Helen Reed - Blog Post 1 - Routman-Ch.5

I selected this chapter to read because my classroom library is a mess. While I have labeled bins on the bookshelf many students just can’t seem to remember where they belong once they have finished reading them. The mess hasn’t bothered me for a while though as I think of the saying, ‘A clean house is a sign of a misspent life.’ A messy library is a sign that my students are choosing books from the library to read.  Routman provides a checklist to think about your own classroom library and one statement particular jumped out at me. ‘Can struggling readers easily find books they can and want to read, or do they spend most of their independent reading time searching for books?’  This is exactly what my struggling readers do.  They would likely spend their entire independent reading time searching for a book if I didn’t tell them that they had to go read.  I’ve noticed that my struggling readers use the classroom library the least.  When I do see them selecting books from the classroom library, they usually select books which I’ve read aloud to the class for a read aloud, or they spend time looking then end up selecting a book they already had from the school library. While I provide my students with choice of books, the books in my classroom library do not include the students’ favorite series or titles. Dork Diaries and Amulet are popular titles among my students, yet they have to get these from the school library.

Looking and thinking about my classroom library, I observe a few things. First, there is not enough shelving, and two, book titles are not easily visible. Routman’s section titled, Display Books So they Entice Readers, really got me thinking. Some of the most popular books in the classroom are books that I’ve read as read alouds. These are the covers and books the students are familiar with and know. One thing I hope to do is create a book display and highlight a ‘top-ten’ of books. Providing a mixture of picture books, non-fiction, and chapter books, I hope students may be more willing to read something new, simply because it is being featured.