Setting Up Your Classroom Library

Organizing and Maintaining your Classroom Library

 

Setting up (or in my case moving and re-organizing) your personal classroom library can be a daunting task, but once you put in the hard work, you are rewarded throughout the year with the ease of maintaining it. In my opinion, the best way to start is by investing in sturdy book baskets. These can be purchased at the dollar store or anywhere home organization items are sold. My white bins are from Walmart and were not as cheap as I had hoped. Use labels and adhesive pockets, found in office stores (see picture below) to divide books by category. Beth Newingham created fabulous labels ready to print.  To level my library, I used Scholastic’s Book Wizard. The task is a tedious one as not all books are found using this tool and depending on the number of books you have, it can take a very long time. Hence, it is a good summer project. Lastly, inventory your library using “Classroom Organizer”, an app by Booksource. Its online component allows you to keep a running list of all of your books and enables students and colleagues to ‘check out’ your books.

Divide and categorize books to determine which labels you will need

These are the adhesive pockets I use. Ask around at your school to see if you have an account set up with Office Depot, etc to get them cheaper than on your own.

My library is still in the works but here are a few pictures of the progress:

Beth Newingham and self made labels, 3×5 adhesive sleeves (Office Depot purchased a few years ago)

Still in progress

I keep chapter books on separate shelves and are categorized similar to my picture books. I will add photos as that section of my library is complete. All of the links in this post can be found here under the Professional Links page at the top of the blog page.