Why is organizing your classroom library important?

Organizing your classroom is important and I’m not taking anything away from that when I say that organizing your classroom library is most important. In lower elementary and upper elementary, we want students to READ. We want them to be able to navigate their classroom library, be able to choose books that are of interest to them, books that are appropriate for independent reading and to be able to return a book when they’ve finished reading it. Without organization, all of the things we want them to be able to do listed above become much more complicated, overwhelming and seemingly impossible. I cannot stress the importance enough! 

 

How I organize My Classroom Library

The way in which I organize my classroom library has worked for me for many school years and I haven’t had to change a thing. Let’s just say, it works! Remember, I teach fourth grade so some of my routines and procedures may need to be altered for lower grades. 

1. I organize by Reading A-Z levels and DRA levels. At my school, we are supposed to have a library that contains both. Therefore, my book bins have reversible labels that on one side have a letter and on the other have a number.

2. I organize my library by genres. We have all different kinds of genres that are mainly chosen by our units of study in ELA, math, science and social studies. For example, we have a Native American book bin, Colonial Times, math, realistic fiction, natural disasters, etc. These bins are pointed out at the beginning of every unit because they are there to support our students understanding of the material. I also have Teacher Read Alouds, literature circle books, poetry, ReadyGEN supplemental materials and more. 

3. I organize books by series. For example, in our classroom we have a Goosebumps series and Magic Tree House series. 

4. Each book has a label. That may sound crazy when a classroom library has hundreds of books. But, it has made my job and my students’ jobs a lot easier. These book labels match the name of the book bin label. The good news is, I’ve already created these labels for you (as that part was very time consuming), to purchase them, click here. 

Xo,