Classroom Tour!

Every teacher likes a good classroom tour! It inspires us, intrigues us and sometimes even energizes us to try something different or new! I’m going to start off my tour with something EVERY classroom should have: a Class Library!!!

Here’s Mine:

Now, I teach Kindergarten, so my students need to be able to manage my library independently before they are even “readers”, so I have multiple ways for my students to access my library successfully.

Like most teachers, I have book bins (purchased over time from Lakeshore Learning), my giant bins, while on the more expensive side, have lasted me YEARS (I’m talking 6 years so far, and still going STRONG!) So I highly recommend them. Previous bins weren’t as stable, and cracked easily under the load/handling by 5 year olds (we aren’t the most gentle of creatures….)

ANYWAYS, each bin is labeled with a number (1-18), a title/theme and a picture that relates. Here is #12, my Fairy Tales bin with a Jack & the Beanstalk Picture.

Then (fair warning: this is the tedious part…) EVERY book has a sticker/label on it to match. Sure… its a lot of work to begin with, BUT the GLORIOUS part… is that all I need to do (once the kids get the hang of it of course) is pull out the bin, ask a student to shuffle through and take out all the books that DON’T belong… (because you know that always happens) and then have them sort it into the correct bin! STUDENT SORTED… that’s such an amazing WIN!

So check it out: the SAME picture, SAME number, SAME words on the sticker/label as the bin! It’s as easy as it can be…. hopefully (cross fingers)!

Quick side note….. Ms. F’s Favorites… not really Ms. F’s Favorites… more like, I wasn’t quite sure where to put this, didn’t quite fit in any of the other bins… but I still REALLY like the book… so Ms. F’s Favorites it is! OR oh man… that bin is already REALLY full… guess I’ll just put it in Ms. F’s Favorites. The kids never know.. but they LOVE this bin!

So at the beginning of the year the students use mostly the pictures to sort through books. We use the numbers at the beginning of the year with early number identification and matching (WIN!) and then finally, students are able to read the titles/themes of the bins to further explore the books inside!

This is WONDERFUL! It means that ANY and EVERY student who walks into my classroom to interact with my classroom library can be successful… and really, isn’t that just what we all want!!

The bin labels are made on card stock and laminated. The book labels are Avery return address labels.

Check out my pictures, and let me know if you have any questions!