their instructional reading levels.
My library looked like this for six years… until now.
I noticed this year especially that my students rarely visited my classroom library unless I forced them to “book shop.” They LOVE reading on Epic! where they can easily search and sort by categories.
Plus, as a grow as a teacher, I’ve learned that the most important thing about a child reading is that they are learning to LOVE to read. What if they can’t find a book they love in their reading level basket? I don’t want to be the adult in a child’s life that turns them off of reading.
So, I decided to take on the hefty task of reorganizing my library by categories and genres. The kids helped me brainstorm, and it actually only took a few days to do!
Here’s what we ended up with:
- Short Fictional Stories (aka 5 baskets of picture books)
- Early Chapter Books
- Fiction Favorites
- Magic Tree House (the only series that could fill a basket on its own)
- Fantasy
- Sports
- Silly Series
- Mystery
- Historical Fiction
- Realistic Fiction
- Adventure
- Math
- Fables, Folktales, and Fairytales
- Animal Fiction
- Animals: Nonfiction
- Nonfiction
I added examples to some of the labels to help students out. For instance, Junie B. Jones and Horrible Harry fall under silly series. If you want to see more – or use my labels for your own classroom library organization – you can find my classroom library labels HERE. (It’s a Google Doc, so you’ll need to make a copy to your own Google Drive in order to edit it. Click File, Make a Copy!)
The labels are the perfect size to fit inside the clear pocket labels from the Target dollar spot. That makes it super easy for you to change out if needed, too!
The biggest issue I face now is the book return, because I’ve willingly made the system more complicated. Honestly, kids put books back wherever they want – even when they literally had to match the letter on the book to the letter on the basket – and I’m sick of it!
Until I can come up with a better system, like labeling my books again (which I know will take forever), I’ve decided to create a book return basket.
For now, this will be my job to replace the returned books. I know it’s another thing to add to my plate, but it’s a task I’m willing to take on in order to save my sanity in the name of classroom library organization. Plus, I’m thinking that if kids are finding books they actually love, they won’t be trading out books as often since they’ll be enjoying them from start to finish! (Wishful thinking?)
Eventually, I’d like to train students to be in charge of the book returns. I may train my after school program students, who are the last to leave during dismissal and already file all my papers for me – ha! Or, I’m thinking that I could add the task to my team jobs. We’ll see!
The pink label bothers me a little as it doesn’t match my color scheme, but I hope it stands out enough for kids to actually use it!
Any questions? Leave them in a comment below!
