How I Organize My Classroom Library | FULL TUTORIAL

hello there and welcome back to my channel I have a super exciting video a highly requested one today I am going to be showing you how I organize my classroom library instead of just showing you the finished product I'm going to take you step-by-step how I take a big pile of books and get it organized into my classroom library in one of my last vlogs I showed you all a sneak peek at my updated library labels I first created these about five years ago and they were well overdue for an overhaul but today I'm gonna really take you step-by-step through the process first I did want to show you just a brief overview of how this system actually works especially if you did not see that prior video first of all I do store my library books in bins now I have a couple of different reasons for this first of all my library shelves are very deep and if I stored my books spine out I would be missing like half of the shelf so using these nice long bins allows me to use a lot more of this space on the shelf plus I have just found with a lot of my reluctant readers you know those kids that don't want to pick up a book it really helps for them to be able to see the cover of the book instead of just the spine sometimes the artwork on the cover will help get their attention and make them want to pick up a book now I do my system based on these symbols so you will notice the actual bin has a symbol this one for example is a star and then every book that's in that bin has the exact same symbol on it this makes it super easy for my students to maintain my classroom library and keep it organized because they know that the symbol on the book has to match the symbol on the bin and it's just the system that I've used for years that has never been disappointing now I do have a Z's library bin labels in my TPT store they will be linked for you in the description box they are editable and that was the biggest change that I made I've included over 500 symbols or the little icon pictures for you to choose from and then you are able to fully customize the label which I will show you in this video all right let's jump into it the very first step is to categorize your books now I personally get almost all of my books from Goodwill just because there is a goodwill right by my school right by my gym there's another one by my house and it's super convenient and the books are really cheap I can get them typically for $0.50 but sometimes they do sales and I can get them as cheap as 25 cents per book and I'm talking like hardcover children's books I tend to go at least once a month sometimes twice a month and I just buy any books that I see that I know I want to add to my library and I typically store them at home and then once a year I will go through and label them all and then add them into my classroom library so I'm gonna go ahead and show you all of the books that I have been collecting that I need it to label alright so as you can see I have a ton of books I do want to clarify though in my library I store my picture books separate from my chapter books now the process for actually organizing them is the exact same I will show you the bins that I use for my picture books later on later on in the video but for the sake of just demonstrating step-by-step what I do I'm going to be using the chapter books and Luna is now playing with one of the bags that I had these in it's a hook now when it comes to creating categories for my library I don't stick to any one system just because I haven't found one system that I really like so when I create my categories sometimes my category will be by the author sometimes it's by this series sometimes it's by the jabra it really just depends on the books that I have and I think it's important to keep in mind that everyone's classroom library is going to be different we all have different books that we've collected over the years so your categories are going to probably look very different than mine so what I really like about my system is it allows you to personalize your categories based on the books that you have so you'll see in the examples that I already showed you this one is a category of Beverly Cleary books now most of these are the Ramona and Beezus books but I knew in my library I have a lot of other Beverly Cleary books but are not the Ramona and Beezus series so by categorizing it under the author I can put not only the Ramona and Beezus books but also any other Beverly Cleary books that I have then my other example bin these are 39 clues books so the 39 clues is a book series and actually every book has a different author so instead of doing it by author I'm doing it by the series and that's just what works for me so I now have this huge pile of books I'm literally just going to start digging through them and trying to kind of find categories that make sense based on the books that I have okay so already I'm looking and I know that I have a lot of Captain Underpants books and I typically pick these up any time I find them at Goodwill because they tend to fall apart very easily because they have those things where the kids have to like flip the pages back and forth and they're pretty cheap so I picked these up a lot but instead of making just a Captain Underpants category I see that I have this book I'm gonna try to pronounce it The Adventures of oak and Gluck kung fu cavemen from the future so it's technically not Captain Underpants but it is date poky at least I think I mean it says the creator's hold on it's not Dave Hilke well no it's other people but it is a graphic novel so I could create a category of graphic novels and put this in there I don't know so I'm gonna put this on to the side but I will create a Dave Hilke category there is my son so the lighting completely