Organizing my Library (Days 12 to 14)

This set of three days had more than one purpose, so I've decided to put the days together and write two separate posts focused on my purposes.

First, it was time to fine-tune my library.  The library was already fairly well organized when I "inherited" it from the previous first grade teacher.  Nearly all the leveled books were all in bins and labeled. Although originally the basket colors were "staggered," which I know is a popular way to make multiple colors look planned, however I feel this is less overwhelming.  Primary colors are not part of my color scheme, so I certainly don't want to call attention to them. 

The "browsing library" was mostly sorted in a way that made sense, and every book was labeled with a code that matched the book bin label in order to help children put the books back.

There were some piles of books that did need to be sorted, so I bought more stickers (luckily they're just the standard florescent sort you can get for yard sale prices) and my husband helped me adhere them and sort them into bins.

During this process I started looking at what books I actually had.  I have been perusing Pinterest/blogs/teaching forums to find out what books are popular with first graders nowadays, and putting lots on my Amazon wishlist.  So as I came across books that I knew were important (either on my wishlist or related to content in September) I photographed them.  On day 12 I was able to go home, delete the repeats from my wishlist, and make my first round of purchases.

Unfortunately, on day 13 as we continued to sort, the bins started to overflow.  Since the bins themselves were in rough shape (as were the labels) I created my own labels and replaced half of the baskets.  Since there is so much space devoted to the library I got much larger bins than before.

I also noticed that some of books really needed to be resorted.  First of all, there are probably 8 different bins of animal books.  Dogs and dinosaurs each had their own bins, which was fine.  But then there were Animals Nonfiction, Animals Paperback, and Animals Hardcover.  Why does the durability of the book warrant a separate container?   The next problem was that there were so many books that fit into those 3 categories that they really needed 5 bins. 

So on day 14 I resorted the books.  As a former fourth grade teacher, my first instinct for the nonfiction was to sort them into vertebrates and invertebrates, but of course there were far more vertebrates than invertebrates.  I thought of mammals, reptiles, and so on.  Of course first graders might not related to this distinction.  So in the end I ended up with 4 piles.  Mammals, invertebrates, everything else, and collections.  Since the "collections" were mostly mammals, I combined those into one bin, and the invertebrates with everything else.  I decided to name them Nonfiction Furry Animals and Nonfiction, Not Furry Animals.  We'll see how that plays out, haha.

Before

The fictional animals books were trickier.  I tried to sort them into "fantasy" and "realistic," but found there were so many fantasy animal books that they wouldn't fit into one bin.  In the end, I decided to bite the bullet and keep the "Animals Paperback (fantasy)" and "Animals Hardcover (fantasy)."  I don't love it, but in terms of space and time (labeling wise) it seemed like the best solution for now.

After

The other bin that bugged me was the "We're All Alike" bin. There was one book about languages, two books about Hanukah, and the rest were realistic fiction stories featuring minority characters.  Why were the Hanukah books not in the "Winter" bucket along with the Christmas books?  Why weren't the realistic fiction stories in the "Family, Friendship, and Love" bucket?  This was literary segregation and I was not having it.  It doesn't matter that the FFL bucket was filled to the brim; a bigger bin cost less than $2.

SO.  With my remaining pile of "books that fit into no other category," I created 2 more bins:  Realistic (fiction) Stories and Fantasy (fiction) Stories.  Many of the "Family, Friendship, and Love" could fit into Realistic Fiction anyway.  As could a lot of the animal fiction books.  So the bottom line is, my library at the beginning of my first year of teaching first grade is not perfect.  But I think it was a good effort.






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