Classroom Library

So for the past six years, I have struggled with setting up my classroom library. Books everywhere in tubs, racks, and a complete disorganized mess.

Nothing was more frustrating than a week into the school year seeing all the precious books you had spent days organizing being put in the wrong tubs. I would try to get on to kids and rationalize with them: if it's an animal book, put it back in the animal tub. However, that seemed to fall on deaf ears. By about October, I gave up each year. "I'll deal with it next year." I told myself.

Well, six years later I decided to tackle this problem as school let out this year. I was DETERMINED.

So when I was packing up my room this year, I took an inventory of all my books and tubs. I counted every tub and the number of books in each tub, once they were all back in their proper homes. I ended up with 65 book tubs and too many books to total.

I created book tub labels for each book tub. Some people sort by lexile levels, genres, authors, etc. Mine are by topic and authors. This one happens to be "Girl Fiction".

Notice the brown dot on the side? That is the lexile level. A couple summers ago I went through and lexiled every book in my library. Longest. Task. Ever. And then we created a color coding system at my school so it would be consistent from room to room. When our kids MAP test, it gives them a lexile so when they do independent reading, they read books on their level. By leveling all the books, the kids can chose whatever they want, as long as it's their "dot" color. I stick with telling them their dot colors and not focusing on numbers, that way the kids can't really tell too much about each others levels.

I then took this to the next level. I printed matching labels for each book in each tub. Obsessive. Crazy. OCD. Yes, yes and yes. But I am *hoping* that this will make it super easy for the kids to just look at the number and put it right back in the correct tub.

This took HOURS. But I am so glad I did it! Hopefully this will keep my classroom library under wraps this year and many more too come! All 65 books tubs are complete and I am feeling good about it!

How do you organize your classroom library? I'd love to hear your ideas!

Brit :)