Mrs. Zopp's Class

I wrote this post a few weeks ago during a snow day and finally downloaded the pictures to go with it. So here it is:

Jan. 2011:
Today was a surprise snow day and my quality time alone in my classroom was very productive. One of my biggest accomplishments was cleaning out and reorganizing the classroom library. I had been noticing that my students were reading less and less in the classroom library during literacy work stations, and spending more time playing. So on our day off I switched all the old books out for new books from my classroom library stash. I learned my first year that fewer is better when it comes to the amount of books in the classroom library. You don't have to put out every book you have. So it seemed perfect timing to re-do the classroom library in January. I changed the book baskets and made new labels and just put them on over the old labels:

• Famous People
• Animals
• Transportation
• Characters We Love
• Authors We Have Read
• Chapter Books

Then I kept the Science, Math, Social Studies bins and of course their reading bags, organized by reading group. I tried to pick high interest topics and a variety of reading levels within each topic. I also have blue, red and green leveled books. In addition to their reading bags, students can read from their appropriate reading level bin. It is a small classroom library but it is easy to manage and keep organized. I also have a "Book Hospital" basket for books that get ripped (seems to happen a lot this year) or for when students forget where a book belongs. That way students can manage their library themselves.