In The Beginning.....

I have no clue as to how things got so chaotic. Well, that's not entirely true.... I think my organizational systems are so complex that the average 9 year-old might just have a tad bit of difficulty deciphering just what that organization is.Here is the "ugly": I have 2 main book areas for the children. The first one is a leveled library of books. Pretty standard stuff, huh. However, having come to Third Grade 3 years ago from second grade (did I mention I taught second grade 15 out of the last 23 years?), I have lots and lots of lower level reading books. Sometimes that is advantageous as I am the classroom teacher in a special education inclusion classroom -- there's quite a range (this year from Level aa to Q/R). Goal #1: I'd like to whittle down the baskets so there's a one- or two-level range of books to choose from.I have a lot of books from my very generous predecesor who retired. I am noticing that the age of the books, the amount of wear and tear, sometimes causes "classics" to go unused. Goal #2: Improve the display of the books in the library.Finally, having previously personally purchased (is this a surprise to anyone outside of education?) most of the books in my classroom library for my classroom in another school, (yes indeed -- all of those books on the white shelves plus about a third of the ones in the blue leveled baskets) I know I have too many "categories". All of the books on the white shelves are sorted by "genre" or interest or series. Goal #3: Consolidate the book selections so children can easily locate a just-right book.Yesterday I encouraged the students to start making suggestions for reorganizing this choas through suggestions made intheir response journal. I got my first feedback this afternoon:Dear Mrs. Bisson,You should make a catagory for Jack Prelutsky books. You have too many of them.Love,SWell, S, I will definitely take that under advisement -- however, I can't imagine I'll ever have too many Jack Prelutsky books :-)