My Classroom Library - a peek inside!

As I was doing my end-of-the-week tidy up yesterday afternoon I snapped a few photos of my classroom library to share with you all.  Hopefully you'll find a few easy ideas that you can use to organise yours or to help your kidlets become excited about reading!

First up, let's talk about how I organise my books.  I know it's not perfect, but I wanted there to be some order so that kidlets could make informed decisions about the books they choose for their book box - and I wanted to scaffold their choice of a 'best fit' text. 

One shelf holds our levelled readers, organised into baskets of 2 levels.  For this term, I have been choosing these books for kidlets - explaining that I'm giving them 1 book at their level, 1 that's easy practise and 1 that's more of a challenge.  Next term they will have control over these choices.  I was undecided as to whether or not I should display the levels... I didn't want reading to become a competitive sport.  Luckily enough, my Preppies have always been happy to choose their level and not worry what their friends' levels are. :) As these are all school books I can't really re-sticker them with colours etc. so the levels are the easiest for organisation at the moment.

Two other shelves hold our picture books and non-fiction texts. The left shelf has baskets organised by author - Mem Fox, Dr. Seuss, Pamela Allen and Jez Alborough - as well as two baskets of non-fiction.  On the top are pink baskets with Grug and Little Golden Books.  We also have a returns box. Children can choose whichever books they like from here.  It took a few weeks, but they are getting pretty good at leafing through to check and see whether a book is one that interests them rather than grabbing random ones.

Now on to the fun stuff! I have a little collection of tools that my kidlets can choose any time they are reading to help them engage with a book.  Our 'Reading Glasses' are just dollar store sunglasses with the lenses popped out.

'Sight Word Stars' are the newest addition to our library.  I typed our sight words onto some star clipart, laminated and cut them before taping them onto a giant straw (from Ikea!).  Kidlets use these to search for sight words they know in 'tricky' picture books.

We have a variety of pointers to use as well, these really help to ensure that kidlets attend to the text they're reading - particularly in Guided Reading groups.  At the moment I've only got the googly eye sticks out, but now that my clever Preppies are using these responsibly I'll add some new ones next term.  I get everything from the dollar store!

Googly eyes glued to craft sticks.

Magic wand party favours.

Plastic magnifying glasses.

Torches.

Two big containers hold our 'Reading Buddies' and 'Whisper Phones'.  Buddies are available any time kidlets want to read their book aloud.  They never interrupt and are nice to cuddle. :)  I asked parents last year if anyone knew a plumber who could get me cheaper plastic pipes to make Whisper Phones, and was so appreciative when one of my little girl's uncles just went ahead and made them as a donation!  They're two pieces glued together, and I just decorated them with colourful duct tape.

Lucky last - our Book Boxes!!

I used the 100 Scrappy Kids set that Mel (Graphics from the Pond) made to personalise each label.  I chose the scrappy kid that most looked like each kidlet, and we also use the same graphics for desk labels.  Each week we change our books (3 levelled texts and 4-5 other books) to keep for our independent reading time.  At this stage of the year my class can read for 10-15 minutes in silence, which I think is pretty good for Term 1 Preppies! :)

That's all from me today!  Easter holidays are coming up so hopefully I'll have some extra time and energy to post a little more - I have lots of photos of fun activities we've been doing but end of term exhaustion has just kicked my butt.  I really hope you found an idea or two today that you can use, and I promise to be back soon!!

Cheap & Cheerful Tools for Reading FUN!

I looked around my classroom today as my kidlets were busy with their book boxes and it warmed my heart to see them totally engaged with their reading.  All of them - even my tricky characters - had found themselves a comfortable spot and were absorbed in their books.  At that point, I was completely unnecessary to them and it's the happiest I've been in ages. :) I love that my kidlets love to read, but they don't always start the school year out feeling like that.  I thought I'd share a few DIY tools that I use along the way to keep reading fun and motivation high.

Graphics From the Pond and KG Fonts made this quote look cute!

My kidlets keep their books in cardboard magazine files with personalised labels.  They are always excited to choose new books and treat their book box super carefully - the fact that it's theirs helps to make reading time all the more exciting.  Our classroom library is small but choosing books is always fun!  My kidlets choose a combination of levelled readers, picture books and non-fiction books to keep for the week.

Let's start with the basics - everyone knows that to do your very best reading, you need to wear your reading glasses!  Grab yourself some dollar store sunglasses (from the party loot section), pop the lenses out and you've got yourself some colourful specs.

I'm sure you would have seen these guys on Pinterest - Whisper Phones!  You can grab the pieces of pipe from a hardware store, but I put a request out to see if anyone knew a plumber who had offcuts that I could use.  One of my kidlets had an uncle who not only donated the pipes, but glued them together for me! (I sent a photo home to show what I was hoping to make.)  I just added some rainbow duct tape to pretty them up.

