Beginning the Classroom Library

Happy Monday!

Today was a rainy day here, so I decided to get some serious work done on my classroom library. I am trying to set up an organized library for my students.  My main goal is to have a set up where students can easily find books and put them back...in the same place.  Since it's my first year, I'm not quite certain what exactly will work for me.

The past five years (since I knew I was going to be an elementary teacher) I have been building my classroom library.  My collection includes books from prekindergarten levels to Newberry award-winning chapter books.  I LOVE the clearance rack at Half Price Books.  However, my favorite stores to buy books is thrift stores.  My best finds have probably been at Goodwill.  Most of their books are priced from 49 cents to a few dollars, so a few extra bucks can go a long way.  Plus my mom is a school teacher and has been a major donor in my collection.  THANKS MOM!!!

Anyways...after looking at Pinterest and many blogs, I came to a decision.  I am going to use book bins with labels.  I have considered book bins for a long while, yet I have also been really uncertain of how to use them.  Then I saw this post on Foreman Teachers blog and fell in love.  I don't have 3,000 books or room for 3 libraries, but I love the look and organization.  So I got started...

Scholastic Book Wizard and Excel

First I created an Excel document and made a table to include the author, title, category label, grade level, and genre.  I used the Scholastic Book Wizard to find the grade level and genre. I don't plan on including the grade level on anything that my students will see.  I just really wanted a way to monitor who's ready what level comfortably.

Book Bins

American Girls Book Bin

These are my beautiful book bins from the dollar store.  I got 14 in purple and 14 in green to compliment my monster theme.  I've even created monster themed book bin labels, but I haven't got around to printing them out yet because I'm still not sure how I will end up sorting the books.  I know I want to sort the fiction books by series, author, and genre.  However, I ended up with tons of nonfiction books as well.  I'm still not certain what the best way to sort them will be.  It will probably make more sense once I open the rest of the boxes. I only made it through 2 today with 10 more to go.

After pulling off price tags, typing, and sorting I am excited to finish.  I'll keep you updated as it comes along!