The Secret to Setting Up Your Library for MAXIMUM Student Impact

Confession. I’m as Type A as you can get. Everything has a place, and everything must be just so with me. I’m not quite as strict about my classroom as I am my house, but even there, with 20+ kids in the room, things are always orderly and we all help out with keeping things clean and organized. Setting up my classroom library is no exception. I’m very particular about the way my books are arranged, the way they’re put away, and keeping it fresh. So it took me a couple of years to embrace the idea I’m about to share with you.

It’s not for the faint of heart.

Are you ready? You may want to sit down first. You might even want to grab a drink.

Here it is.

You do not have to fully control setting up your classroom library.

I know, I know–you probably just gasped as you envisioned kids rifling through hundreds of books, piling them into bins any which way. I agree! That would be madness, and cause me to break out in hives. This is NOT the vision I’m talking about.

I’m talking about a systematic way that kids can learn what’s in your library, understand how it’s organized, and feel a sense of ownership and pride in it. This sense of pride and ownership helps ensure that kids will respect your books and take good care of them. You could go as big or small as you feel comfortable with, and then sit back and see how your kids respond.

The Process

The idea comes from Tony Stead, in his brilliant book Good Choice! Supporting Independent Reading and Response K-6. He was inspired by Harry Potter, in which the game of Quidditch involves “keepers” and “seekers.” Basically, kids are paired up. One child is the “seeker” of books on a particular topic, and the other is the “keeper” of that same topic. The keeper holds the bin, while the seeker sorts through the books and pulls out all that belong to that particular topic and brings them to the keeper. This could be done in a small group, where you only have 2-3 book topics being collected, or you could go all out and have everyone paired up and searching for many different topics.

When I first tried this I went toward the middle. I wasn’t ready to have my second graders arrange the ENTIRE library this way, and I felt it was important (I still do) to have a small portion of my library set up in level bands to support just-right book selection. I decided to not set up all the animal non fiction myself–I knew kids would be super excited to see what kinds of animals I had books about, so I purposely saved my bins of animal nonfiction just for this. There were probably around 150-200 of those books.

My Process–a Small Start with BIG Impact

I sat my kids in a big circle, me right there on the floor with them, and pulled over the boxes of animal books. I had already quickly gone through them the day before so I had an idea of the topics–and to be sure I had enough “seeker/keeper” pairs. I said, “Guys. I’ve been trying so hard to get all the classroom library books ready for you so you can start reading about things you love, but I just have not had the time to sort all these (I held up a few). But I’ve been noticing already that you all seem extremely responsible. I was thinking…do you think you could help me get these sorted and put onto the library shelves?”

Of course, being easily-swayed 7 year olds, they were more than eager to do this! I pulled out a few more and a few more and a few more, until they started to see that there were multiple books on the same topic. As they named the animal topics they were finding, I set those aside, so that in a few minutes, we had a good 10-12 different topic stacks (to match how many keeper/seeker partnerships there would be).

Then I explained the roles of keepers/seekers. As I pointed to each stack of books, I asked for volunteers. They were ALL eager to do this, so this was no problem. I gave a large white index card and a book basket to each keeper, and sent them all off to different parts of the room to prevent traffic jams. They also put the small stack of books on their topic we had already begun in their basket. The keepers stayed put and took a look at where their partner was located, while I moved the bins of remaining books to be sorted so they too, were spread out. Then I turned my seekers loose.

As they found books, they brought it to their keeper, and came back to look for more. The keeper would double check each one to be SURE the book was truly about that topic. If not, it was sent back. This took probably 10 minutes, and all the books were sorted!

It looked like a busy beehive, but it was organized so there were no hiccups. And the kids were sooooo excited to be given such an important task!

Step Two–Labeling

The next task was for each partnership to work together to write the name of the topic in big, bold letters on their card, and agree on a picture to draw to show what was in that basket. After they passed my Type A test (Is it neat? Is it clear?), they then taped that label on the front of the basket, and set it in the library. This image is from this 2nd grade classroom, from years ago:

Last Step

Finally, we regathered, this time all facing the library shelves we had just organized. I briefly shared what each basket contained, and was able to also quickly talk about the rest of the nonfiction baskets that I had labeled so they were all well aware of the topics in that section.

Expanding the Practice

This was also the beginning of a method of rotating my books, so that the library was always fresh and interesting for kids.

Later, as I moved up in grade levels, I gave kids more and more control of the setup of the classroom library. Each and every time, my books were well taken care of, everything was always put back correctly, and kids had very little trouble finding exactly what they needed. Even my big kids loved finding new books to read, all year long!

I encourage you to give this a try. As you can see I started very small, and that payoff was huge. I became more and more comfortable with it over time, and it got easier each year. Kid-made labels might not fit my beautifully themed decor, but I’d never go back to purchasing premade labels. The impact this system has on kids is too important!

How do you think you might dip your toes into this idea? I’d love to hear about it!

Could you use a thinking partner to help solve your literacy puzzles? Contact me to set up a coaching call, so we can think it through together! And, join my private FB group for immediate support from like-minded educators!

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