These are great to help with fluency and expression during independent reading time - kidlets can hear their voices even if they are whispering and adjust their tone, pace etc. to make their reading 'sound like a story'.

Next up is an easy idea that can end up being completely free!  Reading Buddies are simply cuddly toys that are available for kidlets to read to.  They just love reading a story to a buddy - again, awesome practice for fluency and expression and a real confidence booster for reluctant readers at the beginning of the year.  I sent a note home to parents last year and within a week had more than 25 gorgeous toys donated for the library, some of them brand new. :)

I use a variety of pointers in Guided Reading to help with tracking and place-keeping, as well for kidlets to point to sight words, punctuation, letters etc.  Most of them I bought from the dollar store!

Craft sticks + googly eyes.

Magic wands.

Magnifying glasses.

Small torches.

I hope that you picked up a few ideas to use. :) Do you have any cheap & cheerful reading tools that you like to use in your classroom?  I'd love hear them! 

Five for Friday!

Friends, I am tired!  The first week back at school after break really kicked my butt!  We had two full days at a statewide conference and three days back at school for meetings.  In amongst all of that I had a bazillion things that I wanted to do in my classroom... I got about 0.002% of those things done! My Five for Friday this week shares a few things I did complete as well as some random thoughts.

My main goal for the beginning of this term was to have my classroom library reorganised.  That turned out to be A MASSIVE DRAMA! I don't have a heap of space in my classroom so I bought 4 small sets of shelves - that was no big deal. Then came the issue of finding book boxes that would fit on the shelves and would be wide enough for the larger picture books to fit in (some of them are close to 25cm wide!)... as well as being nice, bright colours.  My classroom decor theme is Crayola factory explosion, after all. :)  I scoured the web, visited every store on the coast - and came up with nothing except for small blue, pink and green baskets to store my levelled readers.  I finally ended up buying white baskets and attaching bright labels.  Here's a photo journey of my last two days! 

In the end I was happy with how my little library turned out... but there were a few moments of crankiness in the mix!  I sorted my books into a few categories - readers are in baskets of two levels each and I have a basket each for Mem Fox, Dr. Seuss, Pamela Allen and Jez Alborough.  There's two non-fiction baskets and the other six I labelled just as picture books - because I ran out of time! :)  In the next few weeks I can sort and label the random other baskets.  I also need a rug and a few more decorations... but I'm not sure that those things will help the kidlets to be better readers. :)

Although the library took a heap of time (in the scarce free time we had this week!), I also managed to get new desk labels printed - using the same scrappy kids as I did on my kidlets' book box labels.  I matched each kidlet to a scrappy kid from Mel's 100 Scrappy Kids pack and use their clipart image for anything personalised I create for them!

I got my new chair set up (the metal stool from Ikea I had been using was ruining my back), and re-aligned my SitSpots.

I also threw a my reading pointers and glasses into a new basket I grabbed.  I plan to keep this on my teaching table instead of hunting around for things before guided reading time.  I need to add our sight words on rings and a 'talking stick'.  Anything else that you think is vital to have in a guided reading basket? 

The glasses are just dollar store sunglasses with the lenses popped out.  Kidlets are so much more focussed when they have their 'reading glasses' on! :)

I went to a Whole Brain Teaching workshop at the conference we went to earlier in the week.  I've been using a few WBT techniques with my kidlets - Teach, OK and Mirror mostly - but came away from the workshop super excited to more consciously implement WBT in my classroom.  I don't have a photo for this - how sad!  I've ordered Chris Biffle's book, but if you are a whole brain teacher and can point me in the best direction for resources/articles to read or could share some advice with me I'd love to hear from you.

Have you seen Abby's Pretty Little Printables?  They are just gorgeous, and I particularly loved this quote from the pack:

I have the talent of putting words together effectively (especially for comedic value), combined with the habit of making quick judgements... totally fine if my opinion is positive but it can get me into trouble if I've decided I don't like something.  When I saw this quote again (it's one of my favourites!) I was reminded to always be careful with my words.  Thanks Abby! (Click on the image to read her post.)

When I got home this afternoon I was totally exhausted!  After an accidental 20 minute snooze on the couch, I had a hot shower (it's freezing here today!) and settled in for a relaxing night.  I made sure to light my tealight candles - my favourite Friday night ritual.

Something about the soft light makes me feel so much more calm.  What's your go-to relaxation trick?

Hmmm... I don't think I should admit to watching 'I Wanna Marry Harry' two Five for Fridays in a row, so let's just say I'm finishing up this post to go and read War & Peace. :)  

Happy weekend!