Organizing Your Classroom Library

I'm so excited to be hoppin' along with my Primary Powers gals for this super fun Organization blog hop.

I will be the first to admit, organization is NOT the name of my game. Observe…

OMG. Did I really just admit to this on the world wide web? Classic case of "Do as I say, not as I do" for my students.

Anyhoo, I do my best to keep all my students' supplies organized. One area that is a MUST for organization is my classroom library. I have 3 areas of books in my classroom for my students.

BOOK DISPLAYS
I have two display shelves that I switch out monthly. One of the shelves I use for seasonal books, and the other one has books related to the science or social studies topic we are learning about. I also put our class books here.

The shelves are looking a little bare because my kiddos have scooped up the books and put them in their book boxes :)

LEVELED LIBRARY
We use F&P levels at my school, so on the counter by my windows, I have a bin for each reading level in my classroom.

GENERAL LIBRARY
While my kids all know their independent reading levels, I don't what them to solely rely on their level when choosing books to read. Therefore, most of my books are organized by either genre, series or author.

The smaller black shelf has all of my chapter books on it. These bins I scored from Walmart several years ago, and they're perfect for chapter books!

I have two taller bookshelves that hold my magazines, fiction, and nonfiction books.

So how do I keep all these books in the right bins? I thought that my students would just know that a Magic Treehouse book went in the Magic Treehouse bin, but I was finding books all over the place! So last year I overhauled my entire library and numbered every. single. book. All I can say is THANK GOODNESS for AMAZING parent volunteers!! On the label of each bin there is a number, and I put a rummage sale dot sticker on each book to match the bin. So if someone finds a #14 book laying around, they know to put it in the #14 bin. Problem solved!

I'm guessing I'm in the extreme minority with a hippo themed room, so I've made my classroom library labels a little more generic as a freebie. It's an editable document, so all you'll have to do is type in what you want each of your bins to be called. The labels fit perfectly in the Really Good Stuff label holders, if you have them. For my bins that don't have these label holders, I just covered the entire label with clear packaging tape.

CLICK HERE TO GRAB THE LABELS FREEBIE!

That's all for now! Hop on over to see Deirdre at A Burst of First for your next classroom organization tip!