A Change is Gonna Come

Well folks, it is time.  The big reveal.  The Change.  New beginnings. I am leaving the third grade world and am going to be starting the new year as a K12 combination class.   A K12 combo is exactly that, a Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade combination class.  The dynamics of this class are going to be perfect to help scaffold for students who need it and will provide individualized learning for those high flyers.

Before I could get started on this new adventure, I had to tackle my classroom library.  I am a self admitted book hoarder.  I love books.  I buy them at Goodwill, I get them from Scholastic, I circle the discard pile in the library like a hungry vulture.  I LOVE books.  In third grade, I had them leveled on the back in a way that made sense to me and my kids.  Unfortunately this way was not appropriate for my upcoming little people.

I took every book in my class and dumped them in a giant pile (gasp).  It was scary, yet surprisingly cathartic!!


This is just a small sampling of my book pile (when I ran out of floor space, we started using desks and tables)  Please ignore all the undecorated/covered walls.  We had just finished state testing. . . blech.

In our district, we use MClass as one of the testing tools to help determine our students' reading levels.  I wanted my library to mirror this.  It was very important to me, however, to make sure that my little people, my kindergartners specifically, weren't limited to those easy, predictable texts.  As good as those are for building reading fluency, they aren't always the most exciting of stories.  

So, I took all of my books and sorted them first into thematic book tubs.  These will be used by every student in my class, regardless of reading level.  If your school does Daily 5, this would be a great option for 'read to self' time.  I want to foster a love of reading, and providing them with options by theme will hopefully be a good way to start that.  

These book tubs are a sturdy plastic.  You can get them here

I leveled all of the other books from A to Z (A-D being Kindergarten level and so on).  Most of my books could be leveled using scholastic.com.  For the ones that weren't there, I googled the title with "guided reading level" and just hoped for the best. 

 These books each have a letter on the inside of the front cover and have a bin to match.  With some training, my students will be able to self select books that are on their appropriate reading level. 

The labels I used for my book bins were just nametags from a local teacher store.  You can get them here  Any label would work, these just matched my chalkboard decorations in my classroom :)