Do your students utilize your classroom library or has it become an expensive decoration in the back of the room? We here at ELA Matters understand the importance of having a classroom library, not just pretty books on shelves, but a library where students find books they want to read, they can relate to, they love so much that they recommend them to other teachers.
We’ve put together a few tips to help you add books to your library and some ideas on getting students to interact with the books.
Adding New Books
Last school year, Katie from Mochas and Markbooks decided to revamp her classroom library from a small corner metal book rack to a designated reading space.
Katie knew that filling her classroom library with more relevant, high-interest reads while making it more organized, and accessible would demonstrate the value and importance of reading for her students, but accumulating enough books to fill the new shelves would be no easy task.
Here are some cheap (or free) ways Katie has gathered her best book hauls this summer:
Library Book Sales – Check your local library to see if they have any book sales throughout the year. Follow their Facebook page or join their mailing list to be notified of any upcoming sales. Katie was able to gather her biggest book haul at a “buck a bag” library sale where she filled a plastic bag to the brim for pocket change!
Social Media Book Drive – Just by posting a book donation request on her Facebook page to family and friends, Katie received many offers of books for her classroom. Many people are more than happy to donate their books to tidy up their homes, especially knowing the books are going to help the students in your classroom.
Yard Sales – Grab a coffee and head out for a nice stroll through some of your neighborhood yard sales. There are often Facebook groups for local yard sales that you can check to make sure you target the ones that mention having books. Even if you can’t find a ton of books, you may just find a cool new (old) trinket for your classroom decor!
Thrift Stores – Check out your local thrift stores every month or so, to find a great selection of YA novels, graphic novels, manga and more. Katie has been able to grab five or six books for the price of one new one, but you’re still looking at paying close to twenty dollars each visit.
If you want to see more of Katie’s adventures in book hauling, visit her on Instagram where she has documented it all in her reels.
Include Poetry
A few years ago, Lesa from SmithTeaches9to12 embarked on a reading challenge with students. One of those challenges where you read a book by an LGBTQ2S author or a book set in your hometown and so on, slowly checking the categories off as you read a book that fits. But one of the prompts focused on poetry and well, her classroom library had little to offer to meet such a prompt. As a result, Lesa set out to include more poetry-focused books in her classroom. Here are a mix of well-loved favorites and ones bookmarked for future purchase:
- milk and honey by Rupi Kaur
- Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman
- Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
- 100 Selected Poems by e.e. cummings
- Dog Songs by Mary Oliver
- Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones (forthcoming in September)
- Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
- Cane | Fire by Shani Mootoo
- The Rose That Grew from Concrete by Tupac Shakur
- For Every One by Jason Reynolds
Do you have a book of poetry you or your students love? If so, please share it with Lesa on Instagram @SmithTeaches9to12 or @ELAMattersBlog.
Book Interviews
If the books in your classroom library are sitting on the shelves and gathering dust, it might be time to give students a chance to preview them.
Jen from The Supported Teacher recommends giving students a chance to “interview” or speed date some of the most engaging books your library has to offer.
Gather some of your most-read books and set them around the desks, floors, or other areas where students like to read. Then invite your students to head to a book that interests them and check it out.
If you teach struggling readers or students who might be out of practice with choosing books, you might want to walk them through how to “interview” a book with a quick model.
During the model, I recommend walking your students through choosing a book from the moment they see the book spine on the shelf – looking at the title, the image on the front cover, reading the synopsis on the back cover, and if all of that looks like a good fit, read the first few pages to make sure it’s both interesting and an appropriate reading level. I teach my students to follow the “5 word rule” for determining if the reading level is right: if they find 5 or more unknown words on the first page, choose a different book.
As you model, it can be helpful to invite your students to follow along the process with the book in front of them and when your students are comfortable with assessing book choices, it’s time for a speed date!
Use your students’ interests and ability levels to help you decide how “speedy” the dates should be, but the general idea is that the date ends while they’re still wanting more.
I often ask my students to take notes on 3-5 books, so they have a short list of books they might like to read when they finish their current book. I usually ask them to write the title and a 1-sentence summary to remind them what the book was about or why they liked it. The goal is to balance having students write enough information they remember why they liked the book…without slowing down the date too much!
The last step is to make time for reading: Give students time to delve into their new books while their interest is peaked – don’t wait until next week! The reality is that students have very busy lives outside of school, so if we want them to read on their own, we need to make building the habit a priority in our classroom too. It’s amazing what a huge difference just 5 or 10 minutes each day can make in building book love for students!
Peer-to-Peer Recommendations
Classroom libraries are an essential part of any ELA classroom, but Carolyn from Middle School Cafe knows that if she can’t get her students to actually pick up the books in her library, it doesn’t really matter how many amazing books she has on her shelves.
One thing Carolyn is going to do this school year is to increase opportunities for students to share a review of a favorite book with the class. She knows a student’s opinion about a book outweighs hers!
Providing different methods for students to review books, can create a more inviting environment, enticing readers to visit the classroom library.
Posted student reviews create an atmosphere of this is our library, not Ms. Wahl’s library. Carolyn wants her students to feel comfortable picking up the books, reading the review, back cover copy, etc…and not feel like they need permission to touch the books.
Carolyn wants to be more intentional about having students review books. It used to be a regular part of class for students to write and post reviews of books they enjoyed – something that got lost in the chaos of returning to class last year.
Here are just a few quick, easy ideas to add student reviews to your classroom library that will entice their peers to pick up a book:
- Bookshelf Overhang
- In Book Review
- The Best Book I Ever Read
You can pick up some ready-to-print and go templates here.
