Classroom Libraries are the Heart of a Classroom

Classroom libraries are where new friends are made, new places are explored, and where smiles are plentiful. As teachers, we often struggle with how to grow our classroom library without going broke. Books are expensive and getting enough books to satisfy the needs of your students can take time! This blog post will show you how to grow your classroom library 120 books each year without costing you a dime!

 Why Have a Classroom Library?

All teachers should aim to have a robust classroom library. Classroom libraries should be diverse in genre, characters, authors, and topics. Teachers want students to have easy access to books in every genre imaginable. Having an impressive classroom library sends the message to students that reading is essential for learning.

Happy Birthday to… Our Classroom Library???????

One idea that we absolutely love is the idea of having students donate a book to the classroom library for their birthday. It sounds like a strange idea, but here’s what we have seen. Our students love doing this. Often, their parents take them to Barnes and Noble, or other book store, and the child gets to pick out any book they want to give to the class on their birthday. They come into the classroom and show it off with pride to their classmates. Their smile shows us that they have definitely learned that giving is one of the best gifts anyone can get. If it’s a picture book, we usually read it right then and there, and if it’s a chapter book, we feature it in our library as a “Top Pick.” Watch how fast it flies off the shelf! All the students thank the child whose birthday it is and we sing Happy Birthday. Smiles are the order of the day and our classroom library just grew a little larger, one book at a time… x32 students in our case!

You’ve Read It? We Haven’t!

The number one way that we have grown our classroom over the year is by asking our students to donate books that they have at home that they have already read. We have them fill out a slip of paper and glue it to the inside cover of the book they donate. We might bribe them with some classroom money too! Whatever works! It’s worth it!

Using this FREEBIE

This FREEBIE will save YOU a ton of money and will grow your classroom library! We pass this flier out at Back-to-School Night to the parents of our students. If each child turns in books for the coupons, you will get a MINIMUM of 4 books per child (often, the stack of donated books is much larger). If you have 32 students, like we do, that’s 128 books each year! In five years, you just gained 640 books!

CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO GRAB YOUR FREEBIE!