changed so I had to move my camera but I think what I'm gonna do is go ahead and create a date pill key category and then this one I'm gonna just put to the side I could put this with graphic novels or I might just add it in with Dave poki anyway so I'm just gonna create a separate category for that right now also looking through I have a lot of Minecraft books so I have this one this one oh here's another one of that same book so I'm going to put that with the other one so I have a lot of Minecraft here's another one and you know it's um over here here's another one so obviously I have quite a few minecraft books so I'm gonna create a Minecraft category now I notice mmm let's see this okay Dork Diaries might be its own category I don't know if I have enough of those however here's another Dork Diaries I can put that there oh I have a lot of diary but what we can I know that so here all Diary of a Wimpy Kid Diary of a Wimpy Kid yeah so I've several Diary of a Wimpy Kid books so I'm gonna create that as a category and as you go through keep in mind that the number of categories is going to depend on the amount of space that you have so I would recommend first kind of analyzing how many bookshelves do you have how many bins could you fit on each shelf and figuring out how many categories you're going to create because you may need to consolidate categories in order to make it all fit but I do want to show you for any books that might not fit in a category for example I have Fred doll I don't really have a lot of Andrew Clements is that how you pronounce last name I don't have a lot of his books and it just is this one copy so I could either create just a chapter book section and put this in there or I could do it by genre so I could have fiction books non-fiction books historical fiction whatever it's just gonna depend on the books that I have so I'm going to go ahead and create just a general like chapter books section and then I can divide it up based on what I have so I'm also going to add but not buddy to that section I have Watsons go to Birmingham and even though these are the same author I don't think I've enough books by this author to create its own category so I'm gonna add this into chapter books now I do have a lot of Harry Potter books and personally I like to have a big range in terms of level by my books I do not sort them by level I do not organize them by and I don't even like label them with the level I just personally don't think that's how kids should be picking their books but I do have a wide range in terms of the levels of my books so I do have Harry Potter books I could definitely create these into a category because I have a lot of them here's one here's one here's one so this would definitely be its own category here is a baby-sitters club book this can be added into my graphic novel section because I don't think I have enough baby-sitters Club books to have them be their own category but I could add it into graphic novels there's another baby-sitters club book so I'll add that to graphic novels oh ok so these ones are interesting so I have fish in a tree and the one and only Ivan I could and this is very specific to me I could actually create a category of books that are read aloud for our fourth grade curriculum my curriculum is created by my County but throughout the different quarters of the year we have different read-alouds we read a lot fish in a tree one and only I then actually we read a lot of but not buddy so I could actually create a category of all of our read aloud books I do think it's really cool for the kids to be able to go and get their own copy of the book and sometimes they read ahead that's fine but sometimes they just go back and reread it afterwards so I'm gonna actually put these together I think that might be a good category I'm also seeing a lot of kind of sports books so I see Roberto and me kick off by Tiki and Ronde Barber okay I guess I don't have that many here but I know in my classroom I have some more sports books so I might use these to create a category here's another 39 clues books so that will go in this category what do I have over here lightning thief and I have another here's another lightning thief but I don't think they're gonna be their own category so these might go in with chapter books okay this one I am Rosa Parks I could either create a biography or like autobiography I can combine the two section because I also have meet Martin Luther King you're who is Bill Gates oh I definitely have some that could fit into that category so I'm gonna go ahead and group those together so hopefully you won't get how I'm creating these categories I'm literally just looking at my books and going you know what what can I put together so I'm going to finish that process and then afterward I will show you all of my categories [Music] so here are my final categories I have about 20 of them but in my classroom I have enough room for 24 of course I have some categories in my classroom that I already have bins for that I do not necessarily have any books to add to them and that's okay but I am gonna go through and just kind of show you each one of the categories obviously I already showed you Beverly Cleary and 39 clues then I have Harry Potter these next two are actually both chapter books and I typically have more than one bin in order to store chapter books then I have our interactive read aloud books for fourth grade then I have Magic Treehouse a-to-z mysteries Judy Moody and stink Dave Pelkey and or Captain Underpants minecraft Dork Diaries Diary of a Wimpy Kid graphic novels biographies and autobiographies I think they're probably all biographies I'm trying to think of any autobiographies I have I don't know but when I make that label I can decide cupcake diaries ivy and bean sports