Well, I am proud to say I survived my first week of school!
I am now officially into my second week and we are having a blast!
I just wanted to drop by and share with you how I completely overhauled my classroom library.
Over the summer, I shared my dirty little secret with you…
Yeah… my classroom library was a disgrace!
It didn’t matter how many times I organized and reorganized (and reorganized…), it always seemed to end up like this… A MESS!
Well, I spent the last few weeks of summer completely overhaulin’ my library…
( work in progress…)
and after carefully sorting and re-sorting
I am so happy with how it turned out!
LOVE! <3
The best part of all?
The kids *ACTUALLY* make the conscious effort to put the books back where they found them!
WHAT?! It’s a miracle!
Ok… here’s what I did!
First… I reorganized my books into new categories. A few examples include:
-Magic Treehouse
-Junie B. Jones
-Chapter Books About Animals
-Non-Fiction Books About Animals
-Non Fiction Books about Insects
– Historical Fiction
-Realistic Fiction Chapter books
-Mysteries and Scary Tales
-Notable Authors
-Classics
-Fables and Fairy-tales
I had few books that didn’t *quite* fit perfectly into categories, so I came up with a
few creative baskets like:
-The Boys’ Only Club (for chapter books with boy lead characters)
-The Girls’ Only Club (for chapter books with girl lead characters)
– Books about School
Now to help my kiddos find books that are their levels, I used the app, “Library Leveler”.
It was SUPER easy to use. All I had to do was scan the ISBB of the book and
POOF!
it retrieved the grade level equivalent, lexile, and the reading level. A few books even had a DRA level attached!
After scanning the book, I wrote down the info on a tag
and stuck it to the inside of the back cover.
To help my kiddos keep it organize (and to help me keep my sanity)
I gave each book and basket a sticker
Now my second graders know EXACTLY where their book goes when they are done with it! PTL!
