Watercolor Book Labels Freebie

Me at the end of every year: "I'm going to keep my decor the same next year. It will be nice to not change everything for once."

Me in July: "Ooooh! This design is so cute! I must change everything!"

This year, it's watercolors that are making their way into my classroom. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you already know that I've been working on watercolor book labels ALL WEEK. I'm so thankful for social media because my followers helped me to choose a font, a watercolor clip art style, and an overall label style. To show my appreciation for all of this assistance, I've decided to share all three styles with you! All you have to do is click the image below to download the file and then use the one you love best! Enjoy!

0

Easy Classroom Library Checkout with Booksource Classroom Organizer

Books, books, and more books! That pretty much sums up my life in and out of the classroom. I love to read and each year, it's my goal to help my students to gain a love of reading. After 13 years of teaching and a lot of shopping at Scholastic, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon, I have a MASSIVE classroom library. I add new books at the beginning of each year, as well as new books throughout the year. My classroom library currently contains over 1,000 books, and that number will keep on growing.

For 12 years, I used a basic sign-in/sign-out sheet to hold students responsible for checking books in and out of our classroom library. There were several problems with this:

• Unless I checked daily, I didn't know which students were actually being responsible and signing out their books before taking them to their seats and ultimately taking them home.
• Students often forgot to sign their book back in before checking out another. I allow one book to be checked out at a time (2 over breaks). Keeping track of this meant that at least once a week, I had to take out the sign-in sheet and read off each book that was checked out. Very often, students would say, "No, I already returned that," and then it became a search for the book that they returned so that I could be sure they actually did return it. A lot of valuable teaching time was wasted.
• It was easy for students to go beyond their limit. I always had 3-4 students who would have a stockpile of books inside their desk. Now, I'm all for reading more than one book at the same time, but my students are also allowed to borrow 2 books from our regular library each week. It is rare that my students are reading more than 2 books at a time.
• The conditions of my books were rarely reported to me. I wouldn't know about ripped covers or pages until another student found it on the shelf. My students know that I never get upset about this happening to a book, but I do love to know when it happens. Then I can take out my clear packing tape and try to perform book surgery to save the book. When I can't fix it, knowing the condition lets me know what books need to be replaced, which is helpful when we do our monthly Scholastic book order. 
• Books went missing or were lost and never reported to me. A student would go to borrow a favorite book and it would be missing. Then I had to go through every single sign-out page to try to figure out who was ultimately responsible for the book, which was rarely a success. I don't mind if a book goes missing here and there, but over time, this can result in a lot of popular books not being returned and when it isn't reported to me, I don't even know I need to replace them. 
• It took a long time for some students to write the title with their name and date on the sign-out sheet. 
• There is no way to keep track of your inventory. With over 1,000 books, I have reached the point where I can barely remember which book I bought. That made it hard to order or buy new books without having my classroom library right in front of me.

At the end of the 2016-2017 school year, I was determined to spend my summer finding a solution to these problems. I began to inquire about possible solutions through social media networks. I received a lot of suggestions and tried quite a few, but each one seemed to be lacking the library management ease I was hoping for. Then, in one Facebook group, another teacher mentioned success with Booksource Classroom Organizer. I checked it out and it turned out to be exactly what I needed. I began using it last August and it has exceeded my expectations!

Booksource Classroom Organizer makes classroom library organization a breeze! It's a FREE web-based program that solves every single problem I listed above. You can add your books to create an inventory of your library and organize your library by genre or levels, depending on what you use. Most importantly, it makes the whole checkout process a breeze!

To get started, I created a free account and began to add my inventory. Because of my library size, this took me several sessions. At first, I was entering each ISBN by hand and that was pretty time-consuming. Another teacher mentioned that she purchased a scanner similar to the one that is often used in school libraries. I went on Amazon and found the reasonably-priced TaoTronics USB Barcode Scanner (not an affiliate link). Once I received that, entering my books was quick and easy!

After I'd scanned my entire library, I was ready for students to begin check out. From the very first day, this program was a breeze and I found myself grateful for it throughout the year. Here are several reasons why I love this program:

• Checking books in and out is quick and easy. Students either check books out in the morning before announcements or during the day when they've finished an assignment early. I know they are being responsible because I can see them at the desktop computer that I've set up with the scanner and I hear the scanner beep when they check their book in or out. Scanning the book to check it out is a whole lot faster than writing down the title, their name, and the date of check out on a piece of paper.

• Students are asked to review their books when they return it. We already do book reviews in my class, so this is a great chance for students to write a snippet review that peers can see when checking out their books.
• My Dashboard gives me a great overview of student checkouts, overdue books, reviews to approve, and a nice breakdown of my inventory by genre. I definitely need more nonfiction! 

• In the My Account section under Preferences, I can set exactly how many books each student can borrow at a time. If they haven't returned one at are at their max borrow limit, the system won't let them borrow a new one. I had zero problems with missing books this year - zero! I didn't think that was possible! 
• Also in preferences, I can select how long students can borrow books before they are considered overdue. This is helpful because if I see that a student has had a book for over two weeks, I can have a conversation with them about it. We might determine that the book isn't interesting or isn't the right level for that student.
• When students check in a book, they are asked to select the condition that it is in. I can add my own condition options for this in the preferences page I use to set checkout limits. 
• I can print both classroom and student reports. For the classroom, this includes book checkout history, current books that are checked out, and overdue books. I print the current books list at the end of every week and use it as a 2-minute check-in to be sure that students still have the books on the list. I can also look at individual student checkout history and detail.

