Welcome back to The Problem Solving Teacher! This is your weekly answer to common classroom challenges, curated from the best resources out there. Keep reading for a dynamic new checklist for amping up your classroom library—useful for K-12, all subject areas.

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The Problem: Do any of these describe your classroom library?

• Great titles that students never read because they’re jumbled on a shelf/tucked into a corner/always lost
• Leftover books from previous teachers that students just aren’t in to
• Heavy on one genre or format but lacking in others

A Solution: At times, a little bit of research-based direction goes a long way. First Book has just released a Literacy Rich Classroom Library Checklist: An Assessment Tool for Equity. It's wonderful. The checklist covers choosing titles to fill your shelves, designing and organizing your library space, and teaching students how to use your library. The goal is NOT to create a picture-perfect library. Instead, it provides guidance on how to design a space that “encourage(s) all children to become readers who read with pleasure, curiosity, and skill.” Yes please!​​

The checklist includes features like “books are organized in a way that enables students to easily select them—by genre, theme, or other classification” and “there are multiple copies of popular titles so that students can read them simultaneously.” I like this because it is not telling you how to organize your library or what titles to include, but instead trusts that you, dear teacher, know your students and are the right person to make these decisions.

You may also appreciate the literacy statistics and library suggestions included throughout. I can envision using the content here to support a Donors Choose fund, a #clearthelist push, or a grant application in order to implement checklist items. It also includes several ideas that take minimal time, materials, or money—easy wins to serve your students ASAP.

I’d love to hear how your classroom library changes and grows. Will you reply to this email and let me know what your classroom library is like?

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For your classroom library: Level up your classroom library’s fantasy selection while also ensuring students have many diverse characters to relate to by selecting some fresh titles from Our Legendary New Era of Middle Grade Fantasy. (Use some of the funding suggestions in the checklist to help you acquire a few books!)

A resource to check out: Promote good books by tapping into students’ love of being social. Invite students to suggest books to their classmates by completing a Book Recommendation Form. Students do a bit of bonus thinking about the book they just finished while also turning to classmates to find their next great read.

Have a good one and learn everything you can!

Hannah

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