Kelly Schachner Blog #5 December

 Routman Chapter 5

     A few years ago I was fortunate to be the third grade teacher who was selected to be the "model classroom" reading library recipient. I was given approximately 350 books to build my classroom library. Every teacher was to be getting this library (at the time), but things didn't go according to plan and I was the only third grade teacher who received ALL of the books.
    I was also very lucky that I had two avid readers at home to help contribute to even more reading material being placed into my library. I went to my children's bookshelves and cleaned out any books that they were finished reading and added those to my library. There were simple easy reading books as well as longer chapter books.  WOW! Talk about a lot of books! I had nearly every genre covered. I even had an assortment of magazines (Ranger Rick, Nick Jr., Discovery, and SC Wildlife). The students especially loved the magazines! Many of them had never had access to magazines prior to this because at WHES third grade and up are the only ones to be allowed to check out magazines. They were thrilled! They couldn't get enough of them. As a result they didn't last long and were torn up or "missing" after a few shorts months.
     When setting up the library, the students helped classify, sort, and put colored stickers on them with me. We put each genre in a bucket (or buckets) and they were very excited to see so many new and wonderful books. They were so many books and so many different levels and types that nobody EVER complained about having to go to the library to check out books.
     Having access to such a variety of literature right in the classroom ensures that children can find SOMETHING that they will be interested in reading. My current classroom library has book baskets (sometimes more than one) with the following labels: Chapter Books, Easy Readers, Fiction, Science, Social Studies, Biographies, Tall Tales, Fairy Tales, Folk Tales and (just recently) new Non-fiction reading materials.
     The students generally try to keep the books organized in the correct bins, but they are not very good at it. The bins have labels and sometimes they don't want to take the time to find the correct bin and just drop in anywhere! They rush to trade books and occasionally appear to only be browsing instead of reading. Maybe it is because there are too many books??? Is that even possible?