Classroom Library Tour

I love children's books. I don't know about you, but I love to collect, thrift, buy and even steal a good children's book! (I'm only joking about the stealing... unless we count stealing the idea!) Lately when I travel I come home with a new children's book. And often a matching stuffed animal to go with it! My classroom library is my pride and joy. Today I'm going to show you how I organized it, what's in it and how my kids keep it organized by themselves. Oh! And also what I've been adding to it!

I was super lucky and first got my library from a couple of places. The teacher who retired from my classroom left me all of her books. I also had a good friend who collected a bunch of great books for me. And I bought a bunch at garage sales. However, when it started putting all of these books in my classroom, I had no idea where any of them were! I'm sure you've experienced this issue as well. So last summer I began going through each book. This is my routine for each book:

1. Wipe down the book and make any repairs.

2. Look up the reading level. I use www.arbookfind.com and look up the AR book level, quiz number and AR points. Sometimes I have to go back to where I purchased the book to find it.

Then I write in the inside of the cover like this. If the book doesn't have a level, I just leave it blank.

3. Add a kid-friendly label and my last name on the cover.

4. Log the book in my database on Google Drive.
5. Put away the book in the correct place. If I have new books from my Scholastic points, sometimes my students will put them away for me!

That's exactly what I did for the 1000+ books I already had in my collection and the same process for any new books I get. My actual classroom library has three major sections to it: student's book bins, leveled books and books by topic/theme. Each section has its own labels, so they are easy to put away. I teach first grade, which means my first graders can't necessarily read in the beginning of the year. All my labels only have numbers or a picture. I purchased this label set, but I also made some of my own. 

Sometimes a bin has multiple labels. The students don't seem to have any difficulty with that though. My first two shelves are all leveled books. The last shelf has all of the books for topics/themes. I will write a blog post about how I covered the ugly metal shelves in wrapping paper.

Finally, each student has a book bin for fine books that they are reading. Each bin has the student's number on it. You can grab those for free here.

My classroom rule is that they can keep up to five books in their bin at any given time. They have to return the stuffed animals each time though. I just keep those in a plastic treasure box. I hope to upgrade that to a suitcase soon though! Once a quarter I have them completely empty their book bins. I also personally go through the books and put away any the student's couldn't find.

Finally, there are a couple of fun and a couple of practical items in my library. On top of the short bookshelves are two bins. A doctor's bin for students to put any damaged boss so they can be repaired and a bin for putting books that you couldn't find the spot for. It's the librarian's job (one of my classroom jobs) to put these books away at the end of each day. On top of the taller bookcases are new books or books with matching stuffed animals. I also have globes to go with my room's travel theme. Finally, the best part are my light up READ letters. These are just a battery pack and I turn them on for silent reading time. You can get similar ones here.

Just in case you thought this all happened overnight, here was my mess while I got organized!

That's my classroom library! I hope you enjoyed the tour. Tell me what you have in your library! How is it organized?