Classroom Library Labels, Organization and More

I'm here today to show you my classroom library.  

I meant to show it off in September but you know, life happened and 28 new fifth graders showed up in my classroom and I got a little busy.

Classroom Library 5th Grade


Things have slowed down just a tiny bit now (not really) so better late then never, right?

Even though I teach math, writing and reading - secretly, reading is my most favorite time of the day! 

Reading is my passion.  I've been a reader my whole life.  I have memories of weekly library trips with my mom (where I was limited to 7 books a week - for real!), to proudly carrying Stephen King's 'The Stand' around on top of all my textbooks in high school, (The Stand is like the thickest book ever published - I'm convinced),  to many, many late nights reading just one more page under the covers in my college dorm room.

Reading is what I turn to whenever I have the gift of extra time.  And I love sharing my passion for reading with my fifth graders.  Creating an amazing classroom library to me is how some people feel about traveling to Disney World!

To give you an idea of how long it takes to set up my classroom library each year, (because we have to box up every single thing for summer) here are a few before pics.


Classroom Library Organization

Organize your classroom library

Unpacking that mess was a very LONG day! Who am I kidding, it took at least 3 days to organize all those books!  I swear, I don't have a book buying problem. That's what I tell my husband at least. ;)

A few days later and the library looked more like this............


set up your classroom library

I'm a big fan of displaying books on the tops of shelves.  I do a daily book recommendation and students also love to recommend books in our classroom.  Those are the books that get displayed (for a very short time as they're usually snatched up immediately) on the book easels.

Here's a link to some reasonably priced book easels on Amazon if you're interested!



Organizing the books in our classroom library is one of my favorite parts each year.  I love using book baskets so students can grab a basket of books by a certain author, or genre or theme or topic and browse through it quickly.

These are the labels I use in our library.




classroom library bin labels

black and white book basket labels

harry potter book basket labels

With the books organized into baskets and the labels finished, a place to hang our anchor charts, some lighting and fun seating options, our library is complete.  

Here it is!! 

organized classroom library

3rd grade classroom library

Thanks for stopping by our classroom library!  Happy Reading!

24 comments

  1. And I thought that I had a LOT of books! WOW!

    Angela

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  2. That's amazing! I am currently working on improving my library and I may just snatch some of your ideas. Thank you.

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  3. That's amazing! I am currently working on improving my library and I may just snatch some of your ideas. Thank you.

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  4. I know how hard you work on organizing your library as I see it every step of the way! It always looks great when you are done! Thanks for linking up!

    Stephanie
    Forever in Fifth Grade

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  5. I know how hard you work on organizing your library as I see it every step of the way! It always looks great when you are done! Thanks for linking up!

    Stephanie
    Forever in Fifth Grade

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  6. My mom and I spent days organizing my books this summer. It's so much work. Your library looks amazing. I love the idea of a daily book recommendation.
    Brandi
    The Research Based Classroom

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  7. I'm jealous of all that space you have to house your books! You must have a gigantic classroom!

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  8. I'm curious about your check out system. How do you keep track of who checks out what? I am loosing a lot of my books because kids either don't sign the books out or they don't return them to me. Any suggestions?

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    1. I use classroom booksource organizer. It's an online program. My classroom student librarian makes sure all the books are logged in and she/he works for 15 minutes at the end of the day to check out books for students who are taking them home for the night.

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    2. I use it through my desktop computer. It's a website, but it does have an app to go along with it as well. :)

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  9. What a beautiful library! I'd love to hear about your check-out system also.

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  10. Wow! It's great to see all of the work that you did on your library. I did an overhaul this summer and its awesome to see the kids flock to the newly organized books. Thanks for sharing! Your library looks amazing, I may need to continue to update it this summer as well.

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  11. Wow! It's great to see all of the work that you did on your library. I did an overhaul this summer and its awesome to see the kids flock to the newly organized books. Thanks for sharing! Your library looks amazing, I may need to continue to update it this summer as well.

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  12. Holy Moly! You have MORE books than me, and I didn't think that was possible. LOL! Love the organization...especially your basket tags. Great suggestion for featuring books. Love the lower level shelves too which make it easier to feature books at kids' eye level. Great post!

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  13. Where did you get your baskets from?

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  14. Thanks for an example of an upper elementary library. All the ones I've been finding seem to be from grades 1-3!

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  15. I love your reading/writing/math banners. Where did you find those?

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    1. Hi Amy, I bought them on TPT. I don't remember from who, but search and hopefully they will come up.

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  16. Perhaps I missed this, but how did you decide to organize your books?

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    1. This will be my first year to teach fifth grade. I've taught high school biology and anatomy for the last ten years. This year I moved to a new district and will be teaching fifth grade science and a mid high STEAM elective course. I was wondering which books, series or otherwise, you'd recommend for fifth grade. I'm trying to build up a small classroom library of fiction, non-fiction and DIY books.

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  17. How do the kids remember where to place books when returning them? Did you label the spines?

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