Classroom Library

I mention on a post lately how I spent a lot of time organizing my classroom library. This post will share with you some of the things that have worked. I would love to hear from anyone to add ideas. I have a lot of books in my room. I do put some away, but I don't have a lot of storage space. 

I put all of my books on Library Things it's a site that has a database of all your books. A lifetime membership was twenty dollars. 

I love labels, and my MUST HAVE ones are the Avery 5408 you can feed these right into your printer. I started using these to label my library, but you can use them for everything!!!!! You can find them at Staples.

 I recently watched a video by the Sisters, and they were helping a teacher with organizing her classroom. 

The tip was to have a list of all your books hanging on the wall in your classroom. 

My list is below. 

Give each book bucket a number and put the number on the back of each book. 

 Make time during the week to have kids take buckets out and check for numbers!!!

 You can download the book list below

                                         
                            These are what I call Dot Books. 

They are leveled, and I often suggested for kids you should go shopping in the yellow dot, blue dot, etc. 

The books are stored in ice cube containers; you can find these at dollar stores and sometimes Target.  

This is my nonfiction shelf and math books at the bottom. You can see that I used the ice cube trays here too!! This shelf is not in ABC order.

These are author buckets in ABC order. 
I have the author's name on the corner of the book.

The theme buckets start with A and stay in ABC order until I hit the nonfiction shelf.

For topics and authors that I have a ton of I use these buckets from IKEA. 

IKEA has the best buckets for everything! Great prices too.

This is an example of the labels I use for the big buckets and author labels too.

Student Book Buckets

My goal is for the kids to put books they read with me. I also want them to select some Just Right Books and some Look Books in these buckets too.  

I try to pull books I know I am going to use for mini-lessons

I went to a workshop years ago by Ellen Thompson she shared how to make these flower boxes to store books on the top of your shelves.  If you're interested in making them click HERE.

Just to show what it looks like on the top of the shelf. She also had directions to make one long one that is the size of the two above.

Long List for Library (DR) Book List Two ABC (DR)