Classroom Library Organized!!

Soo as you know, I had to move rooms last week. Luckily, it's not turning out to be as bad as I thought! I actually like this new room better. ANNND one of my awesome second grade teammates helped switch my bulletin board and white board! Literally he brought his drill and 2 hours later VOILA! I definitely owe him big time!

So now that I am feeling better about the switch and am ready to get down and busy in my room, one of my big tasks this week has been my library. Well... here's a little bit how it looks:

 

Looking a little messy right now, but if you can believe it, this is way more organized than last year! This has been a 5 year process, and I THINK (or hope) that this is going to be the year that I've got my system down!!

So how in the world did I organize this? (Even if from the picture you don't believe me!!) Colored bins are the place to start!!!

COLOR	TYPES OF BOOKS
Red	Non-fiction
Yellow	Fiction
Blue	Chapter Books
Green	Books by the Same Author
Purple	Book Series

As you can see I have different types of books housed in different colored bins. It's made my life so much easier! Ever since I had seen Beth Newingham's book labels, I was in love with the idea of sorting books. So from the separating books to go in each colored bin, I then separated them by genre. (My first year teaching I had all my books on one big shelf... took students FOREVER to find a book).

A list of my genres:

1. Many Animals
2. Mammals
3. US & History
4. World History
5. Geography
6. Magazines
7. Pets
8. Marine Life
9. Dinosaurs/Reptiles
10. Insects/Spiders/Worms
11. Plants/Food
12. Earth/Space Science
13. Transportation
14. Biography
15. Math
16. Poems
17. School
18. Silly Stories
19. Mystery
20. Fantasy
21. Realistic Fiction
22. Traditional Literature
23. Fairytales
24. Alphabet
25. Animal Characters
26. Holidays
27. Christmas
28. Monsters/Dragons
29. Seasons
30. Good Character Traits
31. Rhyming
32. Family
33. Friendship
34. Magic Treehouse
35. School
36. Fantasy
37. Mystery 
38. Funny Fiction
39. Peggy Parish
40. Eric Carle
41. Cynthia Rylant
42. Jan Brett
43. Clifford
44. Arthur
45. Little Critter

There's a few more authors/series in there, but that's a pretty complete list!

On each bin I had originally wrote the name of the genre in Sharpie. I found with my second graders that those who struggled in reading really didn't use the genre organization much. And whenever I assigned a librarian (student helper) in the library, I always had to make sure they were higher readers since they had to read where the book belonged. After perusing teachers pay teachers, and seeing Reagan's awesome book labels, I knew I wanted to make some of my own- labels that included PICTURES! That way my developing readers would be able to use the bins so much easier! So here's how my labels turned out:

Now it gets BETTER! Instead of writing inside the book where it belongs, I created labels that have the SAME picture as the bin it belongs to! Now students don't have to be a great reader to help file books back in the library! Great idea right?? (Again thanks to Reagan!!!) Thankfully Avery (who makes the labels) has an online label creator which made making these ever so easy.

You'll also notice a pocket and card. When students check out books from my library, our librarian will take the card out of the book, and place it in that student's library checkout pocket. I wish I had a picture, but basically it's posterboard, with more of these pockets adhered to it. Students write their number on the pocket and decorate it. Then all year the librarian puts the cards of the books they checkout in that students pocket and then puts them back in the book when its returned. Easy way for me to see what students are reading AND keep track of my books!

Now I'm not sure how many of my labels I can share because of copyright laws, but I am going to include the borders I used to make the book bin labels. I used 2inx4in labels from Avery. All you need to do is add a text box and clipart, then print! It'll come out perfectly on the label! I know mine did!

I'm trying to figure out how to share my microsoft word template... but it's not working. Going to definitely keep working on it, but for now there's a copy of the border I used! :)

Here's hoping all this time and organization is going to pay off in the end!

Look for more pictures from my room later this week! :) Can't wait to see the rest of y'alls rooms!