Check It Out!: Changing Things Up

As mentioned in a previous post (Changing Things Up...) we are reorganizing our non-fiction/informational area of the DES library to be more like a book store, with books arranged by specific topics on the shelves based on high traffic areas and hot topics.

Making this change during the school year has been "interesting" but well worth it, even though we have only just begun. In the past week, we (Maggie, Kelli, and our two high school helpers) cleared off the shelves where the 0.001 to 200.00 Dewey books use to be. They weeded the animal books, which we decided would be the first books in this conversion, to get rid of the extremely old, torn, beaten, and battered, and then started to move them over to the open shelves. All the "Big Cat" books are together in an area labeled as such. All the "Shark" books are together, etc, etc. We then began to place colored dot stickers on the spines of the animal books (all animal books will have a red dot on the spine). As the sections grew, it was time to start creating the blue shelf makers; each included the animal word (Big Cats) and also a picture of the animal. This visual will be so helpful for our students.

This week, the 4th graders were the first to actually realize that all the caution tape and construction signs were not decorations left over from Halloween. They discovered the new blue shelf markers and all of the animals books that had been relocated (there are still more animal books to be moved to this area). The students were excited and one young lady exclaimed, " Hey, Scott, look at all the wolf books we have!" The two kids dropped to their knees to grab a bunch of wolf books they never knew we had!