All the Books!

My classroom library is home to over 1,000 books.  Yes, you read that correctly - over 1,000 (EASILY).  Every year I probably add about 100 new books to the lot: chapter books, picture books, informational text, etc.  I am constantly promoting new books and buying books that I think my current readers would be interested in.  This is not always an easy feat on a teacher's salary, but it can be done!  Here are the top five methods I have used to add more books to my classroom library:

Scholastic Book Order

Scholastic Book Clubs is my all time favorite way to get books!  Just by sending home flyers each month and promoting a love of reading in your classroom, you can earn points and free books to help build up your classroom library!  I work at a Title 1 school so I run the average book order every other month.  Some months are better than others but in general I get about 4-6 student orders each go around.  Just form that alone I am able to accumulate enough points that I can purchase AT LEAST 40 new books each year with points alone... that means I didn't pay a single penny for those books.

Scholastic has started putting a $1 book in each flyer EVERY month!  This is perfect for a couple reasons.  

1. You can get books for cheap for your classroom library.  There are also $2 and $3 books as well - still a great deal! If you are like me and work at a Title 1 school, your families don't always have a ton of extra money to spend on books, so them being able to get classics and favorites for just $1 is an AWESOME deal!  

2. I use these $1 books to build my novel study or literature circle libraries.  I will buy anywhere from 5-25 copies (whole class set) of a book to use in my class.  

3. I will also purchase the $1 books for our "Christmas Book Pass" game (for the students who can't bring one in), and for an end of the year gift.  I keep an eye out all year for a perfect summer book for my kiddos.  I want it to be something that is a good piece of literature but also a series, this way if they love the book they can keep the momentum going with the rest of the series throughout the summer!

Also, if you are a first year teacher, Scholastic Book Clubs offer even more extras to help you build your library!  Don't forget to look at other flyers besides the ones for your grade levels as well.  I am a big believer in using picture books to teach my standards as well as reading a classroom-book-a-day picture book.  Purchasing picture books through Scholastic Book Orders are a very inexpensive way to build up this portion of my library as well!

Donors Choose

I LOVE using Donors Choose and I try to do at least one a year for books for my classroom.  I usually have something specific in mind and ask for diverse books, non-fiction, classroom-book-a-day, etc.  But that's the joy of Donors Choose, you can ask for whatever your classroom needs!  I usually try to ask for my more expensive books through DC because sometimes they will offer half-price matching.  The only draw back to DC (in my humble opinion) is that you never know when it will be funded so you never know when you will receive the books.  Better late than never, but if you need them by a specific date this might not be the way to go.  Also, ALWAYS check with your school or district about what their parameters are for Donors Choose and if those books get to stay with you as your teaching career advances, or do they belong to the school...

If you would like to get started with your own Donors Choose account and project, I recommend this page to get you started: 5 Steps for a Successful Start on Donors Choose.

Goodwill

Every Goodwill might be different but ours sells paperback books for $0.29 and hardback books for $0.59.  Y'all, you cannot beat those prices!  It can be hit or miss like anything, but it's always worth a shot!  I also like to go to the Goodwill in my school's neighborhood because they always have a better children's book selection than my neighborhood one. Probably because of all the kiddos! LOL  Another good tip is to at peak times, like before and after Christmas and around Spring, for bigger selections.

Scholastic Warehouse Sale

Scholastic Warehouse Sales are events in major cities that usually occur 2-4 times a year.  If you sign up for their email list you will get notifications weeks in advance as well as coupons for $10 off and more!  You can even sign up to volunteer for the event and my understanding is the volunteers get even more discounts/perks!  Every warehouse sale is different in what they offer (book-wise and sale-wise).  There are usually two sales a year that offer 50-80% off of their books.  Be sure to check the email to see what sale prices are being offered.  Some of the events also offer Build a Box.  This is where you take a box inside a specific section of the warehouse and fill it with as many books as you can for a set price!  There was a time where this was my main source for classroom library books.

Student Donations

Another way to get more books into your classroom is to ask your families!  You will be surprised how many students want to donate something to their classroom library.  Let them promote and talk up their books to the class before you put them out for circulation!  This will make the students feel more special, allow them to share their love of these particular reads with their friends, and inspire another student to do the same.  Trust me, I know!  My principal even gave me the idea that if you have a classroom economy or ticket system, that any student that brings in books (as long as their parents give permission) get "X' amount of money or tickets toward their class account. 

Everything is worth a shot once!  In this case, I recommend giving all of these options a shot more than once!  There are a lot more ways to get books into the hands of your students but these are the top 5 ways that add to my classroom library the most.  Later I will tell you about some other, less common, methods (especially if you work at a Title 1 school like me)!  Do you have any other tried and true methods to get books?  Let's hear about them in the comments below!

