Classroom Library Organization Begins....

So, I'm going back to the classroom next year. I'll be teaching 2nd grade for the first time and I'll be on a new team in a new school. Lots of new, I'm really excited! I like change. One of the first things that popped into my mind when I began imagining things I wanted to do differently than I used to was my classroom library. I left a good chunk of my beloved library behind (because it had been purchased with school money) but I own a great deal of books too. As a first grade teacher, I had most of the books organized by Guided Reading level, and then some genre tubs. I don't have pictures, but it was kind of like this.

Anyway, as I have grown in my understanding and read a lot about such things, and I have changed my opinion on how this should be done. There a several factors I want to take into consideration when organizing the library and setting expectations for classroom book selection;

• Instructional reading level as defined by the F&P Benchmark Assessment= 90-95%
• Independent reading level as defined by the F&P Benchmark Assessment= 96% or higher
• Timothy Shanhaan's thoughts on the subject
• Common Core Text Complexity Bands (page 8 of Appendix A)
• My own experiences with students and how they should and do select texts for themselves

In the end, this is where I have landed...

If you check this post, you will see some of the work I did to start wrapping my brain around pulling the guided reading levels and CCSS text complexity bands together. After that work was done I decided that I wanted to reflect those bands in my library organization without over emphasizing the high, medium or "lowness" of them...does that make sense? I basically didn't want to just number them 1, 2, 3. So I settled on colors, specifically colored masking tape, for organization. 

There is my copy of the chart, which I just added the tape colors to. This isn't very profound, I know. Basically its separated by grade level ,but its not cut and dry (especially if you look closely at F&P guided reading levels.) The picture doesn't show this well but the first color is yellow and the 3rd one is lime green! I chose the tape for a few reasons, its bright, I can easily get more, and it allows me to cover the previous circle stickers with letters on them, by wrapping it around the corners like so:

These are new books ( rom the Scholastic Warehouse Sale!) so they didn't have the circle stickers in the top right corner, but the other 200 books I have in storage do :( Once again, I am trying to get away from kids or myself saying "Your'e reading level D books." With this new color coding system I will be able to direct my kiddos to a color  they should be reading within (based on assessment data) but then also work with them to build their capacity to independently choose "just right books."  In other words, I'm trying to honor and understand these words from CCSS Appendix A:

So once I figure out storage of the "ranges" of texts ( I'm thinking maybe these......because then I can put them on the floor around the edge of the room or on top of other shelving?) students will be choosing books for their book boxes from the color they have been assigned, but  growing in their understanding that even within the red bins, some books are going to be hard, some are going to be easy, and some will be just right. 

I'll post pictures once I get in there and get things set up. I'm excited about this new way of thinking and the possibilities for my new 2nd grade readers!

Reading level correlation chart

In my studies of the Common Core ELA appendix C and other supplementary resources I came to a spot where I wanted look closely at the F&P reading levels, lexile ranges suggested by the Common Core, and even DRA scores. I needed to better understand if/how they were connected. And this was the result...

I created this chart to bring some clarity to what text complexity expectations look like alongside one another :)

Content Area Centers...with an elementary twist!

While at Teachers College back in February, I learned about content area centers for middle schoolers and fell in love with the idea. For those of you who have been teaching primary grades, centers are not new for you. But when my learning happened the examples I was provided all had to do with middle school and to be honest, the task cards were a bit overwhelming, so I starting thinking through how I would tweak them for elementary, and here is the resulting post :) 

 What if instead of cracking open social studies textbooks or jumping into science experiments from our FOSS or EIE kits, we had a day or two set aside for centers? K-8 teachers, I want to challenge you to think about some of these compelling reasons to engage in this type of teaching for the purpose of increasing your student's learning. 

Centers are: An opportunity for students to engage with content in a variety of the ways, many "access points", Requires deep thinking about content, rather than "sit and get, Students learn from conversation with one another, defending opinions, justifying thinking  with text evidence, Allows for differentiation in task, support, and thinking, Great chance to generate and answer "big questions", Lends to  thoughtful CCSS connections, Builds independence and ownership of learning, Here are some ideas for centers that could become part of your instruction regardless of the center;

Here is the link to the Teachers Pay Teachers product

Of course students need to know what your expectations are for the centers, and that does take time. Once students know what the expectations are for the photograph center however it doesn't matter if the photos are of the civil rights movement, science content, or even a math diagram, they know what to do.