Who's Who and Who's New: Lexile, Guided Reading, & Topics Oh My!

Lexile, Guided Reading, and Topics Oh My!

Over the last year I have been so overwhelmed with organizing my classroom library. It seems every month teachers were changing how they organized. Going from guided reading levels, topics, and genres. Last year I kept mine organized by topics: friendship, animals, winter, and holiday books. It worked great for me, but my students had a hard time picking books for buddy reading during our daily 5 centers. I taught them how to find the perfect book and we made anchor charts, but still the Charlie the Ranch Dog books were too good to pass up! I can’t blame them, the amount of freedom was too much and temptation gave in. I decided to dedicate a week to leveling all my books and placing them in guided reading level baskets.

Here are some easy steps!

1. Take all your books out and make a huge pile. This will for sure bring your anxiety level up a notch!

2. Download the app Literacy Leveler! For the most part it had the majority of the books available for leveling. The ones I was unable to find I used Scholastic Book Wizard!

3. Start scanning!

4. Mark with level! I used garage sale dots on the back of each book and wrote the level.

5. Place in baskets J I went to the Dollar Tree and bought 25 of their large blue bins. It took me three trips to three different stores to accumulate the 25, but well worth the savings! I have heard you can order online however I do not think you can specify the color.

6. Enjoy your hard work before 30 little friends start book shopping!

Here are some pictures of the process.