I have bought 300+ AR books for my classroom library and I need help organizing them. Do you organize by genre, level, or author? I would like to organize by genre if possible. I just need ideas where to start. I feel dumb because some books I'm not sure what genre they fit in. I just bought 17 small tubs (every one they had) from Dollar Tree in three different colors to help sort them. I would have bought a color for each genre, but they only had three colors. Any suggestions would be very appreciated.
I just organized my new 5th grade library. I borrowed this idea for organizing books: http://hill.troy.k12.mi.us/staff/bnewingham/myweb3/ I organized by genre. THen I went through and divided them even more. Then, I put colored dots on my books. So, for a fiction mystery book, I put a red dot with a M on the dot. I also wrote the book bin number on the dot, below the genre name. I put my books into those white baskets with the holes from Target. I bought a TON for my centers when I taught kinder (glad they still have some use!) I also downloaded her book basket labels. I did have to make three more. What I did first to start, since I had so many books, I first downloaded Beth's genre posters. I put them on the carpet, and box by box, I unpacked my books and placed them next to the poster. After I had unpacked ALL of my boxes, I went through my books again, to make sure I was happy. THen, I grabbed my tubs. I put the books into my tubs. Once I was happy with that, I grabbed my dot stickers. I placed the dot sticker on the bottom left hand corner of each book, but now I'm thinking that I should have stuck in on the top left hand corner. ANyways I wrote the genre letter and number on each dot. WHen I was done labeling, I packed my books back into their boxes (I'm storing them in my garage for now). But ,I plan to unpack my books again so I can put my property of labels and also, I want to make a library index of all of my books.
This year, I made an excel chart of all the books I have. I just got so tired of not knowing which books I had! I listed the title, author, genre, and then any skills that it covered. I can't wait for the year to start so I know if my hard work paid off!
I don't label mine. I probably should. The kids should know which genre they took them from - and usually do. I have realistic fiction, fantasy, biographies, historical fiction, poetry, reference, history, science, just for fun (I Spy, joke books, holidays, picture books). Some of my mysteries are in fantasy, some in realistic fiction.
Peachy--Thanks for the link to that site! I have just spent the past hour looking at all her ideas and activities! She has really put together a lot of stuff and it is awesome!
My library is divided into Narrative and Expository. Expository books are grouped by subject and narrative are grouped by author (I made labels similar to Beth Newingham's). I keep a variety of levels in each expository box... not labeled simply because I've got too many books and continue to buy more!
Mine are organized by genre. The teacher before me left me all of her books so I've been going off of what she used since she left me over 300 books. I numbered each section and each book has the number on the spine for easy reshelving.
I have a VERY similar method, except my dot stickers are on the top left. The other difference is that I have mainly shelves and just some bins.
Do any of you do anything with your double copy books? I used Mrs. Newingham's method of rubberbanding them together and putting them on a double copy shelf. It turns out I have 60 double copy books!!! :woot: :woot:
Interesting information! All of us at my school pretty much just put our books on the bookshelf and that's that. I had some girls last year that would organize them for me by "girl" books, "boy" books, and "anyone" books. It would be nice to be able to organize this way....But there's a big lack of space for the tubs in my room.
I've been collecting double copy books to use with the reading partners idea. Two reading the same book, responding to it in separate but jointly discussed response notebooks.
