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.

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.

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............

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.

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!! 

Thanks for stopping by our classroom library!  Happy Reading!