very clever title there this one I think I'm doing just like fairies let me try to show you it's probably me shaky on the camera so I have a couple of these never girls and then I also have these Disney Fairies so I think I'm just gonna group those together and then this one is actually not a category of books I'm gonna keep in my room so I have a Black Lagoon book and a Juna be Jones these are a little bit too low for my library these are books that I had when I taught second grade but right now they're just not important categories to keep in my library all right so the next step is just to create a list of all of my categories so I have a notebook and I'm literally just going to write out what all of my categories are because I would rather work from a piece of paper than this huge pile of books [Music] all right so now that I have my categories the next step is to decide what simple I want to represent each category I have my list so next to each like category title I'm just going to write what I'm kind of envisioning the symbol beam and then I'll show you how to go about actually finding it so for Harry Potter I'm thinking either a lightning bolt or like his glasses so I'm just gonna write lightening for chapter books obviously I'm just going to have a book of some kind same thing for my IRA books or our interactive read aloud books that's just gonna be another image of a book Diary of a Wimpy Kid I'm thinking a stick figure because it's all stay figures so stick figure Dork Diaries it would be great if I had a diary image minecraft some kind of like in acts of some kind Captain Underpants underwear Judy Moody and stink I'm thinking some it's mostly Judy Moody because I think I have some books that are just Judy Moody so I'm gonna say an image of a girl a to see mysteries I actually have an icon that says a to Z so I'm gonna use that Magic Treehouse oh my goodness my hair I'm gonna do a tree house shocker graphic novels I'm kind of thinking like a speech bubble of some kind biographies and autobiographies maybe just like a people icon like with a person like a silhouette type of thing cupcake Diaries cupcake IV in beans so there are two friends so maybe something with friends of some kind I don't know sports I could basically do any sport thing I'm just gonna write sport and then fairies obviously I'm going to use a very icon okay so now that I have this let me show you how to actually go about creating your labels and finding the symbols that you need alright so now that I have my list and I know what icons I want let me show you how to actually find them and create your labels alright so I have downloaded my library label pack and I have unzipped the file you will see there are a lot of different things included I do recommend watching the two Tori video but I'm also gonna just show you I'm going to first open up the bin labels guide and the reason I'm opening this up is because it's gonna show more symbols per page so it's just easier to go through and find what you need because as I mentioned there's over 500 of them so first Harry Potter I had set a lightning bolt or glasses now in order to make it easier to find what I need they are listed alphabetically but I can also do a search and find so on a PC it's gonna be ctrl F on a Mac it's gonna be command F and it will open up your search and find so I could type in lightning and click Next and look it took me directly to the lightning bolt now it's going to give you a page number that is for the been label but I'm gonna actually show you all an easier way because when the labels are all on one page let me show you what I'm talking about so I'm gonna open up the bin labels and I'm gonna go ahead and do Google slides so I'm just going to click here and it's going to prompt me to make a copy I click make a copy this is going to save it to my drive so I can always go back and edit it now you will notice when it pops up I think there's about 10 labels per page and I might not end up needing all of the labels so for example let me go back to the organizer okay it said the lightning bolt is page 26 so I'm gonna come down to slide 26 awesome so I see the lightning bolt label right here but I don't need these other labels and I don't want to print off a whole page just for that one label so I'm actually gonna show you all a faster way but first let me go through and find all the other ones that I need so Harry Potter lightening bolt that will work chapter books so I said some kind of book next there we go I've included four different books so for chapter books I might do book two so I'm just gonna write those two and then for the IRA book I might do book three Diary of a Wimpy Kid I had said a stick figure there we go stick person that's how I did it so if you don't find what you're looking for try narrowing it down a little bit and hopefully you can find it so stick person I've got that were um a diary yeah I've got one of those and acts oh not taxi next there we go acts that'll work underwear yep that's their next height set a girl for Judy Moody so I have six different girls I'm kind of looking Judy Moody always has that piece of hair that's in her face so I might do girl for so and I'm just gonna repeat that process for the rest of them make sure that there is a label that I want I'm going to go ahead and exit out of the guide and on my Google slides with the actual bin labels I'm gonna come all the way down to slide 53 you will notice slide 53 they are all blank but I'm gonna show you all a game changer I can actually put all of my labels onto one page so in order to do that I'm just going to select the label I'm going to come to replace image and choose upload from computer I'm gonna go to my library labels and there is a folder of bin labels once you open that it has all of the