The Most Popular Books In My Middle School Classroom Library This Year

My classroom library is organized by genre with a few areas that are organized by format or topic. Within each genre, books are alphabetized by author’s last name. This combination of organizational strategies, helps students (and me) find the books they’ll be interested in reading.

The genres that make up my classroom library are: fantasy, science fiction, romance, action & adventure, dystopia, mysteries & thrillers, humor, realistic fiction, historical fiction, and nonfiction.

I have a separate section for graphic novels (fiction and nonfiction are mixed together), and bins for short story collections, verse novels, and manga. I also have bins for my fiction books about animals.

Read on for the top book check outs in each genre plus from the graphic novel section of my classroom library.

What Independent Reading Looks Like In My Middle School ELA Classroom

Hands down, my favorite part of class is our independent reading time. ⁠We read at the end of our class period (doing it at the start of class just never worked for me) for 10 minutes daily, and there's just so many things I love about it.⁠

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I love helping students select a book that's just right for them. ⁠I love watching students become totally engrossed in what they are reading and not want to pack up to go to their next class. ⁠I love hearing students share about what happening to the character in their book. ⁠I love seeing a student pick up a new book based on a peer's recommendation. I love letting students have a break from the noise of learning and just sit in quiet.⁠ I love the chance for the students (and for myself) to turn off for a few minutes. I love getting to model a love of reading for students by reading right alongside them.⁠ 

Stocking Your Classroom Library: 8 Inexpensive (Or Free!) Possibilities

Building a robust, diverse, and inviting classroom library is something I truly enjoy. Spending lots of my own money on it is not. Students interests can change from year to year, so I am always looking for books that match those, and offering new books is a great way to keep reading enthusiasm high throughout the year. 

If you are building your classroom library or just starting one, you don’t have to spend a lot of money (or any!) either. Before you spend any of your own money, ask at school to see if money from the budget can be used to purchase books. If you get a yearly stipend for your classroom spending (I do), try to save your book purchases until you receive that. If you are spending your own money, consider setting a budget for yourself for each month or the school year as a whole. Read on for 8 places to purchase inexpensive books or get them for free.

3 Ways to Introduce Students to Books for Independent Reading

In the first week of school, one of the most important things I do is introduce my students to our classroom library and make sure that they have a book that they love for our daily independent reading. If students are enthusiastic about reading at the start of the year, it so much easier to maintain that enthusiasm rather than trying to create it as the year goes on. 

Some of the activities I use to introduce students to the organization of my classroom library during the first week of school are activities like genre circles, a book sort, and book speed dating as well as a variety of book spine activities.

A few other possibilities for getting books into students' hands are using a book scavenger hunt, hosting a book tasting, and holding a first line face off. What I love about these three activities, all described below, is that they can be used at the start of the school year to get students excited about choice reading, but can also be repeated or used later in the school year when your choice reading routine needs to be reinvigorated.

Introducing Students to Your Classroom Library With Book Spine Activities

Getting my independent reading routine started is a priority for me in my first week of school. To introduce students to the organization of my classroom library, on those first days of school I do activities like genre circles, a book sort, and book speed dating. You can read about all three in this blog post.

But those aren't the only activities I do to have students see and put their hands on as many books in my classroom library as possible, especially ones they might not normally gravitate toward. Having students create book spine poetry is a great way to do this because students are looking at books’ titles, rather than immediately evaluating whether or not the books are ones they’d like to read or not. 

3 Activities To Expose Your Students To Books On The First Days Of School

If you are anything like me, you want each of your students to have a book in their hands by the end of that first week of school so you can jump right in to your independent reading routine. My classroom library is overflowing with amazing titles I know my students will love, but before they begin to find those amazing books, they need to understand how my classroom library is organized so they will know where to look.

Read on for the details about 3 different activities I use (and you can too!) during the first week and even on the first day of school so my students are exposed to the books in my classroom library and can explore how my classroom library is organized.

How I Organize My Middle School Classroom Library

My classroom library is the heart of my classroom, it is my pride and joy, it is what makes students and sometimes even other teachers stop and say, wow, this is where the magic happens. With close to 1500 books, my classroom library took time to build up, but is a necessity because my school was built without a library. Because of its size and because it is the only place my students can access books within the school building, the organization of my library is something I've given a lot of thought.

As you are thinking about your own classroom library, whether you are just getting it started or you are looking to overhaul your current organization system, keep in mind that you want to do what is going to work best for you and your students. The organization of your classroom library should be manageable, sustainable, and help your students find books they are interested in reading. What works for me or another teacher may not work for or be best for you or your students.