• As long as I have access to the web, I have access to my inventory. I went on an Amazon spending spree last week, stocking up on lots of new books. I had a few on a wishlist that I thought I might have already purchased during the last school year. All I had to do was log on to my Booksource Classroom Organizer account and search for the books in my library. I had one title already, so I didn't end up making an unnecessary purchase. What a breeze! 

Those are my favorite features about this free program, but there's a lot of other great features, too. If you are looking for an effective way to manage your classroom library and make book checkout a breeze, I encourage you to explore this program. You won't be disappointed!

0

Dollar Store Hack: Using Crates as Bookcases and NOT Ruining Your Books

In ten years of teaching and five different schools (military life), I've only once had enough bookcases for my giant classroom library. The first time I encountered this problem, I bought wire bookcases from Target and aside from the fact that they were less than fun to put together, they did their job. Shortly after that, I found some purple crates, which were much easier to put together.  I began to use them to hold my excess books that didn't fit on the shelves that were in my room. Since then, I've added additional shelves based on my color schemes and additional needs as my library grows and grows because yes, it's super challenging to not order tons and tons of books from Scholastic each month.

The problem I've encountered can be seen in the picture above. Whether it's a wire bookcase or a crate, there are lots of openings, which means that the books don't stand up or fit in the way that they would if you were using a regular wooden bookcase. For those that like things nice and neat like me, this can drive you a little bananas. I often see students attempting to take a book out, and the spine of the book getting stuck in one of the holes, which results in the student forcing it out and is not kind to the spine. So while I bought crates to keep my books safe, I've started to think that they are doing more harm than good. So this year I decided to do something I should have done ten years ago.

Enter the Dollar Store. Don't you just love how the Dollar Store has everything you need/don't need/can find a use for? Well, it turns out that the Dollar Store had just what I needed in the kitchen goods aisle. I present you the Flexible Chopping Mat, in a set of two bright and wonderful colors, one of which just happens to be part of my classroom color scheme. I currently have four crates being used, so I grabbed 4 packs so I could have 4 blue mats.

Back to the classroom I went and the fun began. 

Just $4.00 saved me a lot of money in book replacements and sanity too. It's also more aesthetically pleasing so it's definitely a win, win! Though I didn't use them now, I know those purple ones will come in handy in the future, especially since I still have my purple crates from my early years of teaching. I'm sure I'll use them someday when my theme includes purple again! 

3

Summer Task Card Organization Mission…Complete!

I have to admit, I'm a bit of a task card addict. I own at least half of Rachel Lynette's Store. Ditto for Teaching With a Mountain View. Throw in a set here, a set there, a set EVERYWHERE and you'll get the two giant boxes of task cards that I had at the end of the last school year. Thrown in plastic bags in no apparent order, they kind of drove me crazy last year. I can't begin to tell you how many times I printed cards that I already had simply because my cards were in chaos and I couldn't find anything. When the year ended, I turned to my friend Judy and said, "It is my mission to find a way to organize these task cards this summer." That is how my mission began.

This is what things looked like at first:

And yes, I like to create a bit of a mess as I work. Also, this didn't go as smoothly as I thought it would. I started off with the plan to do the following:

1. Place all answer keys in binders with the cover.
2. Place all cards in baggies in containers.

#1 was a good plan, though perhaps not yet to it's full potential. But #2: Not so much. Let's talk about why this simple plan didn't work: BAGGIES ARE A PAIN! There, I said it! Basically, I got everything organized and then realized that when my task cards were in baggies in a container, they were still unorganized and worse, they were all getting squished. I ended up putting everything away for awhile, forcing myself to take a "Task Card timeout" to rethink my strategy.

Then I saw a few people post that they organize their task cards not with baggies, but binder clips! Ah, what a genius idea! Without the baggies, the task cards would actually fit and they would be held together all nicey-nice! I also decided that I would need some sort of tab to organize the task cards by their skill/strategy/concept. So, here's what I ended up needing:

Materials: Card stock, sheet protectors, binder clips - use the small when the stack isn't too large and it saves space. I learned this the hard way, but can you ever have enough binder clips? No way! 

Also needed but not included in this picture, though you can play seek and find and identify these objects in the first picture:  containers (I found those awesome white ones at Target and they worked the best), sharpies for labeling, scissors for cutting, and binders. These are also known as the common sense items, but you know, I want to be sure that my post is clear! :-)  

So I cut card stock, I labeled card stock, I clipped task cards together, I put answer keys, answer pages, and covers in sheet protectors. I worked hard, covering every inch of our place with materials until we couldn't even eat on our kitchen table. But slowly, over the course of about a week, my project came together.

First, the math task cards:

I'm giving you two views here and thus you are getting two shots of my first reading container. So if you are thinking, "Why does she have two narrative elements sections?" I don't. I just shot those pictures at two different times during the process, but I think you get the gist, right?

I don't want to leave out how wonderful the binders look. I put the covers and keys in the binder in the same order that the task cards are in their containers. That's one of the things that I had not thought of when I first started this project, but I'm certainly glad I did! 

And with that, my task cards organization mission is complete and ready to go! Don't they look fabulous? 

You may be wondering about that container that has baggies, gasp! Those are huge sets of multiplication war that no binder clip on Earth would hold. That's also why those are in a separate, wider container.

0