No More Dewey - Part 2

I have finally finished weeding the everybody nonfiction section. I then did inventory on the section and marked the missing books lost. This allowed me two times to get my hands on the books. I carried a sheet with my categories on it and kept adding as I went through.  I am now ready to start dividing up the section. As I was working my way through this section I tried to figure out how to divide the section. I debated with the biography books as to whether to put them in the sections with their subject or make a people section and divide them by their subject in the people section. I really had to think about the way my students might use the books. I decided that I was going to create the people section and divide by subject. It will be interesting to see what other categories I will have to rethink. I am excited to get this process going. I don't work during the summer but I have an aide that keeps the library open during summer school so I am hoping to have the section into piles for her to redo spine labels.

No More Dewey

This month I went to the WEMTA conference and listened to many interesting speakers talk about all kinds of things that I could do in my school as the LMS. I went to one workshop were in a side note the speaker talked a little bit about changing her library to follow the bookstore model. I had been thinking about that same thing for a while. I want to make it easier for my elementary students to find books. I want them to do more browsing instead of always picking the same thing. I am now on a mission to change my everybody fiction into the bookstore model. Here are the steps that I have taken so far.

1. I ran off a report on the use of all the books in the everybody nonfiction.
2. I highlighted every book that had 2 or less uses.
3. I am weeding the section using that report.
4. I am coming up with my categories that the section will be divided up into. I have looked at the BISAC website to help me with categories. Having the print out of the whole section I have started looking at titles to come up with the categories. 

Here are the categories that I have come up with so far.  These are still changing daily as I start pulling books off the shelf and seeing that I can create a new subcategory. I am trying to make sure that each subcategory has at least 10 book in it. If it has less than ten I put it into the general subcategory.

Author Go Fish

Today in my third and fourth grade classes we talked about a bunch of different authors. We then played Author Go Fish. The game is played just like Go Fish except the cards had the names of authors on them. I found boxes of old check out cards in my library and used those to create the cards.

Everybody Fiction

This week my third and fourth grade classes have been talking about the Everybody Fiction section. The main point of the lesson for this week to get my students to understand how we organize the Everybody Fiction section. We talked about how we create the call number for a book in this section. Then we played a matching game. They had to find the authors name on one card and match it to the card with the call number. My students seemed to have a really good time with this activity.

Teaching Students How to Find Library Materials

I posted the question "Does anyone have any good activities that they use to help students learn how to find books and other materials in the library?"on the WEMTA Listserv and here are the answers that I received.  I have put them into a Google Doc. I have it so that anyone with the link can view it and I also have made it so that anyone with the link can edit it. If you have some other ideas please add them.

 Finding Library Materials

Author Websites

There are many authors that have wonderful websites. I have listed a few that I have used.

• Eric Carle
• Jan Brett
• Kevin Henkes
• Marc Brown
• Tedd Arnold
• Jan and Stan Berenstain
• Dav Pilkey
• Lemony Snicket
• Beverly Cleary
• Chris Van Allsburg
• David Wiesner
• Jon Scieszka
• Laura Numeroff

Are there any that you have used with your students or used for creating lessons?  List them in the comments.

Learn Boost

Have people at your school been looking for a way to keep an online grade book for free? I just learned about Learn Boost. It is a free online grade book along with having other features like attendance, calendars and a way to create lesson plans. If you have Google Apps for Education this programs is suppose to work with it. Check it out.