Blog Post #6 Chapter 5 - Organize an Outstanding Classroom Library- Samantha Guest

Reading materials are available in almost every part of my classroom. No matter what center they are in or what activity they are doing, they are almost always reading. The chapter says that the availability of reading materials greatly impacts children’s literacy development. I was happy to also read that books contribute more strongly to reading achievement more than computer software does. We read a lot in my classroom. We complete a shared reading activity every day. We read in the reading center every day. We also read during independent reading time at the end of the day every day. I usually have books out on a variety of different reading levels. Some of the books have more pictures and colors, and some have more words. I try to also put out books in the library that go along with our unit or the theme for that time. I also have several class books that we have made together because the children love reading them and looking at our work. I try to read as many books as I can from our classroom library so that the students can then retell the story by themselves. This way they know all about the book and are way more interested in reading it. The chapter mentions that we need to ensure that students have books at home to both borrow and keep. I make sure that they have books by making them with the class about once a week. We will make paper emergent reader books at school that the students read, color, and take home to read again. For example, last week we made a book called My Jj book. I also will provide beginner books called BOB books for my students to borrow and practice reading at home. I have already seen a tremendous amount of success through doing this. The chapter also says to provide a lot of choices of books and I definitely put out as many books as my baskets will hold to give them lots of options. The chapter also talks about teaching students how to care for books, and with 4 year olds I have definitely had to do this. I have modeled how to “nicely and gently” turn the pages and hold the book. We have discussed how special and great these books are and we want them to last a long time so we have to take care of them. By now, most of them have learned how to do this. We also have a lot of “reading buddies” in the reading center, which are small stuffed animals that the students can hold on to as they read. This helps them to feel more comfortable reading and it helps them to enjoy reading more!