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Archive : 2004 : August : 4

Classroom Library
By Erin

Every year, I have the students sort the books. They sort them in any way that they deem purposeful. With my first graders, we had categories like true animal books, animal stories, fact books, community helpers, ABC books,
123 books, fairy tales, Clifford, Amelia Bedelia, etc. We had about 15 to 20 categories. I labeled the categories just what they decided. Then we put a sticker on each books to show the category. (ie purple smiley face for true animal books, green for community helpers). This helped the students put the books back in the right place. During the school year when I got new books

we would add the books to the categories we already had. The students as they learned more about genre and books changed the names of some of the categories, for example the true books about animals basket became expository animal books (non-fiction). By the end of the year our classroom library was awesome. Because the students helped with classifiction and organization of the library they took wonderful care of the books and the library. I have over 350 personal books, which were all in our library all year. They were read everyday. I only had to repair one book. They are stil all in excellent condition. My students would get every upset if someone from another classroom would take a book and not put it away in the right place. This was a very young first grade so I would think that almost any grade could do this. Good Luck!