CLASSROOM SET UP DAY 6 & 7 | Library Organization 

As a school librarian with 20,000 books plus other media, organize your work for efficiency. Put all the labels on a bin of books at the same time. Then go back and enter them into your spread sheet. I am from pre computer days, when the card catalog drawers needed reorganizing, i took one drawer home a night. It was more manageable, and did not take up a lot of contract time. Do that with your bins. You can watch TV at the same time.

Your room looks great! Just a tip, if you can find a place for it, you may want to keep the small round table for awhile even if you get a kidney shaped table. Small tables for centers, group work, a creative or art table, setting up game boards or puzzles, etc. is valuable real estate in a classroom.

Love your room. The effort you put on over the summer will pay off; the first year is so hectic, the last thing you want is to worry about your room. Your library organisation is so good. Love the holiday-book organisation. Yes, I would add a section for back-to-school, and one for the end-of-thé year. Maybe it's a next-year project, but I actually have similar systems for books linked to major themes or topics we study throughout the year. So, if we are studying, say, magnetism in science in May, I have books on magnetism stored until May. I then display them when we study them. Having new/exciting books makes children so excited about what we are studying. But, again, it a big project and not something I did my first year. Also, I would try and screen your kids for colour blindness if you are using a colour-only library system. I remember my first year one child would avoid certain book bins. Had no idea why he hated reading and tidy-up time until we worked out he could not differentiate the colours. Broke my heart. I now use colours and shapes or numbers where possible. But no need to do that this year if none of your kids are colour blind. However, I did want to mention the only thing you may struggle with from what I can see: you don't seem to have very much space for kids' bags and coats. I would try to make extra space for backpacks on your shelves or get a big box for them. Perhaps you could store your cleaning supplies in a box or on your desk, freeing up space above the coats. If that's not practical, you could move some bins up there and free a lower shelf. Also, pro tip, if children bring in lunch boxes, make sure they are stored separately from the backpacks and coats. Lunch boxes can and will leak... I learnt this the hard way. Sigh. Hope this comment helps. Have fun this year, You are doing amazing!

If your read aloud go with a unit, keep them with your unit. When my teachers had books from the library for a unit, we would photocopy the cover or title page with the call number so they could file with their unit. When they were getting the unit ready they gave us the copies and we pulled all the books for them.

Loving how your classroom is turning out! I would suggest that since your kiddos will be first graders, instead of having them bring a family picture for “our class is a family” bulletin board, you collect pictures of them through the year and add them there. Projects pictures, art day, field days, etc. Reason is that not necessarily all your kiddos will have a “regular family” meaning some might live with grandparents, some might be adopted, parents are divorced, and other variations that can make them emotional or bring tough questions… as kids, they will compare families. Awesome job!

Just a suggestion. Instead of buying more stickers from Amazon and spending more money. You can take colored construction paper and hole punch out small dots for each book and just use tape to put it on the front of the book. That way you can get a lot more dots for the books and you can still have a lot of different colors to choose from. Also someone else mentioned this but I'd also put a dot on the inside of the back. Like on the inside of the back of the book so that way if the sticker comes off you still know where it goes without having to reference your inventory list.

Just a tip… add a colored dot inside the book that corresponds to the sticker color so that when the sticker falls off ( some will! ) you don’t have to look it up again. Makes teacher life easier!

Awsome I love the library it looks wonderful 😊👍

Your classroom is looking so cute!

Inspiring Edventures, the spray ur talking about is Matte spray

Where did you get your bins from??

Another teacher that I was watching found white board paint at Home Depot and painted the chalk board.