My library is organized in a few different ways – for a few different reasons. I want to making reading as easy as possible for my students. I want them to find the book they want easily and quickly. I want to make sure they know how to locate a book that is not only at their reading level but also about a subject they are interested in. Because really – who enjoys reading something they can’t understand or don’t care about? Yup. Nobody. Not even your students.

Top shelf stores my student quiet reading books. Each kid has a basket where they store their quiet reading books. We switch out each week. Check out the visual I use in the basket here.

Next shelves are books organized by Guided Reading Level.

Bottom shelves are books organized by theme.

The only problem with the system was that my students were horrible at putting away the books that were organized by theme. It always became a mess. Of course this happened – since my students had no clear way of know if a book was considered an animal book or science book. I made these visual labels and BAM – organization perfection! Makes me freaken happy. First I labeled all books with the visual label:

Then I labeled the baskets with the corresponding picture.

 

This has made our book system so much easier! The class library is something that honestly – I don’t have time to worry about. And know I don’t have to. It runs itself 🙂

Download the visual book labels here: Visual Book Labels.