Texts Sets for Introducing Novel Studies (Among the Hidden)

We are starting our new novel, Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix (one of my favorites!), and I wanted a unique pre-reading activity to introduce the book.  If you haven't read this book, it is a must read!  It's about a boy, Luke, who lives in a society which enforces a population law that only allows two children per home.  Luke is a third child, one of the Shadow Children.  One day when Luke is gazing longingly out the window, because he can't go outside for fear of being discovered, he finds another "third child" in one of his neighbor's home.  His new friend would love nothing more than to leave the house and let the world know who she is...  But does Luke dare to do the same?  From there it is a very suspenseful tale and I'm not going to give any more away!  As you can tell for such a good book, I had to have a good hook!

Cue my most recent professional development!  One of our county's reading gurus came to our school to tell us all about "text sets" and how to implement them in our classroom.  Now I know the term "text sets" has been around for a while and I have always heard a few different meanings for the phrase but this PD showed me text sets in a whole new light.  Maybe it's a Common Core thing, but Florida is just starting to semi-embrace CC (we're just calling it something else) so forgive me if you already know this!

The purpose of this text set is to attempt to not just introduce a topic, but issues within the topic, and have students form opinions based on their evidence from many different sources/forms of media.  For our pre-reading activity I used video clips, articles, and maps.  One of the things that the presenter kept mentioning was that we DO NOT teach during this lesson.  This is all about the students teaching and thinking for themselves.  Using this graphic organizer (go ahead and grab it, it's FREE!) they fill out each square after each new piece of evidence and write down all their thoughts, then finally form their opinion.  I cannot take credit for this organizer.  The presenter showed us her version but I created my own and swapped the order of some of the boxes.

Step One: Introduce the Topic and Purpose Question
My topic was about population policy.  I started off by just asking some general family questions of the kids.  Who was the second child in their family?  Who was the third?  Who had more than three siblings?  Were their parents a third child?  Then the "hard hitting" questions came out.  What if I said every family could only have two children?  Who would still be here?

It was very interesting to watch the faces of the third children.  I asked them if there was any way that could ever be a rule, only being allowed to have two children, and they were very adamant that it could not!  Then I introduced my Purpose Question: "Is it ever okay for the government to "manage" your family and tell you how many children you can have?"  Unanimous "no" ladies and gentlemen.

I introduced the graphic organizer (which I printed on gray card stock and laminated so they would last me longer) and the purpose behind it and told them to only fill out the box I told them to when I tell them to.  You can actually go in any order you want but I started from the top and went left to right.

Step Two: This Makes Me Feel/Think
Our first source was a three minute video clip about what exactly is China's One-Child Policy.  It was very informative and gave the background as to how it got started and looked into one "invisible child's" life not being able to fully exist.  It was very moving.  After watching the clip I told them to read the directions and fill out the first box.

Step Three: Stop and Jot
For the last three boxes the students would be using articles that I prepared for them on a key ring.  Each pair of students grabbed one article and read it together.  I only had two articles, one that showed the benefits of China's population policy and one that was against it.  After they read their article and discussed their thoughts and opinions with their partner, they had to read the directions and fill out the Stop and Jot square based on what they just read (not the video).

Step Four: R.E.S.P.O.N.D.
You can have the students swap articles if you would like, but I had mine tell each other what they read about.  They did know this ahead of time to help them prepare key points and the main idea.  They were also allowed to reference back to the article.  After teaching each other about the other side of the issue, students chose one way to respond to what they just learned: R - rephrase, E - explain, S - summarize, P - pose a question, O - opinion, N - note your thoughts, or D - describe.  Again, this section is only writing down their thoughts and feelings based on what their partners just taught them.  They never read the other article, just learned about it from their table mates.

Step Five: Citing Textual Evidence
This is where it all comes together.  Now that students have seen the video, read the articles, made connections, etc. they write down their final answer to the Purpose Question in the last box using text evidence to support their opinion.  It was interesting to see some of their unanimous "No's" go to "well maybe..."

My kids absolutely LOVED this pre-reading activity.  They couldn't wait until we started the novel after they found out that this is what it would be about.  As I stated in the beginning, I did very little teaching during this time.  A couple kids had questions about what words meant and what not and we did end up having a whole group discussion on the two articles at the end but by that point they already knew everything.  I wasn't teaching them anything new.  It was very satisfying to watch my fifth graders be such independent learners and thinkers!

You could use text sets and the graphic organizer for SO MANY subjects!  The Reading and Writing Project has tons of digital non-fiction text sets already set up for you by subject to get you started.  It is an amazing way to cover citing evidence, differentiating reading levels, text features, social skills/communication, in-depth knowledge on any subject, and so much more!  I keep thinking of different topics I would love to use this with!  What are your thoughts and suggestions?  I would love to hear any ideas you have in the comments sections :0)

Happy Friday y'all!