labels already created and they're just alphabetical so the first one I needed was the lightening bolt so I'm gonna scroll down to El okay so here is the lightning bolt label I'm going to click open and it's going to replace that one with the one that I needed and I'm gonna go in and edit the text so this one is going to say Harry Potter now you can change the font if you want to but this is just the one that I prefer next we had said chapter books and I actually need two labels for this so I'm gonna do it twice I'm gonna go to upload from computer I'm gonna come down to where I have the books and I'd said book label too I'm gonna open that one and I'm gonna have this say chapter books and I'm gonna do the same thing with this label come down to books too okay open and chapter books alright so I'm just going to repeat this process in order to create the rest of my labels [Music] okay so I've finished creating my labels for ivy and bean which there are two friends I don't have like a friend label so I needed abusing a handshake label which I feel like you know it's basically the same thing now I do not need these last three labels so I'm actually going to select the label and I'm gonna hold down shift and also select the text box so I'm gonna do that for each one and I'm just going to hit backspace in order to delete them so now all of my labels fit on to just two pages which makes it super super easy so now the next step is to print the labels now for the bin labels I do like to print them on cardstock instead of regular printer paper it just makes them a little bit more durable especially if for some reason I need to replace the bin I will link the cardstock that I personally use now because I'm only doing two I only need two pieces so I'm just going to open up my printer and I'm going to take out the regular printer paper and replace it with my cardstock next we need to prepare the labels for the actual books now we're going to use the book label guide which is different than the bin label guide only because of the page numbers so I'm going to go ahead and open up the book labels guide the images are all going to look exactly the same the only thing that is changing are the actual page numbers because every book label has its own page what I'm going to do now I already have my list of all of the labels and the icons I'm going to write down what page each of those icons is on so that when I go to print it's super easy just to type in the pages that I need alright so now I'm going to close out of the guide and I'm going to open up the book labels which is a PDF you will notice there are 512 pages which is why we broke the page numbers down so when it comes to printing these you have it two options let me grab them option number one is to print on circle labels now these are 1 inch size labels I believe it comes with 63 on a sheet these are actually the Amazon brand so I will link the Amazon brand down below but you could use any brand now they will print directly on the labels however I'm going to tell you all what I actually do I print the book labels just on regular paper and here's why I have used labels in the past on my books and I have found that they do not end up staying on there over time they end up peeling off and it's just a pain now what I do to overcome that is I would tape them down but then I realized if I print on paper and just tape the paper down I don't have to spend money on labels because labels can get very expensive so if I'm going to put tape in order to keep them adhered anyway then I might as well just use paper instead of using the labels so even though yes you can print them on labels I'm gonna actually show you how to do it just on paper because that's what I do it saves money it's cheaper it's easier and that's my preference so I'm going to actually go to file print within my PDF and I'm going to select pages and I'm just going to list all of the page numbers of the labels that I need so let's see my first one is 257 comma 36 comma 30 7 and so on I'm just gonna repeat that for all of the page number [Applause] [Music] next let's talk about how to attach the labels to the bin first of all I do take the bin labels and I laminate them this is going to make them more durable and for some reason if you have to change bins you can easily just take the tape off which I'll get to in a second and move it to a new bin without damaging the actual label so once you laminate them and then cut them apart I use a personal laminator I laminate first cut second and the lamination does not come off you are going to want to attach it to your bin now for the chapter books I like to use these long rectangular bins this one is from Michaels however I have also gotten bins from Target and from lakeshore the ones in my classroom are actually from Lakeshore Learning but I will link a few different options for you down below they come in a variety of colors for the picture books I like to use this taller bin you will notice it's a lot higher than the chapter book bin and this is going to help stabilize those picture books so that the bin does not fall over this is actually called a magazine file or a magazine bin I forget which one and it comes from Big Lots they typically only carry these during back-to-school time so make sure you are checking and sometimes they are available online so I will try to link them but these come in different colors every year I typically go with a neutral color like black that way if I need to replace them I don't have to worry about the color that I was using being discontinued when it comes to actually attaching the label to the bin I just use regular old packaging tape I also will use transparent tape like the Scotch transparent tape however I do not have access to my classroom and I do not have any of