Books are Taking Over Our Classroom!

Yes! The best thing about walking back into my room over the summer is seeing the books pile up. The new books I've purchased. The books that the amazing janitors have saved from an uncertain fate from all over the building. The books that graduated seniors return before packing up to leave. When the majority of my books are there, I don't have enough shelf space. And although I do lose some books every year, I still end up accumulating more books than I've lost. So this year, for the first time, I'm starting to actually go through and *sob* get rid of books.

When I started teaching in 2006-2007, my inherited classroom had maybe 50 books. Although they were good books, they typically don't get checked out. Some of them are incredibly old or just plain look awful. In my previous nine years of teaching, I've never gotten rid of them because any time I consider it, I get this voice that says, "This is some student's home-run book. This is the book that will capture that one student and if I don't have it, I won't catch them." So I had to come up with a way to go through these books, but still make sure they had every opportunity to catch a student.

So here's what I'm doing- once a week, I'm going to find three books that probably should be thrown out. (Now, I'll be honest, I'm not actually pitching these books. If they're still in good shape, I'm taking them to my local Goodwill. If they're falling apart, I'm squirreling them away in my craft room for all of those cute book crafts on Pinterest that I pinned and will likely never get around to.) But these three "throw away" books are going to get a book talk. This week, I chose from the horror genre which, despite my kids loving horror in movies, never get checked out. I have two Stephen Kings and The Exorcist. I can tell you for a fact, from the names on the old check out cards, that the Stephen King books have been in the English department at my school since the early 90's. They have been loved and read. But now they're old and torn up, so my kids don't give them a second look unless I can find a way to do it.

After I've described the books, I tell my students that these books will be on the podium for one week. If they're checked out, they will stay, if not, they go. It's going to be that simple. Like the book ratings or the new book previews, it takes maybe 5 minutes of our time. It gets kids to hear about books. This week, one of the three books was checked out already. This was not simply a pleasant aside to our day, it was instructional. My students learned that popular horror books are very often turned into movies, especially Stephen King books and that Stephen King is an incredibly prolific author (and the meaning of the word prolific!)

Update on wait-list books. Check out all these lists! Almost every new book I previewed got a wait-list and they keep getting longer each day!

Note: How do I know just from the names that the books are from the 90's? Are they stereotypical 90's names? (Are there stereotypical 90's names?) Interesting fact-- I teach at the school I attended. I recognize the names. ;)

Coming Soon: How do we track our reading?