Stayin' Alive
I Will Survive
Living' on a Prayer
My summer classes came to end today with the math final I took. Only missed one and I sure do wish I knew which question it was. Eighteen credits completed in the last 6 months. I feel like I can surface for a quick breath of air before another deep dive begins into the abyss of lesson planning and all things school related. I've got a 7 week hiatus until school starts and then soon after classes start up again.
My language arts class required that I complete a literacy project. She didn't care what it was only that it had something to do with literacy and it had to take six hours. I was vegging at my desk one night, looking at the hoards of books I've acquired from the DI, the library book sale, a retiring school teacher, and envisioning the books left in my classroom for me. I had my project.
Organize, label, and level my books.
It was a project I was going to do eventually anyway so why not have it count for something.
I want my classroom to have lots of books for the students to choose from. I once read that a classroom library should have at least 20 books per student but I want as many as I can successfully fit. I came across Beth Newingham’s library organization method on the Scholastic website. She uses the Fountas and Pinnell guided reading levels where the range for second graders is K, L, M. However, I plan to have most of my books in the yellow with books in the red and blue to help students who struggle and students who need to be challenged.
Previously I had done some research on why you might or might not want to level your books. I came away with not wanting to level every book, but to use it as a guide for me to guide students to books that they are interested in and also books that are at their reading level so they don’t get frustrated. If I leveled every book, students might get dissuaded from reading books that might challenge them.
I used a hybrid by using four colored dots to represent the different levels. On these labels I them used a number 1 through 4 based on the different level also. This was a way to let me know what the level of the book was without letting the student exactly know. A student might see a book leveled N and not pick it up because they know they are reading at a level M. Whereas with this system of colored dots and numbers, this same student would pick up a book with a yellow dot and a number 4 and not necessarily know right away what level. As the teacher, I would know that it is a level N but it wouldn’t be as obvious to the student.
I used the Book Wizard* on the Scholastic website to find the levels for most of my books. Some books weren’t on there and some nonfiction books I chose not to level. I also put a label on the inside of the books that said, “From the classroom library of Mrs. Leary” to keep track of my books.
I am not sure exactly what bins and bookcases I might already have available, but I would like to keep my books in bins that are labeled according to what they will find in the bin. Some of the categories to use are Fiction Picture Books, Animals, Chapter books grouped by series, Poetry, Historical Fiction, etc. I printed out some labels for bins.
Each book will also have a corresponding label that matches the bin the book should be in. This will help students know exactly what bin the book needs to be returned to.
I liked how Beth used four different colored baskets for Fiction, Nonfiction, Chapter Books in a series, and Chapter books not part of a series to also guide students in their book selections.
This project is on going. I have several more boxes in the garage to sort through and a whole classroom to sort through too.
*I downloaded the app on my phone which made it so much easier to find books to level. I could utilize the voice to text feature instead of having to type. This made the job easier.
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