How do I organize my library?

I have to say that I am incredibly lucky. I got the largest classroom (minus the gym) to call my own. I have the luxury of 6 student computers to make the yearbook and to use as a mini-lab for writing. And I still have a complete classroom desk area surrounded by books. My classroom library has over 1,300 books. This has not come easily. It has taken hard work curating a library of books to create my curriculum. You see, I have no textbooks. I teach all levels of high school English at my rural school- 5 whole classes. My library is my curriculum. Besides my students, it's the most important thing in the room.

How do I organize my books so that we can find them?

I use a simple genre system. I switched to book bins, sorted by genre, last year because it seemed a great way to get my students to really take a look at books. I've found that if I put my book on the shelf, spines out, that students don't really look at the books, their eyes simply pass them. Think judging a book by its cover is bad? My students were judging it by the spine. I don't have enough room to put them all covers out, so book bins work a lot better.

My students can pull out a book bin and actually interact with the books. They see the covers, they feel the pages as they flip from book to book. They are now much more likely to physically hand books to each other with these book bins. They take one or two and gather around them in groups and hand books back and forth. They make recommendations to each other. More books get checked out and the students are much more involved in seeking out books.

I do not put the books in any specific order in the genre bins. My students never worry about putting a book in just the right place which means they re-shelve a book they've decided they don't want much more often than before. I don't put the genre bins themselves in any particular order except to keep like bins together. As my library grows and changes, it's much easier to move around individually labeled bins when I run out of space than it was to re-label shelves in my system before. And the biggest benefit? I can fit more books on my shelves!

I buy the bins for $1 at my local Dollar Tree when I can find them. They don't always have them (and I haven't found them on their website) so I buy a lot every time I find them.

But Mrs. Folkman, you're out of space!

Yes, and this year is the first time I'm really going to need to cull the shelves really well. I have an idea for that which I'll share next week when I start that project. Stay tuned.