Classroom Libraries

The last two summers I have been lucky enough to snag myself a pretty great summer job. Coming back this summer was great because I knew all the perks in advance. One in particular could definitely work in my favor; the company has this little program they call the "bulletin board" which is similar to Kijiji or Craigslist, but safer (in my opinion) because you like to think you can trust your co-workers! So coming into the workplace this summer I knew that I wanted to use the bulletin to my advantage! Anyways, I posted that I was looking for childrens books. Having done my intro field experience and seen the vast number of books that my mentor teacher had in the classroom, I knew I had to get a kick start! No way could I afford to stock my classroom library all at once. So I posted a little ad, and low-and-behold, the responses came pouring in! "I had my son clean out his closet..." "My daughter wants to buy a new Ipod..." "We just cleared out our garage for a big yard sale..." and they dogpiled on. Once I dug my way out of the mountain of books dumped on me (for a VERY affordable price!) I thought "OK, NOW what do I do?"

I rent a room in a small, 1940's style house... with 6.other.people. Its cramped. I barely have enough room for a bed, dresser, and some storage. I dont even have enough room for my OWN books, let alone five boxes of books for my future classroom! Whether he likes it or not, my boyfriend has kindly allowed me to store the boxes in his room at his parent house (nobody uses it anyways!).

So now Ive got all these books, what am I supposed to do with them? My mentor teacher had his all catalogued beautifully, they were organized alphabetically, but they were also scored by reading level. I had no idea how to even start something like that!

So first off I perused the web. I found a lot of positive feedback about an app called Delicious Library.

http://www.delicious-monster.com/get/

So I bought it. I cant remember what it cost- about $25 Id say, and downloaded it onto my Mac. This program is amazing. You just use the camera to scan the barcodes- you dont even need to buy a scanner if you have a camera (scanning worked for probably 90-95% of my books), the rest I had to type in manually, which was a little tedious, but not the end of the world. Now I could sort my books by all sorts of different genres (alphabetically, by author, by subject, by theme and on and on and on). You can also upload your class list (as I dont currently have a class, I believe but am not certain, that this must be done manually) and document who has borrowed what books! You can set due dates, and the book emails you & the culprit when books are "over-due." Once again, pretty sure this has to be done by you (Ive seen other programs that allow the student to check out their books) but seeing as my plan is to teach lower elementary, Id be doing it myself anyways. This was amazing!

Now Im on to my next challenge: Levelling my books. Let me tell you. I have done my research over the last few days. And its not as easy as it might sound. There are like, 50 different methods of labelling books!



Scholastic Book Leveling Chart
http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/classroombooks/browse_level.asp

Too many different programs to count! From what Ive read, some school districts prefer you use specific labelling methods. Others arent quite as picky. I have no idea what is best. At this point, Im thinking of labelling them using ALL the methods I come across... Ill keep you updated on how this goes.

Feel free to let me know if you have any advice on the topic!