Moving to a new grade level, yet again, and inheriting books from the outgoing 4th grade teacher gave me another chance at getting my classroom library organized in a more meaningful way. I got it about half way there last year, but even with the system I was using, I found that kids kept reading the same series of books over, and over, and over… So, I wanted to organize more by genre this year.
I once again had high hopes for some of the book cataloging apps, and pulled up the Classroom Organizer app that I tried using last year, but still found it too frustrating with the lack of titles in the database. It was also too cumbersome to label each book with level and genre after I scanned it in. Even for the books that I put in manually, it was inconsistent when it came to checking them out to students. So, that app has since been deleted. If only Amazon and Scholastic would get together to create an amazing app to catalog books (already including their levels and genres) and check them out… Ahhhh, one can only dream. Anyway, back to the classroom library.
Looking up every single title in the Scholastic Book Wizard can be quite tedious. My mom made the silly mistake of saying “If there is anything I can do to help you with your classroom, let me know.” She probably thought she was off the hook living hundreds of miles away, but you can probably guess what request came next! I took pictures of stacks of books and sent them off in emails, and magically emails came back giving me the levels and genres of all of the books. After that, I just had to match emails to the piles of books, then put a genre sticker on each book and write the level on the back. This project NEVER would have gotten finished if I didn’t have help! (Thanks, mom!)
I’m pleased with the way everything is set up now. One shelf is baskets of books sorted by genre, one shelf is popular authors and series, and the last shelf is sort of the “Land of Misfit Toys.” There are also a few baskets of non-fiction picture books and informational books. When I created the labels, I changed to rectangles instead of circles, since they didn’t seem to stay on so well last year. I also created dividers for the books that are not in baskets, in the hopes that giving everything it’s designated place will encourage students to put books back where they belong. We will see how long those dividers last, but hopefully this will encourage kids to try reading new books and authors.