that tape at home but packaging tape works exactly the same way I essentially just put a piece on either side the label attached it to the bin and then I'm good to go now if for some reason your bin does not maybe have the right texture I'm thinking back a few years ago I had bins that were plastic but it was like a woven basket type texture and the labels would not stick to it so instead I and just hole punching the label at the top and using book rings they're like those silver rings in order to attach it to the handle part of the bin so get creative with actually attaching them but for me a packaging tape works great next let's talk about attaching the book labels so you have a sheet of all these circle labels one of the first things they do is I will actually either use a paper cutter or a pair of scissors and I will cut it into strips that is going to make it much easier to hole punch the circles you do not need to hand cut all of these circles you would lose your mind buy yourself a one inch diameter circle punch you can get that at craft stores like Michaels or you can get them onto Amazon and use that to actually punch the labels out now I will say I have bought this one on Amazon and it does not work very well one of the sides it won't punch all the way through so I do not recommend this one I think the brand I know it just says ek on the back but I did end up ordering myself a Fiskars one which is like literally on its way to be delivered right now so that's the one you will see me using in this video but in my classroom I actually have a Stampin Up circle the punch that my mom had given few years ago but go ahead and get yourself a circle punch you're going to punch these out and then you're going to use packaging tape to tape it in the corner of the book that packaging tape is going to last for years I have books that I labeled five years ago and the tape has not started peeling the label has not come off it works so much better than using just sticky labels but I am gonna recommend to you as you're punching these instead of only punching out the exact number that you need go ahead and punch out some extras I am gonna talk to you later in this video about why I recommend having extras so go ahead and do the work now punch out some extras put on a Netflix show watch some YouTube while you do it okay I actually enjoy this because it's very mindless and I can be doing other things like watching TV shows or watching a movie listening to a podcast while I'm doing it so go ahead and treat yourself to your favorite TV show while you are preparing your library [Music] [Music] [Music] I do want to give you all just a few final tips and ideas of things that you could try out first of all you will notice that my labels are all black and white I keep them very neutral because most book covers and spines have a lot of color in them and then I also have color in my actual bins so I don't need my label to also have color I keep it very plain but if you would prefer your labels to have color you can actually just print on colored paper that way you're not using all of your colored ink because we all know how expensive ink is and you can fully customize the color to be exactly what you want it to be this is a strobe ripes colored paper but you can use any colored paper or colored cardstock in order to completely customize the color of the labels another idea for you is to actually put the book label on this spine instead of up in the top corners that is totally personal preference I do put mine on the top of the book in the corner because my librarian which is just my student who's responsible for making sure the library stays organized they will actually go through each bed and literally just like fan through the books and it makes it very easy to check the symbol when they're in the top corner but if you feel like having it in the corner is somehow impeding on the cover you could put them on the spine you could still organize them in bins or you could even organize them just spine out on your library shelves and my final tip goes with those extra book labels I already mentioned that I recommend punching out extras that way as you get new books it's super easy to add them into your library a great way to organize them is actually in a bead organizer now I don't have one at home but I will insert a picture of what I'm talking about over here they basically have these compartments and you can use each compartment for each different category of books that you have you can put those circle labels in there or the little you know paper pieces and that way it makes it super easy when you do get a new book you just take it out take it on and you're ready to go so that is it the step-by-step guide on how I organize my classroom library if you have any questions please leave them down in the comments I will do my best to get back to you if you are interested in purchasing these labels it does come with both the bin labels and the book labels I will have it in the description box for you if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up share it out with your teacher friends go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the notification bellow so you do not miss any future videos as always thank you for watching I love you all so much don't forget to put your pasta pants on I don't catch you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 39,774

Rating: 4.9541616 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 4th grade, pocketful of primary, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, classroom library organization, how to organize your classroom library, tutorial, library, organization, organizing, organize

Id: 1njC1XsBq8w

Length: 30min 11sec (1811 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 12 2020