How (and Why) I Transformed My Classroom Library

"Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or a duty. It should be presented as a gift."

-Charles Scribner Jr.

I had a dilemma in my kindergarten classroom this year. My kids hated reading time. They were rolling on the floor, books on heads, talking, joking, playing, practicing ninja moves and gymnastics... basically, anything and everything EXCEPT for reading. I wasn't sure what the problem was. I taught the mini lessons, made all the visuals, gave reminders of how "Read-to-Self," should look and sound. I did all the things. But, it just wasn't working. This year was particularly challenging, but this is the one part of teaching kindergarten that has just never felt as smooth as the rest of the day. I always felt there was a better way but I didn't know what it was.

My grade level at my school uses a modified version of the "Daily 5," framework. The Daily 5 framework typically consists of 5 main components for your daily reading block: Word Work, Work on Writing, Read to Self, Read to Someone, and Listen to Reading. I had mostly managed to adapt this framework to fit into how I prefer to structure my classroom. The one problem that was recurring every year was- Read to Self.

My Problems with Read to Self:

1. How can young children read to self when they cannot yet read?

2. In order to get them reading independently, they must be taught and this works best using a one-on-one approach.

3. How do I find time to work with each child individually while also putting out the wild-fires in the circus that had become our Read to Self block?

In order to get to the bottom of what was going on, I sat down with my students and had a class meeting. I told them I had noticed that "read to self" time wasn't working. It was loud. We weren't reading and it didn't seem like they were enjoying it. They agreed. We brainstormed a list of problems and they came up with some ideas of how to fix it. It boiled down to two main issues.

The Students' Problems with Read to Self:

1. It was too long.

2. The books were boring.

They confirmed what I was already feeling. The leveled readers that were being used were not holding their interest.

I've always been a firm believer in the Montessori philosophy to, "follow the child" and this was no different. I decided to completely re-work my classroom library. Previously, the readers available to the children for use during "Read to Self" were leveled readers. I had already started to add more decodable readers (readers that children can read independently using their phonics knowledge) to my collection. I also decided to make available many of the favorite books and allow the kids to add some of those to their book bins as well. After all, I want to teach them to read but I also want to teach them to LOVE reading!

What I did:

I found this great, free set of classroom library labels from "Kelsie's Classroom" on TpT. Using some book bins, I sorted some of our favorite titles by subject and/or author. I also went through our leveled readers and pulled out the ones that could fall into tour new categories. I plan to add more as we go, but I wanted to started with a limited collection so as not to overwhelm the kiddos with too many choices. I condensed the number of leveled readers available to make room on the shelf for the new system. I cannot wait to introduce the new system to my class when we return from Spring Break next week! I have a feeling this is going to help them get excited about reading time!

My classroom library BEFORE: