Thursday, September 9, 2010

Classroom Library Photos


These are some of my favorite pictures of classroom libraries in Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade Classrooms.

This Second Grade Library from Marcella's classroom has many sections.  One section has baskets just for leveled books.  The baskets are colorful and well labeled.  In addition each basket is not too full so students can flip through books with ease and find the titles they love.  A few books from familiar series are in the leveled bins but you can also see a separate series section in this section grade library.  I like this because kids can get to know lots of different books in a leveled bin and then, if they find a series they love, they can move to that basket and read all the books in that series.









The Kindergarten Classroom Library pictured below from Sara's classroom has sections for non-fiction topics, authors students love, as well as leveled books and emergent story books.  Notice how the leveled library reflects the needs of the students at the time.  In this particular classroom there are many students reading at F&P level C.  You will see there are two of the bins of these books on the shelf.  In time, the bins will change to reflect the growing readers in the classroom.




Katie's classroom library features a leveled section.  Her school uses a dot system to represent the levels. I also really love the way she has organized her baskets.  They are roomy so little hands can dig in and browse.  She has many kids reading green dot books at the time of this photo so she has 2 bins containing books of that level.  

 

She also has familiar character books grouped together on top of the leveled shelf.  In the picture below you can also see the way Katie has categorized her other topic bins as well as nonfiction bins.  I salute her for separating the giant category of "Science" books and "Animal" books.  Her kids can now shop with confidence in specific nonfiction interest bins. 



Note:  You can level the books that are in these buckets so kids can shop for leveled books within their specific interests as well as the leveled library.