Tuesday Tried It: Organization with Leveled Book Baskets & Labels Freebie!

So this is a little embarrassing, but I’m now nearly complete with my 4th year as a reading specialist and this is the FIRST time I will officially have book basket labels (that are more than just generic themes…)! This is mainly because we haven’t really followed a system of leveling at our school up to this point so I just never put the effort into labeling all my books. Also, I’ve always been using either the intervention books that came with our reading series or Reading A-Z books, so….to be fair…it’s kinda ok that it’s taken me this long (or at least that’s what I’m telling myself!!). 🙂

I leveled these books mainly through Scholastic Book Wizard. I personally chose the DRA Level option (but there are other options depending on how you level your books) and then used a correlation chart from Reading A-Z to see the F&P level of each book. The book wizard is a great resource and although it is quite mundane to sit and type in the names of books, in the end it makes you have a very organized classroom library so it was worth the time for me! 

After I had my books labeled with their F&P level on the front cover of each book, I set them up in each little leveled book basket and woohoo I officially have a leveled classroom library! I’m so very glad that I tried out this new organizing idea because I really think it will make my bookshelf so much more resourceful for my little friends next year. If you are looking to spruce up your classroom library, you can download your free copy of my F&P book basket labels (AA-Z) here (or by clicking the pic below)! 

If you don’t use F&P but you use numbers for your book leveling, you can grab these labels with numbers instead here! 

Oh and I still am using generic theme labels for my read aloud books that I like to keep separate from my student book baskets.  But, I made new fun labels for those too and I have them now all organized in my tall bookshelf so I can easily grab them throughout the year for read alouds. I personally have to take the time to do this kind of organizing now at the end of the year because I always find a ton of other things to do the days leading up to the beginning of school- so for me, end of the year is a major organizing time for me otherwise it doesn’t happen (evidently so, considering my 4 years without leveled book baskets…). 🙂