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Aimee's Response From: Aimee
To: Franki
Re: Weeding
Hi Franki -
I can relate to ... everything you've written. I am teaching third grade, after I've been teaching fourth for nine years. Also I moved to a new classroom, and as with any move, I realize I have too much stuff.
One of my goals has been to reestablish a reading area in this new classroom. I really want the classroom to look spacious and not crowded. This is what my mother would call an unrealistic task. To top things off, my classroom comes with two metal bookcases - no built in shelving. So my challenge had been collecting enough bookshelves. Now that I have those set up, along a long wall and a short wall, making a corner reading area, I'm ready to weed out, sort, and organize.
I thought before moving I gave away a lot of books. It seems I keep unpacking more and more. I realized that I don't think I've weeded out books - ever. So I have more than a decade's worth of books to go through. I've decided to weed out most of the longer, more complex books my high readers in fourth grade would read. I'm also looking at copyright dates. Books that were copyrighted before 2000 are coming under close examination from me. If I don't remember kids reading and/or writing about it or if it looks like it hasn't been read in a long while, then I will weed those out. I picked the year 2000 out of the air. If that doesn't weed out enough, then I may reconsider that.
I am concerned about meeting the needs of my lower readers and average readers as well. I will rebuild part of my book collection with them in mind. I do want to keep enough challenging text, however, for my high readers. I think it's easy to become so wrapped up in the kids that "struggle" that we may over look the kids who "excel." So I plan to keep my Avi books around - especially the Poppy series. I love Kate Klise's novels, but I think the humor will be above third grade heads. I may take those home. (I can't part with her books.)
I plan to have fiction books sorted in baskets by genre, series, author and then do the same thing you are for the books that don't fit into a category. These will be on the two walls forming the corner of the "library" area. At the far end, I have picture books on display and several crates of picture books. I haven't really sorted these - usually I just have fiction picture books and nonfiction. The books on display are ones I'll use with the class, new books I want to display, and books on the topics we're studying in social studies and science. I think I'll go peek in some first grade classrooms and see how they sort their picture books.
My nonfiction books - including poetry - are on the metal book shelves formed at an angle on the other side of the room. I'm suddenly thinking - WHY? Am I short changing nonfiction by having it away from the larger reading area? Does it deter my students from reading nonfiction? Maybe I need to rethink the placements of those bookshelves.
Nonfiction is organized in baskets by topic. So I have the weather books in one basket, rock books in another, and government books in still another. (By the way, I found some great baskets at the dollar store near us. I'm finally getting them all in the same color scheme. Limited budget...) With my new curriculum, this will be another high need in my reading area.
Another challenge I have brewing in my mind relates to guided reading and literature circles. In past years I have done different things. Sometimes I kept these texts in the general circulation of books and went searching for them as I needed them. Other years I have kept these books to the side and used them as needed. How do you organize those books? For guided reading, I prefer short texts, so I do use a lot of articles from assorted news and kids magazines. How do you organize these books?
MAGAZINES! I have to sort those too. Do you have a magazine section in your room? How do you organize those? I think they're important to have around for quick reads and to promote nonfiction reading. Hmmmm... just one more thing to think about.
Aimee
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