When I first started teaching, I thought my classroom library had to be organized by subject, topic, genre, and leveled on top of that. So I tried my best to separate and label each book with where it should go. I was so proud of my work. I had all of the tubs filled and labeled and I just knew that my first class of kiddos was going to love and respect it just as much as I did.
Wrong. Not only did books get out wherever and however a kid put them back, but it was hard for kids to find the specific tub. Even with Guided Reading Levels marked on the books, kids weren't matching the letter on the book to the letter in the tub. I do have to be upfront and honest, as a first year teacher, this wasn't just because my classroom library was too complicated. It was also because it was one of the things that I did not spend enough time teaching at the beginning of the year.
My second year, I had to move classrooms, which had me resetting up my library. Again by genre, or popular titles and still by guided reading level. I taught the expectations slightly better, but still same thing. In my third year I moved districts and grades and I just ended up throwing them in tubs. Again, they got put wherever they wanted to put them back at and a lot of really good titles were getting buried in the process.
Last year I knew I needed something different. So I went out and bought a bunch of dot stickers from Lakeshore. They had an entire aisle dedicated to these stickers because they are the ones that can be used for behavior charts. Each tub and each book in that tub had a corresponding sticker. My librarians could now be ANYONE in the class. Non-readers could be librarians because they had to match the sticker to the book. All students were capable of finding where their books needed to be returned to. This was the system that I needed. It is simple and can almost manage itself. In the pictures you will see that I still have written labels on the tun as a general rule (i.e. non-fiction texts, picture books, chapter books, etc.) but this is more to guide kids to books that they are interested in and less about organizing the library.
I hope that this system can work for you too. What tips and tricks do you use for your classroom library?
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