Classroom Library Facelift... or Full On Surgery!

Alright. All teachers have pet peeves. I have a couple, or a few, or maybe a lot! Haha. But each year I pick and choose one or two things to tweak to see if my peeves can become more of a perk.

One of those pet peeves was my library area.  Problems included how to organize (leveled?, genre?, none at all?), and (the big one) how kids put my organization back in order! Throughout the years, I've tried a variety of methods, but here is a picture of the latest method before the major library facelift (combo of baskets with major themes and then other books on shelves by genre/theme).

BEFORE picture

Last year, I even made a sign letting kids know how to use the book markers in the library and how I've pulled out my hair every year. It doesn't work.  

Let's start the FACELIFT!!!

I felt after this last year, I needed to change up my environment to feel fresh & new again. So what better time than now to just fix this library up. I knew it would be a tedious process, but I guess that's what summers are partially for! Teachers on a break completely??? Pishh!

Basically, I researched different organizational styles and decided to follow these directions: 

• Daily 5/CAFE article on Classroom Library Makeover - 7 Steps  
• or video explaining the process

Daily CAFE for Long Term Sub

Our first snow day of the year!  I totally needed this!  We (teachers and students) have been working hard and are ready for this unanticipated break!  What to do?  Catch up on some school work, long term planning, play with the pups, and blogging.

Ok, this is my first year implementing Daily 5 and CAFE.  Now that I will be out on maternity leave for a about a month and a half after spring break, I want to make sure students don't have to learn a whole new routine.

You can read about how I originally set up Daily CAFE in my room here.  I had some reservations about doing ALL 5 rounds each day, but got some much better ideas after attending the 3-day conference.  Then I tweaked some things to make it fit for me AND be able to incorporate our district's reading curriculum so I wasn't tossing everything out the window and starting from scratch.  My post Daily CAFE conference reflection and changes I made can be found on this post.

So this is what I have been doing pretty consistently and it's been working out well.

My BIGGEST concern with Daily CAFE was the lack of direct writing instruction & practice with what is specifically taught.  However, I was able to fit it in for 45 minutes after lunch for at least 3 days/week.

Daily CAFE Conference

I attended the Daily 5 and CAFE conference in Vegas this past week.  It was very informative since I had many reservations about aspects of it since starting my implementation of Daily 5 and CAFE this year.  You can read about that post here.  The sisters had some revisions & updates to the original Daily 5 book.  They are currently finishing up the second edition.

Well, here are some things I plan on trying out since the conference.

Assessments to Guide Strategy Groups
At our school, we currently have been trying to find a way to progress monitor comprehension.  We measured fluency pretty well, but didn't have something school-wide for upper grades when it came to assessing and monitoring comprehension.  My biggest problem with fluency assessments are that by the time they get to 5th grade, my biggest concern is comprehension.  Some kids just don't read well, but man, do they think outside of the box!  Also, the fluency assessment didn't even monitor their pace or expression.  It was simply read as fast as you could in the time frame given.  Who reads like that?

Anyway, the upper elementary assessment recommended by the sisters (which looks pretty good) is the Informal Reading Inventory by Roe & Burns.  It has the fluency, accuracy, vocabulary, and (most importantly) a comprehension piece.  Our reading specialist just ordered it and I'm excited to have something that will assess students' different reading areas and abilities.

Daily 5/CAFE

Okay, so ever since I did the book studies last year at my school, I have discovered Daily 5/CAFE has been a pretty big craze, meaning I've found a ton of posts and blogs all about Daily 5/CAFE.  This is my first attempt at it this year and I wanted to post some things that are working well and reservations I have.  Obviously, trying anything new takes time and I plan to use it next year too before deciding how I want to run my reading/writing stations.

Book Boxes:
Can we talk about how EXPENSIVE magazine holders are?  Even cheap ones multiplied by 30 does not equal cheap.  Anyway, I found a pretty inexpensive way to make book boxes and did it this past summer.  Here's the site I found with the information & directions: Book Boxes from Priority Mail Boxes.  I ordered the boxes from USPS and they shipped it to me for free.  The cost of labor was spending some summer time doing all this, but after buying paint (about 3-4 cans for 15 boxes), the cost was about $0.82/box.