Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Building a class library

Ever since I received my placement for the fall semester my mind has been running about a million miles per minute with different ideas and random thoughts about what the semester might bring. My Pinterest account can attest to that! I realized that I had a lot of ideas for little ones, but not so many for upper elementary students.

In the midst of my pinning and blog hopping, it hit me. My 4th graders will be able to read actual books! When I was in 4th grade I read some of my favorite stories and began to develop my individual tastes as a reader. That was the year I met Laura Ingalls out on the prairie, the year I read my first collection of Edgar Allen Poe short stories and scared myself silly, the year I started solving mysteries with Nancy Drew. 

I quickly realized that one of the best things I could do for my students would be to have tons of reading recommendations to offer with copies of the book to put in their hands. So, I cleared out the back of my car and headed over to my parents' house to sort through the books I left in my old bedroom when I moved out. 

After about 45 minutes of sorting through the boxes, I managed to find quite a haul:

You can't really tell from this picture, but I even had multiple copies of some books which will be perfect for reading circles. There are some excellent stories in here including everything from Anne of Green Gables to Animorphs; Hiawatha to Number the Stars.

There are a few more boxes I did not get to which have my collection of Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and a few others.

Since I plan to loan these out, I realized I needed to catalog these books and label them as mine, So, I created this label to go in the front of each book:

Cute, right? I really like it and there will be no mistaking who these books belong to!

I am getting even more excited about my placement each day and I really can not wait to meet my students. I hope they get a lot of use out of my books and I hope I can hold onto this excitement when I am staying up late planning lessons and grading papers. :)


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