Classroom Library Organization: A Guest Post

 

Unfortunately, school will be starting soon! I’ve loved our non-stop family time this summer. While I’m enjoying these last trips to the pool, I’m sharing this guest post today from Ella Jane.

Hi! I’m Ella Jane, and I’m a teacher and a new blogger.  My friend, Andie, and I share teaching ideas and tech tips at T-Share. I love seeing everyone’s organizing projects!

One of my goals this summer has been to work on my classroom library. This is what I started with:

I have so many books, and they were just shoved in baskets and tubs and stacked on shelves. This is not very convenient when I’m looking for a St. Patrick’s Day book to read to the class!

When trying to figure out what to do with this mess, I looked at ideas on Pinterest, Googled classroom libraries, and asked my organized friend what she does. I came across some amazing classroom libraries online! Books were organized by nonfiction and fiction, and fiction books were broken down by genres, while nonfiction books were broken down by topics. Some had other sections separated by author and book series, and some were even alphabetized by the author’s last name!

I know my organizational limitations, and I just knew that this would not be a system I could manage easily. I also did not want the students to have to spend so much time trying to figure out which book goes where. I decided to start with what my organized friend does…she has colored stickers on her books that represent the reading levels and correspond to the stickers in our school library.

Over the past 15 years, I have labeled my books with Accelerated Reader levels, relabeled them when they changed some of the levels, and then relabeled them when we switched to Scholastic Reading Counts. It gets a little confusing for the students, because there are sometimes three labels on the books, and they are not in any specific spot.  So, I decided to put the stickers on the spines of the books, and add a piece of clear packing tape to make sure they stick.  I also put the lexile and reading levels on the inside front flap, along with the number of points.  Now, I just have to explain to the students where to look for the label and information, and it will be uniform on all of the books.

Most of the time, I will just have the chapter books out for the students to choose from, and I will keep the rest of the books in a different area in the room or back in the closet. Students will still have access to the school library, so they will have plenty of other books to choose from there.

I started organizing the remaining books by topics, so they would be easy to find when I need them.  Now, if we are working on an animal report, I have all of the animal books in one place.  On Groundhog Day, I will know exactly where to find the book to read to the students.  I also have other baskets, such as a big one with all biographies, that I will pull out as needed. One thing that usually keeps me from beginning a big organizing project like this is my need for perfection.  I want it perfect, that gets overwhelming, so I don’t even start. I decided to let go of that and just write the topics on construction paper to make dividers for now. Students won’t be looking through these baskets every day, so the dividers do not need to be sturdy.  It was quick, it was easy, and it is done.

In my new classroom library area, I have the books in tubs that are labeled with colored circles.  Students will be able to easily identify where to put the books when they are finished with them.  Even though some of the old labels are still on the books, they will know to look for the sticker on the spine and the information on the inside flap.  I also have additional books that I will rotate in when they get bored with the ones that are out.

Labeling the books took a lot of time, but now that I have a system that I am happy with, when I get new books, I can quickly label them and put them where they go. It’s an easy system for the students to keep organized, and I will save a lot of time throughout the year not having to search for the books we need.

Thank you for your time, and thank you, Nony, for having me!

Check out more teaching ideas and tech tips at T-Share.