Book shop in the classroom: what you need to teach students! The beginning of the year means it’s time to teach students how to book shop! This is an important step in the launching readers workshop component. We want our students to understand how to find books and book shop in the classroom. So, how do we do that? Find out here!
Book Shopping Is A Mess
This was my before! Can you relate? Then it’s time to learn more book shopping tips and tricks!
Having kids book shop used to be messy in my classroom (see photo above). I didn’t really have it organized and would just let students book shop whenever they said they needed or wanted to. What a rookie mistake #firstyearteacherproblems
Don’t worry- I finally figured out a system that worked for our classroom and I am happy to share it with you today.
Classroom book shop tip #1: Make sure your library is organized
Once my classroom library was organized and leveled, students were able to find what they needed and wanted to read. I had bins organized by genre and by reading level. Each book had a sticker to match the label as well.
Read more about how we organized our classroom library for success in this blog post.
Tell students what to shop for
No, I don’t mean pick the books for them! I had a rule that students could pick 2 on level, 2 on the level below their level, and 2 that they are interested in from anywhere in the library. So, they had 6 books for the week. This was a good amount because they would book shop once a week, which means they had enough time to read their books at least once. Did kids complain they already read all their books? Yes, they did. However, I always encouraged them to read books more than once.
Create a schedule
I would let certain reading groups book shop on certain days during our morning work time. While the rest of the class was completing morning work, there were 4-5 students book shopping. Sometimes these students didn’t get their morning work completely finished, so you have to decide if that’s something you can let go of. I tried to set a timer of 10 minutes for students to book shop so they would have time to complete their morning work.
Classroom book shop tip #3: Make sure students know where books go
With book shopping happening so frequently, one thing I had to do was teach my students to put their books back in the correct spot. I used to have a Book Return bucket, but it would get overflowed from being neglected. Oops. I started using matching book bin stickers on the books so students could match the books to the book bins and put them away themselves. You can see our library labels here.
Even our youngest students can book shop! It’s important that all our students have the choice to choose books that interest them.
I also had 2 library leaders for the month who would go check the library at the end of the day as we were cleaning up. Their job was to make sure books were put in the correct bins and that our library was clean. They also checked the “I Don’t Know” bucket to put those books back in the correct place. The “I Don’t Know” bucket was for books where students weren’t sure where they went.
Download a free book shopping schedule
Organize your book shopping schedule! Grab a free book shopping schedule here! You can type your names or groups right into the form and hang it up in your classroom library!
