Billie Wiles November Blog: Routman (2003), Ch. 5: Organize an Outstanding Classroom Library

I chose to read Chapter 5: Organize an Outstanding Classroom Library because at RES we are having Christmas in November.  There are stacks and stacks of  red and white boxes (Christmas colors) in Mrs. Hankins' Coaches Corner.  Everytime I go by her office and see the boxes, I get excited.  Our wonderful PTO has purchased new books for every classroom. I cannot wait until these are unpacked and put into the classrooms.  My students are going to be so excited to get the new books.  Routman suggests having the students help sort and label the books for book baskets so they can have ownership of the books and so they can get a preview of the new books.  One thing I have noticed with my students is when they see a student reading a book, they want to read the same book.  My students are really good about sharing the books they have checked out from the library or chosen from our book baskets.  Sometimes they have a chain of use set up where students have asked to read a book when they finish and other students are in line to use the book.  This has been a very powerful encouragement to my students who have a hard time choosing a good book.  They see how much their peers enjoyed the book and then they want to read it also.

When a students takes an AR test and make seventy or above I announce it to the class by simply saying "Thumbs up for  (student's name)!" and everyone holds their thumbs up for their classmates success with another book.  It does not slow us down or distract us and it is very encouraging to students to read books and take an AR test scoring 70% or above so they can get the recognition.  It has proven to lead other students to read that book because they know their classmate was successful with that book.

I love the idea of using gutters to display books.  I have played with that idea for a couple of years but with the limited space for student/ teacher made charts, it makes space very limited.  In the book they suggested acquiring books through discarded books and used book sales. As a teacher who moved from fifth grade to second grade, I left a lot of my classroom library for the teacher who took my place in fifth grade.  I worked all summer on finding discounted books and free books to begin building my classroom library.  In addition, I bought many used books off of Amazon.  Most of the time the book jacket or cover is damaged and it looks old or not interesting to students.  I have intentionally read my class several of these books this year so they could see how good the book was even though the outside might not look like the most interesting book.  We spent a lot of time talking about not judging a book by its cover and how good the classics are and why they made it to be classics.

I am very excited about getting our new books and adding them to our classroom library.  I think the students will be very excited to see the boxes arrive and even more excited once they begin helping me sort them for our class library.