I have a desktop computer in my classroom that was donated by a friend. That's #1 for this set up. I don't know any other teachers in my building who have a student-use computer, and really, I only have mine because of sheer luck. Well, that's not completely true. I guess it could be considered off-line networking that got us that computer. Everyone I meet finds out quickly that I'm a teacher, so one day during Sunday School a friend said, "Would you like our old computer for your classroom?" Uh, yes.
So, that computer has one icon on the desktop: Firefox. My classroom blog loads as the homepage for Firefox and kids click on the "Classroom Library" link on the blog to get started:
This link takes them to an embedded Google Form in our classroom wiki. The students then fill out the wiki with all their information.
When they hit "Submit" on the form, their info gets updated in a Google Spreadsheet that only I have access to.
After reading their book, students put a sticky note with their name on the book and drop it off in a box by my desk. I have them use the sticky because I have a few books with multiple copies, so I need to know which copy is coming back.
When I get time, I go through the books in the box and input a checked-in date on the spreadsheet. My favorite part about this is the list of books each student has checked out that I'm getting!
After checking books in, I put them in a box by our classroom library where kids can sort them into the library during their free time.
There are a few improvements I'd like to make. When I was really ambitious (in the summer) I thought I could put all the books in our classroom library in a spreadsheet with genre and Lexile level to go along with them. I want my students to be cognizant of their Lexile levels. When I doubled my library two weeks into school via Scholastic book order, I ditched that idea. I'd like to see if I can get that going again next year.
I also had visions of the kids themselves checking books in as well as out. At this point I don't trust their organizational skills to get that done. Let me stress that it's not them that I don't trust. I don't think I have a single kid that would steal a book from me on purpose. I do think that they would lose more books if asked to check them in themselves. If they were checking them in, I had planned to have "Where can I find a review for this book?" as one of the check-in questions. Possible answers: Video review on YouTube, blog post on classroom blog, etc. Sounds awesome. I'd like to figure out how to get that going for next year. Open to suggestions.
Hope this helps anyone looking to get students involved in some parts of the classroom library experience.
