Classroom Library Organization System

Today I want to share my tips for organizing your classroom library.  After years of trying to keep the library organized and manageable, I finally found a system that worked for me and my students!

I tried organizing my books by genre and letters and themes.  That worked great for me, but did not work for my students putting books away.  My new system is something that even my kindergartners can use and understand!

This is my classroom library.  The shelves were custom made to fit in this odd shaped area.  As you can see, I store my books in plastic book boxes.  

The white boxes are ice bins from Wal-Mart and cost about $1.  I am slowly converting all of my boxes to these bins.  I like the white and the size of the bins.  They are perfect for holding books!

Each box is labeled with a number and a type of book.  I have books sorted by teaching ideas, themes, genre, authors and topics.  

I simply place the book in the best category for that book (based on my own judgement and what will be easiest to remember!).  

The key to this system is the numbers.  

Each box has a number.  No boxes have the same numbers.  

Even though I have three boxes full of math books, each box is labeled differently.  I have math 3, math 4 and math 5.

Every book in a box is labeled with the same number as the box.  

This allows myself and the students to return books to where they belong and keeps our library organized.  

This system also allows me to know where to go for a book for a read aloud.

I love that this system is so user friendly for adults and students.  

In fact, this system is so organized, when another teacher asks me for a book, I can almost always tell them to go in my room and look in a specific box!   I also love that it gives us a bit of number recognition practice when using our classroom library and teaches my students organization and responsibility!

~Mr. Greg
Visit him at The Kindergarten Smorgasbord