Organizing a Classroom Library

So I've been building this blog post for a while now, attempting to collect pictures and stories from my friends who still teach to show you examples of classroom organization of books. It's interesting that the more people I talk to, the more I realize there are many similarities in how we have organized our collections. This could be because I tend to seek out teachers who share the same philosophies I possess or perhaps because our organization methods are just that good. I'm kind of hoping it's the latter.

Before we talk about organizing the physical texts, let's address how to obtain them. I had been a children's book collector for years, so I had several boxes of books to move into my classroom when I began, but I realize not everyone wants to collect children's books (relatives do begin to give you strange looks when you request the latest Kevin Henkes for your 18th birthday) and books are expensive! So what to do?

My thoughts:

1. Make friends with your local library. In Bloomington, we are fortunate to have the Monroe County Library Friends of the Library Bookstore. When the librarians take books out of circulation, they send them to the bookstore to be sold. This means the books have been well-loved, but you can obtain a hardcover of superior library-grade quality for a mere dollar. They tend to have a decent selection most of the time - I have walked out with armfuls of books one visit and nothing the next - and the books come fitted with snot guards already. (Snot guards are what my kiddos called the plastic wrapping libraries put on the books to protect them while being enjoyed.) They are open on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday - for hours, check their website. It's a great way to get good books into your classroom while supporting the local library.

Other civic institutions also have books sales throughout the year, including the Red Cross. I've never been to the Red Cross books sale, but I hear it is amazing.

2. Book orders are a pain in the rump. Collecting money, making sure you don't lose the money, tallying up orders, sorting the orders once they come in: it all takes time, time that is valuable and could be spent doing other things, like lesson planning or reading a book yourself. There are the upsides, though: book orders provide low-cost books to your kiddos and their families and they also award you, the teacher, points for doing all the work. These points accumulate and can be redeemed for books in the book order, classroom supplies and other various goodies. Keep in mind that anything non-book takes what seems like forever to collect enough points for, but I found myself spending them on guided reading book sets and big books quite a bit. The big book club (the PC name for book orders) is Scholastic. When you get your first classroom, sign up.

3. Think alternatively. These are some other methods through which I have procurred books for my classroom: I had a lot of dietary restrictions in my room, meaning that regardless of what the caregivers sent in, not all of my kiddos would be able to enjoy the treat. At the beginning of the school year, I sent home a note explaining that due to the diets of my kiddos, I would not be able to have treats in the classroom but they were encouraged to send in a book in honor of their child's birthday. I would read the book to the class on their child's birthday, place a special sticker in the book to designate that it was donated for their child's birthday and place their birthday picture in the book as well. For kiddos who did not come to school with birthday books, I kept a stash of them in my desk drawer, purchased with those bonus points I referred to earlier.

I sent home another note right before Thanksgiving, asking caregivers to think about donating supplies or texts to the classroom rather than buying a present for me, if they were thinking this way at all. While I appreciate them, there can only be so many #1 Teacher mugs in my cupboard and if the teacher across the hall has the same mug, one of us has to be number two. I found that parents appreciated a list of things needed in the classroom - it was more helpful to them to buy something that would be used by all the kids rather than just myself. On the day before break, individual kiddos would open up their presents and show the class new glue sticks, glitter gel, and books.

Okay, so there are some options to persue when bringing books into your classroom. Be picky - don't let just anything in. Use your resources wisely as you only have so much space and so much time. This is the first thing I notice about the classroom libraries of my friends: we don't just let anything into our classroom.

Organizing the books in your room is a matter of personal taste. You want think about several things when putting together your system:

* How will student use the books?
* How will they keep them - in their desks, in their book bins?
* What can you get away with in your physical space?
* What will be best for instruction?
* What materials do I have to organize them with? (Baskets, bins, etc.)

For myself, I put my books in groups based on several factors: author studies, topics, genres, series and favorite characters. I found my kiddos were overwhelmed, as was I, by the sheer amount of books in my classroom. I began to rotate the books through the library - one the first school day of the month, I would introduce the new book bins (Sterilite baskets I bought at Target) and we would look at the contents. It kept them excited about the classroom library and ensured they would not be bored. It also reduced the amount of books in the classroom kids and had to manage. If a child took a particular shine to a book and the end of the month was approaching, I would allow them to hold onto it. I'm not that mean.

Students would select books in the morning while getting their backpacks taken care of, before starting writer's workshop. My kiddos worked with book bins, cheap magazine files I bought at IKEA. On the first day of school, they decorated the outsides of them and got to take them home at the end of the year. The rule was they needed to keep eight books in their bins at all times: three leveled texts and five enjoyment texts.

Which brings me to another point: I had multiple libraries in my classroom. The above described the general classroom library. I also had a guided reading leveled library, collections of single-titled leveled books, for students to access, as well as a teacher-only library filled with anchor books for writing and reading lessons. I moved to the teacher-only library after never being able to find my anchor texts in the general library or having to take them from a kiddo who was enjoying them.

This is a lot of information on classroom libraries and doesn't begin to cover it all. Since my fingers are beginning to hurt from writing, here are some links to explore:

Mandy's Classroom Library

Tips for Organizing and Managing Your Classroom Library

ProTeacher Discussion Thread on Library Organization

Scholastic: Creating Your Classroom Library

Happy Internet surfing!