Today I wanted to spend some time on the classroom library and more specifically, how to organize it. The classroom library can be one of your greatest assets to your class! It can very easily become your student's favorite spot to go to and spend time, and that is exactly what we want! In order to achieve this though, you have to make sure your library is set up properly. So let's get started!

One of the things I personally like to do when organizing my library is to create a space that makes a U shape. I then put a beautiful carpet in that space and make this amazing little spot for my library. I collect all my books in bins! So I’ll get some plastic bins and I’ll use index cards to label each bin! I’ll label the bins based on the types of books that are in them. So I might have a bin that's labeled “Adventure”. Some other bins that are labeled might be “record books”, “fairy-tale”, “sports”, “silly”, “informational”, “scary”, “drama”, or “classics”. I may even label a bin based on the author. If have a lot of books by Beverley Cleary, I’ll label one bin Beverly Cleary. 

A lot of times I'll do a book talk before my reading workshop and I’ll tell the kids about all the books that are available in the bins just to get them thinking about what's available in our classroom library. As the year goes on and the more I learn about my students and their interests, the more I'll be able to add different bins to my library. For example, if I have a class of kids who are really into horses this year guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to look for as many books as I can that talk about horses. This allows me to start a couple different bins about horses. Maybe I'll start a realistic fiction bin or an informational bin all about horses. For some years I had kids that really got into big-foot and the Bermuda Triangle so I made bins relating to those topics. I then filled them up with as many books, magazine articles, or any material related to those topics. When you cater to the needs of your kids you know your kids will enjoy reading the books! 

I want my kids leaving the year we had together knowing that they enjoy reading, are excited to read, their confidence in reading was built, and they have fun when reading! Reading is something we can enjoy for the rest of our lives! So hopefully you can begin filling up your bins with things that are interesting to your students each year as well. If you're in the search for reading materials for your class check our all my Interactive Read Aloud's.

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*Clipart from A Sketchy Guy. View his store at https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/A-Sketchy-Guy

Happy teaching!
Jen

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