Educator Book Club discussion

Hello everyone,
I am training to be an elementary teacher, and I am anxious to start teaching!
I am just wondering about classroom libraries. First, how/where do most of you get your books? Also, how do you organise your libraries (by genre? by author?)? Lastly, do you have any special tricks for organising students' book loans?
I would love to hear how you do all of this :)

Hi Shanna!

I teach middle school and I have TONS of books in my classroom. I collected the books in the following ways:
1) Signed up with Scholastic book clubs (scholastic.com/bookclubs) and got 50 books for $50, a special deal for new teachers. Now, whenever my students purchase books through Scholastic, I get "bonus points" to use toward getting free books and I've earned many, many books this way. Also, Scholastic has a few $1-2 picks every month and you can stock up on those.
2) I go to my public library that has a room full of discarded and donated books, and I stock up on popular titles for 10-25 cents each! I now won't ever pay more than a quarter for any book. If your library doesn't have this feature, every library has an annual book sale that you can hit up. All of the libraries in my county have them at different days, so you can hit like 10 in a year!

Which leads me to the library part of it. My students read more when I have them available, because going to either the school or public library on their own time is more effort than they think it's worth, unfortunately, and that's even with my good readers. So having books in my classroom is really important.

I have a sign out sheet: Name, title, date out, date in, and I initial when I've received the book back and cross it out. HOWEVER, I'm not successful with this. I lose about 50-60 books a year. The fact that I have no computerized system, and there are no deadlines, leads to the situation where kids are eager to sign out a book and then I never see it again. I find my books kicked around in the hallways at times, and many of my kids "lose" their books. But I assume that the way an elementary classroom runs in contrast to the 9 40-minute periods of my day will probably render you more successful than me. They often try to say that they returned them and forgot to tell me, etc. and I have no recourse to get reimbursed for them.

I organize the books by genre in baskets, and I have a few bookshelves with each shelf labeled by genre. I have a secret stash of my favorites and most special, and students have to pursue those actively and promise me up & down that they'll return those. I'll also give a deadline on those and keep better track of them.

So anyway, good luck with your classroom library!

Shanna...

Most of my classroom library books came from:
-Scholastic (as explained by Julie)
-Garage sales (people will practically give them to you to get rid of them...especially if you explain you're a teacher)
-Used book stores/library sales (also explained by Julie above)
-Student donations (parents will often be willing to clean out their home library, especially, if they don't have any younger children)

As for a check out system, I gave up. I had the same experience of losing books and having to chase them down. So NOT worth it. Most books that werein my library was a cheap paperbacks, so I didn't really cry about losing them. If you have some special books, I would keep them on your own shelf to loan out sparingly.

I did put a sticker in the front of every book with my name and the genre. I sorted by genre. The sticker at least helped the books "find me" again should they turn up in the hall, another classroom, etc.

My system evolved over the years, so you'll figure out what works best for you through trial and error.

Best of luck with your teacher training!
-Amber

Wow, thanks everyone for the feedback!
KCSmith, I will check out Top Notch Teacher Porducts!
Julie, I love that you said "I now won't ever pay more than a quarter for any book". That's amazing! I hope I will be saying that one day. I know to check library sales! I can't believe you lose up to 50-60 books a year - that's crazy! I hope you come up with a system that can fix that situation.
Amber, the sticker idea sounds good for being able to tidy up the library quickly. I can see myself using this (I would probably give each genre a colour. i.e. yellow=fantasy, green=science, etc).

Shanna, I agree with trying the public library. Here in Austin, our public library donates through a group called Books Beyond Borders, which sells the books and sends the money abroad to build and stock schools with materials and furniture. They've allowed me to volunteer, and afterwards have my pick at the thousands of books that can't use.

As far as organization, I was thinking about the responses of the others above. I, too, have lost lots of books. However, the reality of my kiddos is that the books they've "lost" are the only ones they have at the house. Anyway, I chalk it up to one of the costs of being a teacher.

On how to organize the books in the classroom, we had a quite serendipitous happening one day in my third grade classroom. A young lady tumbled into the bookshelf, spilling the hundreds of books we had organized by subject. We made a lesson out of it, as I had the kids work in groups to decide what subject each book would fit into. It produced some great conversation, including some arguments. Not only were kids discussing the main points of the books that they had read, but others were making contextual assumptions based on "book walks" using books that they hadn't read yet. It was really great, and we talked a lot about useful stuff, affirming for the students how much they could get from a book without having read it. It was really great, something I plan on doing with all my classes in the future.

Cameron, I love the idea of involving the class in organizing the library! I can just picture the students arguing over the subject or genre. Thanks for the inspiration!

Hi Shanna!

I am studying to teach elementary too. I start my internship in 3rd grade in January...best of luck to you!!! :)
Anyways, Ive started collecting books for my classroom library as well and I have found that the Scholastic idea that many people have mentioned has got me a lot of great books. However I would try thrift stores if I were you. Some books are beat up and not good for a classroom library, but a lot of them are almost new books. I have found entire series of books and paid like $1 for the whole series. Most thrift stores sell their books for .10 cents or so. Also, if you tell them you are collecting books for your classroom library most of them will give them to you for free or at a discount. It's really great the way most communities support teachers.

Anyways, best of luck!!! :)