I know, I know. We are mid-way through October and already passed our first nine weeks of school, and I am just now getting things in the classroom settled. But ya know, #teachingin2020. This is the new normal. During my fall break, I had time to work on some loose end projects in the classroom. My boyfriend, also a teacher, came back to help me in the classroom during his fall break and we finally got my picture book library relabeled and reorganized. *Keep reading to get my new labels for yourself!*
My Class Library Before
The system for my picture library has been the same since my first year of teaching in 2020. My room colors at the time were blue with accents of black and white. I got my storage bins from the dollar tree. Coming fresh out of college, I couldn’t afford anything more expensive, but most have lasted all five years. I decided to organize my books by genre/category. I found the colored circle sticker labels at the dollar tree and used numbers and colors to organize the books (more on that below). I created the labels to go along with those on Microsoft Words, and badaboom, badabang, my classroom library set up was done for the next five years.
Why I Changed My Classroom Library
This year I decided to change my classroom library up just a bit for multiple reasons, but all of which were aesthetic. I began at a new school this year and my new classroom is DARK! With no windows, there’s just not enough brightness in the room. I decided that switching things in my classroom to white would help to brighten the room some. I decided to get some more of the bins I used from the Dollar Tree because they had lasted all these years, but this time I wanted to white ones.
The bad news was, so did everyone else! They were nearly impossible to find, and after going to about 7 different stores, I decided to bite the bullet and order them online. Unfortunately in doing so, I had to buy 36 – half of them white and the other blue. I needed about 24 for my current library set up, so I just used blue for the remaining bins.
I also wanted to switch up my labels. they began to look beat up over the years and the theme that I used the I originally made them was no longer present in my classroom. I wanted something a little simpler, just black and white, and with the new fonts that matched other parts of my classroom.
Organizing the Books
As I stated before, the books are organized with circle labels on each book that have a matching circle and number to the bin they belong to. I know there are lots of new ways of organizing, but this method was easy for my second graders five years ago and it been hard for me to find a reason to switch things up. Looking at the books, I began to group them together by category. Then, I assigned each group with a title, color, and number.
For example, for the category “As Seen on TV”, all groups that belong in that group have a red circle in the top right corner with the number 1 written inside. I followed this pattern for all of my books, and because the system is in place, it is easy to add new books and continue to grow my library. I simply have to see which category the new book fits best in, the place a matching colored circle on the top right, and write the matching number. The system is actually so easy to use, that I typically put students in charge of organizing the books and labeling/placing new books into our class library.
Books Label Categories
I have my books grouped in the following categories:
You can grab these classroom library labels for FREE by clicking the image below!
Let me know how you organize your picture books and your classroom library in the comments! Up next will be my classroom chapter book library!
