Your library is one of the most important features of
your classroom. We spend lots of money collecting wonderful books, so it’s
important to have a good organizational system in place for our students and
for ourselves. A good organizational system will help make your books more
usable.
I've been asked by several colleagues for advice on organizing their classroom library, and I've seen lots of questions about it online. When I started thinking about how I actually did it, I was pretty surprised.
Classroom libraries are always growing. It’s best to have an organizational system
that allows for growth. I used my knowledge of children’s literature,
elementary curriculum, and teacher preferences to design this system of
organization.
I started out by creating a concept map. This is how my mind works.
 |
| Click here to get a better view! |
See why I was surprised? It looks pretty overwhelming. My goal is that it will all makes sense by the end of the post! Don't worry, you won't actually have all those categories.
My rule of thumb is to have between 20-50 books in a category. I store them in baskets and crates. Since I have such a large volume of books, I aligned them to the 6 week themes in my reading curriculum. I rotate my books every 6 weeks. If there’s an extremely popular category (like Dr. Suess) it will stay out longer. I assign a number to each category; then I put a sticker on every book with the category number. By clearly labeling the books, I make sure it’s easy to replace them. I can easily give this task to any student with confidence. It took me forever, but I’m so glad it’s done!
I also recommend getting a stamp with your name on it
from an office supply store.
With my system, the seasonal category trumps all others. I use this rule when sorting all my other files as well (computer, Pinterest,
centers, etc).
One thing you will have to decide is how to classify
books about all the seasons I put these with my science books, but I could see
the logic of putting them here. I rotate these books according to the season. I
break down some of my seasons into smaller categories.
If you don't have many of these, just call them "seasonal," otherwise, make a category for each season. Continue breaking the categories into more specific groups until they are manageable.
 |
| Concept map pictures can be found in this Google Doc. |
Most reading experts advise organizing books by topic
rather than by level. My system is topic based, but it does allow for a small
section of loosely leveled books. Primary teachers often have a collection of
very simple books for students to read independently. These books have strong
picture support, patterns, short sentences, or decodable text. It makes sense
to keep these together. This is supported by the 2 Sisters (developers of CAFE and Daily 5, see the blog post and video listed below). Primary teachers may also have some students reading
chapter books with no picture support. Since these texts aren’t accessible to
most of my students, and I don’t have many of them, I keep them separate.
I have debated about what to call my easy readers. One
of my colleagues told me she calls her books “hard,” “harder,” and “hardest.”
She talked about all kids wanting to think they are reading hard books. I used
this method for a while, but too many of my students were intimidated by the
word hard, so now I have an “easy” basket.
Regardless of how you choose to label any books you want
to level, experts advise organizing the majority of your classroom library by
topic.
Fountas and Pinnell (see page 14)
Most teachers develop collections of authors and
characters they and their students love. I have a basket for favorite authors
and a basket for favorite characters. I also added one for teacher favorites
this year because I just wanted them to be accessible all the time. I didn’t
want to have to dig at all. If I have a sizeable collection, I separate that
author/character to their own category.
I use the basic subjects of school to help me determine my big categories. I do not strictly sort books by fiction and non-fiction, but I did design my concept map this way because I thought it was helpful. If you have a very small library, you might want to be clear about fiction and non-fiction, but with a large library, I like to be a little more relaxed. I look at the content of the book to decide where to place it. If a book has a dog in it, but the book is more about being a friend than being a dog, I would put it in the “friends” category. If a book is about a pet dog that goes on a fictional adventure, I’d probably put it in the dogs category.
If I am teaching about fire safety, it is convenient to
have Daisy the Fire Cow in the
same location as a book about what it is like to be a fire fighter. This sets
me up to discuss the differences between fiction and non-fiction, and it makes
it easy to find books for compare/contrast lessons.
I suggest beginning with these categories: science,
social studies, health, language arts, math, fiction
Science: the first way I divide science is living vs.
non-living. Chances are you will want to do this right at the beginning. One of
the trickiest areas of sorting is where to put books about habitats. Generally,
they would go in science under living things.
 |
| Concept map pictures can be found in this Google Doc. |
Social Studies: This is a very broad area. Books about
maps, landforms, people, sports, arts, communities, and history all go here.
 |
| Concept map pictures can be found in this Google Doc. |
Health: I put the topics covered by elementary health
curriculum here: safety, mental health, the body, food, and social skills.
Language Arts: ABC books, books about being a writer, books to help you teach about language go here. This is also where I would put books I like to use as mentor texts. It just makes it easier.
 |
| Concept map pictures can be found in this Google Doc. |
Math: These are easy to identify for the most part.
Remember the point here is for you to be able to find and use books. If there’s
a book you like to use in association with a math lesson, it should go here.
Fiction: this will be your largest category. I put songs
and poetry here, they will probably be sorted out later. Honestly, I try to put
books in other places if I can. For example, a book like Tacky would go in with
my social skills or favorite authors section rather than my fiction section.
Fiction is harder to sort, so if a book fits somewhere else, I put it there!
 | |
|
I think fiction is hard to sort! The obvious method would be to sort by genre, but then I end up with really large sections of fantasy and realistic fiction. Additionally, I'm not quite sure what to do with stories that would be realistic except that they are about a family of otters. The big categories I decided on are People Stories, Animal Stories, Fantasy, Rhythm and Rhyme, Humor, Folktales, School, Movies and TV. Most of these categories can be broken down further. Take a look at the outline in my downloadable guide.
If you followed this procedure, you have your major categories established. The number of books in each category will vary based on the size of your books and the size of your container. For optimal use, you want students to be able to flip through the books easily; I think 20-50 books is a good size. For more detailed listing of the sub-categories, get this outline (and concept map sections).
I tried to make sure I had lots of subcategories for each major category. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone to use all the categories I include in my concept map, but teachers tend to acquire large collections of books related to the topics they teach.
This year I'm adding two categories: new books and book hospital. When I get new books mid-year, it's hard to find time to categorize and label them. I think a new books box will get them into circulation faster. Hopefully giving the students a book hospital will prevent them from interrupting me to tell me about a damaged book.
This post turned out to be a bit more involved than I'd originally planned! If you found it helpful, I'd really appreciate hearing it in the comments! I created some labels to go with all these categories. The product covers much of the same information in this post, and it includes over 200 labels. There's also an editable page if you need to add anything.
The outline with the concept map pictures that I've mentioned several times also includes this little quick guide.
If you found this post to be interesting or fun, I'd love for you to connect with me!
Great post! You did a lot of work and really broke it down. How and where do you store your out-of-rotation books? I've heard the easy books called "everybody books". Meaning "everybody" can enjoy them (not too hard). When I was in the classroom (4th grade), I kept a basket of these easy readers out. I didn't label them anything.
ReplyDeleteMy Bright Blue House
Wow, you've put a lot of thought and effort into organizing your library, and I love that you've laid it all out so others can too. This was a great read, and you've motivated me to start working on a post about my organization system - which is completely different!
ReplyDeleteWhoa, you have been busy! Subject is important to me, too. And bins... I have many, many bins, some labeled, some memorized. All. Over. the Room. :) Great post. Kathleen
ReplyDeleteKidpeople Classroom
This was a great post. Well thought out. I know I will be referring back to this next year when I am back into my own classroom again. Thank you so very much for sharing this. I found this so very helpful.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for all the time you put into sharing this with us! What a wonderful post!
ReplyDelete