I
have a book problem. I buy them constantly - at the store, from Facebook
groups, yard sales, you name it, if I see a good one, I’m buying it! I’ll take
all the FREE ones I can get too! There is no shame in my game! I buy not just
for my classroom, but for my own kids too. (You know where they end up anyways
once they are done with them...wink, wink!) You can never have too many books?
Right? Right? Riigghtt???
I
started out in 5th grade, and didn’t have a whole lot of money to
spend on books, so I did what I could. And you know what, they read them! And
then the pages started falling out and covers got ripped and bent, and I was so
upset. My precious books! And you know you can never tape a page back into the
right spot once its fallen out! I fixed them, and moved on, all first-year
teacher happy.
The
next year I moved to 1st grade and packed away those older books,
and started collecting more age appropriate ones. I remembered the problem I
had the year before, and if 5th graders couldn’t take care of the
books, then 1st graders couldn’t! So, there they sat, looking all
shiny and glossy on the shelf. Sure, I’d let them borrow one every once and
awhile, but never keep them long. I didn’t know any better.
A
friend was our reading specialist, so her and an aide went through the books I
had and leveled and sorted them for me. They sorted the books by genre, then
leveled them using guided reading I think. Seeing them in boxes with cute
labels I had made (pre-pinterest or TpT) made my teacher heart happy. I stuck
with this system for all my 1st grade years. I even started leveling
my kids using DRA (I think), and only letting them pick certain books.
Then
we decided to move back to Michigan after 8 years of living in Florida. I took
a job teaching 2nd grade, and after that year, I decided that system
just wasn’t what I needed anymore. So, I sat down and figured out what I wanted
it to look like and how it could be functional.
I
had so many books, and no way to track them, so they “grew legs and walked out
my door”, and I never knew who had touched it. My kids weren’t sticking to the
levels on their cards, because they saw “better” books in the same genre tub,
and didn’t “pay attention” to the level on it. These were my top problems, so
how was I going to fix it? I started by packing up my books in boxes and
bringing them home for the summer!
I
hope that you will join me next time as I walk through my classroom library,
and how I set it up! Until then, please share with me…..
Do
you have a classroom library problem? Which problem do you have?
a)
I have too many
books and nowhere to put them.
b)
I don’t know how to
sort or label them.
c)
How do I level them?
d)
I don’t even know
where to begin…..
Great adventure awaits you
~Kari
~Kari
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