How do you organize your books?

I'd like to welcome and thank Fern for being today's guest blogger! I absolutely love her blog and ideas! I hope that you'll visit her blog and maybe even become a follower :)

I'm Fern Smith, my school's Teacher of the Year and 3rd Grade Team Leader.

I ♥love♥ followers if you would like to come check out my blog!

My Read Alouds

Organized By Month & Then By "Left Over"Authors

Organization is the difference between a good teacher and a great teacher!

It is the difference between a great teacher and an excellent teacher
because you are not wasting your time & energy looking for things!

Example ~ Judy Blume Section

Example ~ Easter Read Alouds & Listening Center

Here is how I store my Read Alouds & I hope my system helps you too!

Some people have great big closets and/or lots of shelves. I am NOT one of those lucky teachers! I have a wonderful portable here in Florida & I'm just so happy to have a job in my hometown that NOTHING about my portable bothers me!When I first started teaching I wasted so much time trying to find my own personal books in the classroom library. I wanted the students to have access to ALL my books, but then I would waste so much time looking for "The Velveteen Rabbit" when Easter was approaching! Some years I would have to waste more time going to the Public library when the book I wanted to read was missing from my classroom!  

I have wised up with age! 

My classroom library DOES NOT NEED each book I own & there is nothing wrong with keeping my Read Alouds separate from the rest of the books. My pictures do not show that many books because I've "LEFT" teaching three times {never say never} and every time I would leave I would have a massive classroom garage sale! Duh!!! I left teaching twice to stay at home when each child was born to try the Stay~At~Home~Mom~Thing & then the third time was when we moved back to Florida from Texas. I followed my long-term dream to be a Real Estate Agent!

OK~Stop Laughing!

I took the classes, passed the tests and went on interviews. Prayed to God for the agency across the street to hire me & He told me to go back to teaching! No joke! The very next day at 8:00am I was sitting in my daughter's orthodontist office & got a phone call about returning to teaching in my very desired hometown district! Never mess with God's Plan ;) Anyhooooo, back to the books!

Steps:

• Label your folders, one for each month & one for each holiday.
• Label your folders, one for each author you like or that you "collect" in your grade level.
• Organize them by school year, August to July. If there is a certain author that you like during a certain month, put their folder behind that month. For example: I adore Tedd Arnold and I read his Huggly series & his Parts series at the beginning of the year. They are slap-stick funny and it helps to build a relationship between me, the students and how books can be read JUST FOR PLEASURE! :)
• Put the rest of your authors behind July in alphabetical order.

Now when you are preparing for Thanksgiving, BAM! just pull out all of your books. I like to keep them in a basket by my "Teacher's Reading Chair" at the front of my gathering area and I also let the boys and girls read them, I just "train" them to put them back into the basket. Another nice feature about keeping your seasonal books together is when you start to get more than one copy of a book, the students can EEKK {Elbow, Elbow, Knee, Knee partner reading from the Daily Five} read with them. This way wastes very little student time while that try to look for the matching books! :)

Now that it is summer, and you might have some extra time, I hope this helps! Enjoy! :)

 Thanks again Fern! What great organizational ideas :)

Don't forget to stop by tomorrow for Katie from Dirty Hand and Lesson Plans

Ummm... I hope you didn't forget that I love your love aka comments!!