Classroom Organizer App

I love to organize... and then reorganize... and then reorganize again. I make simple projects into step by step drawn out processes to make sure every little thing has its proper place, and if it doesn't belong somewhere, then I don't need it! That's my rationale anyway.

Lately, I have been on a bit of an organizing spree. So far I have tackled my computer documents, my Pinterest boards (See what I mean? Reorganizing already organized boards!), and my file cabinet. My latest project is my classroom library. As a newer teacher, I am still trying to build up a classroom library. Since I didn't have too many books before, I didn't feel the need to organize my library. I thought it would be a bit silly to have an entire box dedicated to shape books when I only had two books about shapes. Now that my collection has grown to over 150 titles (and is continuing to grow... here I come summer yard sales!), I think it is time to make sense of everything I have.

Step 1: Make a list of all classroom books. To do this, I used Booksource's Classroom Organizer. The website has a free app that I used to scan the titles of all of my books onto my account.

It was super simple and took no time at all. I now have an alphabetized list of all of my books available on my phone, my iPad, and on my computer.

I can add genres to help sort the books, and I can export the list to excel (which will both be part of Step 3). I will also be able to use the app in the future as a tool to keep track of students who have checked out books from the classroom library.

Another similar application that I found is The Classroom Library Company's Book Retriever, but it costs a whopping $0.99.

Tomorrow will be Step 2 of Project Library Organization. I am going to enlist the help of my kiddos in deciding which books go best together. I think this will be a great end of the year project for us to take on as a group. We are getting antsy for summer and this will engaged all of the students in a meaningful task. I will keep you posted on how it goes.

How do you organize the books in your classroom library? Did you allow your students to help in the organization process?