Blog Post #5Laurie Smith Routman Ch. 5: Organize an Outstanding Classroom Library

“It is difficult to maintain a strong independent reading program without an excellent classroom library.”  It is important that children have access to many different types of books in the classroom so that they develop a love of them and of reading, but creating an organized classroom library can be challenging. With my 3 and 4 year olds, who are not reading independently yet, it is just as important to have a variety of book genres.  Just because they cannot read yet, doesn’t mean they cannot enjoy looking at the pictures or enjoy having it read to them.  They can still pick their favorites.  I recently received a book order from scholastic and it sat in the box for several weeks before I actually had time to go through it.  December was a busy month.  When I finally went through the boxes of books I automatically started putting them in piles by category.  Before I knew it I had begun organizing my classroom library.  My floor was covered in books and once I start that kind of project, I’m working until it’s complete.  I had several different stashes of books around the room that I included in the organization process.  I decided that for my students, the best way to organize the books was by topic.  I made categories like animals, numbers, colors, shapes, family, school, nature, self-help, etc.  I feel like this is the best way to organize it.  Right now I have the number books on display and the color and shape books in two separate bins labeled accordingly.  These are subjects that we are constantly working on, so I thought I would start by putting those out first.  I have a limited amount of space for my library, so I can only display a few categories of books at a time.  The others I’m not displaying are stored in bins that are labeled accordingly on the shelf by my desk.  I plan on changing them out every couple weeks so that there is always something new to look at in our reading corner.  Routman states that “an adequate library will have at least two hundred books, but an excellent library will have more than a thousand.”   I’m positive I have at least two hundred and that is a good start.  I plan on getting more to add to it over time.  I find at this age, it is more important to have books that peak the students interest rather than have them all leveled, especially since my students are not reading yet.  I am very excited about my small classroom library and I can’t wait to see my students enjoying it as well as how it will evolve over time.  I know it won’t always stay the way it is now because I will add to it and tweak it as my students’ needs and interests change.