Today in my classroom we sorted our class library. This is one of the ways I introduce the students to all the books I have in the classroom library. I pile them all up on a table or two (see the first couple of pictures) and then the students grab a pile or two and start sorting them into genres or topics. While they are sorting they have a blank book list so they can jot down the titles of books they might be interested in reading. When they have sorted their own piles, we discuss the different categories they have used to sort the books, then decide on some general categories to sort them into. (See the next couple of photos) Then the students sort their table books into these categories. Next we put all the books in the same categories together and we reshelve them. I use baskets to make them easier to sort through when they are choosing a book to read. They can take the baskets off the shelf and look through twenty books at a time rather than trying to shuffle through all of them on the shelf. I will take pictures of the restocked library tomorrow.
All in all this was a fairly decent exercise, althugh I found that some of the students really had no idea what constituted different categories and so we had quite a discussion as to what made up the different genres. I think by the end of it they were getting quite tired and some of the books ended up just plonked into the nearest basket. These will be weeded out as we continue to place the books back on the shelves. The great thing is that many of the students have a pile of books on their desks to read or they have quite a list of books they are interested in reading. They also read for 30 minutes today with little disruption.
We talked about doing a reading challenge like I did with my class last year and they are all up for that, so stay tuned for updates on the new challenge.
I discovered that I have approximately 800 fiction books in my classroom library. Aren’t books great!
(via fuckyeahreading)
