Book Bins
We have over 2,000 books in our classroom. On top of those, we always have additional books from the school library and Door County Public libraries. We love books! We store the books in tubs (of course!). The tubs are labeled. If the books belong to the classroom, they each get a name stamp, color-dot level sticker, genre/theme label, and a number sticker. Each tub is labeled with a number sticker and genre/theme tag. I also scan (or manually enter) each book into my LibraryThing Catalog. This system seems pretty intense, and it is at times, but it helps us organize the books and easily find books when we need them. The video below will give you and idea of how the system works and what it looks like. (Video Picture File)
On Mondays, students self-select books (beginning in October). They store their self-selected books in their browsing box. These books are then used during independent reading time. The books are then returned to their book bin on Fridays. The books aren't always put back correctly or appropriately (even after a lot of training!), so we have book box managers that fix book bins. Everyone in the class is a book box manager. If we notice a problem with a book box, the book box manager fixes it. If we find a "wandering book" in the classroom, the book box manager takes care of it (bin 10 manager manages bin 10 books and so forth). It's a nifty system!
The labels print out on address sized labels (Avery #8160). You can also buy store brand labels that are compatible to Avery 8160 address labels. For those that wish to print shipping labels (Avery #8163) or business cards (Avery #5871), you can visit the QUICK TEMPLATES page on my site for the template downloads and then just copy and paste the label image into your new document. I no longer have the larger labels available.
Click
here to download the Book Bin business cards that I use, for my
book bin labels.
The labels below were created by me and several web site visitors who have generously shared their creations. The label contributors include Melanie, Stephanie C., Angela K., Ann-Marie R., Jeanna P., Debra M., Tessa S., Candace, Tara W., Susan E., Jennie S., Susan E., Michelle A., Melissa, Jo C., and Michele S. If you have labels to share, please send only one type of label per document (small size only please). I can no longer spend time converting large labels to small labels or creating one-type-of-label-per-document files from files that are sent containing lots of different labels in one document.
