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Organizing a classroom library can be an overwhelming task! (sigh of exhaustion) There are so many questions that teachers ask themselves when preparing their classroom for back to school! One of the biggest questions is…how do I organize all of the books in a classroom library?
Sooooo many things that go into preparing a classroom library for a successful school year. This includes how to organize a classroom library, including using book labels, and creating a system for managing a classroom library.
As an upper elementary teacher for more than 15 years, I completely understand the stress and frustration that comes with a classroom library! Every year I update my classroom library with new book choices and find the most engaging novels for my current students.
When I first started teaching, I found the cheapest book bins that I could and had a very small number of books available for my students. Over the years I upgraded my library book bins (yay for Really Good Stuff) to be longer-lasting and created a collection of over 1100 books! Yes- you read that right! Read on to find out exactly how I organize and manage my classroom library.
When you designate your space for a classroom library it’s really going to depend on your school and your classroom itself. Does it have shelves already built-in? Or will you need to purchase some storage to create shelving? These are the first two things that you have to think about when setting up your classroom library!
Once you determine the space for your classroom library, you need to think about what you need to organize the classroom library. Do you want to use book bins? Or do you prefer to have the spines showing? This is a preference for each teacher. It’s not something that can be determined by anyone but you!
I personally prefer book bins because I want the students to see the covers of the books which is one way they judge if they should read the book. Other teachers I know prefer to show the spine because they want to organize it in a specific way for students or the teacher needs to save valuable space. Setting up a classroom library will take some time, but you can do it!
Teachers always ask what is the best way to organize a classroom library. There are several ways to organize a classroom library. I HIGHLY recommend that you do not label books by level! I made that mistake when I first started in the media center. My school at the time used the Accelerated Reader program. Students lost their love of reading and became very frustrated when trying to choose books to check out.
When I moved to the classroom I decided that was not a great way to organize books and I wanted students to find that love of reading again. So, I chose to organize the books by genre. I printed classroom library labels (courtesy of Ladybug’s Teacher Files) for the front of each basket and the students choose the books that they want to read while also picking a good-fit book. The more student choice involved in reading the more engagement and increase in reading ability!
One tip to make sure you do is to separate your fiction and nonfiction books from each other. I designate one section of the shelves to all genres of fiction. The other section is designated to all non-fiction books. In the fiction section, I categorize books by fiction genres as well as popular series. In the nonfiction section, I divide it into popular series of nonfiction and the rest is general nonfiction. You could make it more detailed for your informational section and divide it into categories, but in the upper grades, I did not feel that was as necessary as it may be in primary grades.
No matter which system you choose to organize your classroom library books it’s going to take time and effort! Once you have that system in place, as you continue to add new books throughout the school year you will have all the necessary tools you need in order to appropriately label the books and add them to the shelves.
Students are always looking for recommendations of what to read next! In the elementary classroom library, I keep continual recommendations for student reading. Some of the recommendations come from me as a teacher and some come from their classmates.
There are so many different ways that you can create a checkout system for your classroom library. This will really depend on your preference as the teacher and what you want the students to do! I’ve used a paper check-out system, an electronic check-out system, and even the honor system. While one system is not better than another, I personally prefer to use the honor system because it saves me time as a teacher from having to continuously manage book check out!
With that being said, I do keep an electronic record of the books that I own so if a student asks for a specific title I can quickly search for it. I used Classroom Booksource as a checkout method, but I switched to keeping the information in a Google Sheet a few years ago. At the end of the school year, I check for any missing books and remind the students and families to check at home for any of the missing titles. If any of the books are not returned I delete them from the Google Sheet or replace them with a new copy.
The final item you need to think about is how the students are going to return their borrowed classroom library books. You can create a cart or basket for returned books and the students can place them in there. You could designate a classroom job for the students to place the returned books back in the appropriate place within the library.
Or my favorite way is to have the students that borrow the book put it back where they found it! Hello, responsibility of all students! Since I use book bins they’re not in a specific order and they can just be placed in a book bin with the same genre label. Or you could create a shelf marker for the students if you have it categorized in a specific way.
You also want to create a system for the students for any damaged books that need to be repaired. Sometimes students don’t want to admit that the book was damaged while in their possession but I always teach them that it’s better, to be honest, and let me know what happens so we can get it fixed or replaced. You could use a basket for a Book Hospital. If it is a simple repair sometimes I will even ask our school librarian to use something to fix it to help keep it in better condition.
I hope you found some useful tips and tricks for how to organize a classroom library. Feel free to check out my posts on Instagram about my classroom and my Mentor Text Monday posts for additional reading inspiration. I’d love to connect and see your classroom library!
Love this journey for you.
-April