4 Easy Tips for Managing Your Classroom Library
When I dreamt of becoming a teacher as a little girl, I always thought about my classroom library. I wanted it to be a place of magic and wonder for my students to lose themselves in the perfect book. Moving into my first classroom, I quickly realized that was not so easy! I sat on the floor surrounded by one hundred books and had no idea how to put them on the shelves. I didn’t know how to facilitate students enjoying them either.
Let me give you some easy tips that I learned over the years to help make the magical classroom library that you imagined a reality! There is also a FREEBIE below!
1. Organizing Your Classroom Library Books
Raise your hand if you have reorganized how you have the books in your classroom library more than once, twice, three times? Yeah totally guilty I have reorganized at least 3 times! One year I did it by lexile number, another by author, one year by genre, one time by category, it goes on and on! I finally found what works for me!
- As shown above. I have one of those stickers on every one of my books. They help to identify that they belong in my classroom library and they show where the book needs to go. I use these Avery labels because they have free templates on their website that I can type onto then print!
- On the inside of the book, I have the lexile written. It is in a discrete place that students will not notice unless we have talked about looking for that when choosing a good book. Some groups of students I have had benefited from choose their own books rather than me encouraging a certain lexile level for them. Other years, students ask for challenging books or for recommendations on their level, so this comes in handy!
2. System for Borrowing & Exchanging Books
My students are assigned a day of the week Monday- Friday to “shop” for new books. During SSR they know if it is their shopping day they can exchange their books and the other days they get to enjoy the books they have in their book bags. This helps to eliminate the students asking to exchange everyday and promotes them to choose books that are interesting to them and they will want to read for multiple days. I keep a schedule posted on the wall so students remember what day they exchanged books. Grab it for FREE here!
We talk a lot about choosing just right book strategies. I also have SSR conferences with students frequently to check in on how they feel about reading independently and if they need help choosing an appropriate book.
3. Storing Your Classroom Library Books
- The book bins pictured above are a lifesaver!! They are extra sturdy and the perfect size to fit a TON of picture books or chapter books.
- Each book bin is labeled with a category label and a number. They have nothing to do with each other haha the category picture is to help students navigate the library and find the type of book they are looking to read. The number connects to the number sticker on the book to help with students putting away the books after they read them.
4. Students Borrowing Books
I give each of my students a Dr. Seuss tote to keep the two books they borrow from our classroom library each week. I got the totes in the Target Dollar Spot a few years ago but found these similar bags on Amazon. My students keep these book bags in their cubbies. This helps to minimize books getting lost or messed up in their desks.
We talk about, model, and practice how to take books from the library and how to take books from the classroom library. We also talk about the importance of caring for a book and ensuring it does not get messed up. I use a strategy called interactive modeling to teach students how to look through the library, pick a book, and care for it while they borrow it.
When you have a system and procedures for how to manage your classroom library and caring for the books, your students care to help you maintain that. I hope that these tips help you to get started making procedures for your classroom library!
Affiliate links were used in this blog post.
