The Classroom Library
Ah, the classroom library. When I moved from Michigan to California, I had over 3,500 books in mine. You can only imagine how happy my husband was when he got the estimate from the moving company on that one. But seriously-nothing in the world makes me happier than thinking about books, buying books or reading books. They are the hub of my classroom, and hopefully are for your classroom as well.
Classroom libraries take forever to organize. It's hard enough trying to decide how to organize it, let alone make all the little labels and posters to guide students around it. I'm hoping this page helps you speed this process up. I've included PDFs I've found to be useful, as well as some links to other websites that talk about their libraries. Because these teachers have a huge investment in their sites, I have included links straight to their sites instead of copying them onto documents.
Level your classroom library with Scholastic's new Book Wizard website. Each of the books in my classroom library has a label on the inner cover that has my name and a space for me to write in the grade level number and the guided reading letter. Not all books will have levels, but perhaps they will be showcased one day, and they will have a label when that time comes.
Book Basket Labels- These were made to go on the front of those small white baskets you can get at the dollar store. Print them on normal paper, cut, laminate and glue to the basket! It's in powerpoint format so you can add, change, delete, etc.
A great way to store picture books is with magazine holders-you can get many of these free from office supply stores (look for the folder section, and cram all the folders into one holder while you steal away with the empty ones...)
You can use wider folder boxes for magazines or for books that you would like covers to show.
Sorry so blurry! If your school has book carts, squirrel them away in your room and use them for your novels. They are PERFECT, and you can roll them out into the hall when you need that space for larger activities (score!).
Creating an A+ Classroom Library-Article from scholastic.com
Classroom Library Center Ideas
Creating Rain Gutter Book Shelves- extremely clever, CHEAP idea
Jan Brett Bookplates- Label with your name and the level of the book
LibraryThing.com- Organize your books and allow students to search using book covers with this amazing website tool.
Book Shelf Labels- I used these labels to help students quickly find the series they want to read, and to find the place to put their books back. I simply cut them out, laminated them and taped them to the edge of shelves. They are small enough to put in skinny shelves. Feel free to replace my topics with your own. The second set of blank boxes was printed out on colored construction paper and used to back the text boxes, as they are slightly larger. You can color code by genre, or do color the topics randomly.
Other Classroom Library Sites
Another Beth Newingham Library website