Fast forward to me now going into my seventh year (crazy how time flies!) and I am moving to a new city along with my five IKEA plastic bins of books, four bookshelves, and countless dollar store bins. Is it a lot to haul them around? Yes, yes, and yes. But to me, having students excited about reading these books makes it all worth it!
So exactly HOW do I organize these books? I've researched soooo many ways and read many articles and have come to the conclusion that the way I organize my class library now works best for me and more importantly, my students who will be reading these books.
Many teachers organize their class library by reading levels, whether that be AR, Lexile, Reading A-Z, etc. There are a million programs that help teachers choose books for students based on their instructional level. That's exactly what those programs are designed for: to help teachers for instructional purposes, not really for students when choosing a book to read independently. Of course, as the teacher, I do choose books for my students for whole group lessons and differentiated small group lessons by their current reading level, but not when it comes to the classroom library. That's their time to choose a book to read based on their interest level and their own ability to realize whether or not a book is a "good fit" for them. When I introduce my classroom library expectations to students, I also go over how to choose a "good fit" book for themselves using the I-PICK strategy from the Daily 5 program that many teachers follow. This is also when I introduce various GENRES,which is how I organize my classroom library!
I use these emoji labels I purchased from TPT HERE. I printed, laminated, and hot glued them to dollar store bins. From there, I simply placed my books in the bin that went along with the label. I found it also helps to separate the picture books from the chapter books just to keep things looking a bit neater! I also bought genre posters here for students to refer back to when choosing a book HERE and posted them up on the wall in the library for easy access. When a student asks me what a certain genre is, I simply point to the wall so they get used to referring to the posters instead of me lol. The emoji labels comes with the following 16 genres if you want to purchase, or create your own:
- Fiction
- Nonfiction
- Sports Fiction
- Autobiography, Biography, and Memoir (one label)
- Realistic Fiction
- Historical Fiction
- Mystery
- Science Fiction
- Fantasy
- Animal Fiction
- Poetry
- Greek Mythology
- Graphic Novels
- Adventure Fiction
- Traditional Literature
- Informational
Happy Library Organization!
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