Allison Catto's December Blog Post #5 - Chapter 5, "Organinzing an Outstanding Classroom Library"

          I have always been fortunate in my teaching career to have a vast supply of books for my classroom library.  I know that the more children read and excellent classroom libraries often lead to the students doing better on standardized tests. 

          Due to my personality, everything in my life has to be organized, including my classroom library.  I agree with Routman in chapter 5 when he states that children read more when they have easy access to books, and the classroom libraries are well-designed, organized, and provide ample books to read.

          One way to improve your classroom library is to find out about the students’ reading interests.  Surveys can be given or simple discussions during conferencing can give you insight to their interests.  Many students like series of books because they learn the characters and find it easy to follow the story line.  Sharing enthusiasm for reading and talking about books will inspire and motivate your students to want to read even more.

          Classroom libraries will vary in many different ways.  An adequate library will have at least 200 books, but an excellent library will have more than a thousand.  As I stated earlier, I’ve always had close to a thousand books in my classroom libraries.  My books are arranged in baskets with color coded labels and stickers for easy attainability.  Students in my class use the Accelerated Reader program, so this system makes it easy and quick for students to pick books on their level and that they are interested in.  Within each level, there are ample books for students to pick from.  I keep all genres of books mixed together in the baskets so there are books that appeal to all reading preferences.  Since nonfiction is often preferred by students, especially boys, I plan on adding more nonfiction selections to my classroom library.  The school is purchasing each teacher 100 new books, and all 100 of mine will be nonfiction.  I think this will really excite my students when they see all of the new books to choose from. 

          One thing I’ve never done in my classroom is “advertise” books.  I do think this would be a good way to get to students interested in books they aren’t familiar with.  I particularly like two ways that Routman suggested to do this.  One way is to create best-seller lists of author and titles, and then share with others in the class.  Another way is to design posters, writing blurbs and reviews, and creating book jackets.  I plan on trying these ideas throughout the year to help motivate my students to read books that they may never have chosen by simply looking in the book baskets.