Library Centers from the Beginning!

I've had a variety of people ask me about my library centers, and I thought I would blog about every step, so that others can implement in their classrooms.

Today, I set up the tables - label the tables in some way. I have them labeled 1 - 8 using these labels. I also added these to give them some color. These are what I think of as my "throw away" labels. For some reason, the beginning of the year labels never last very long. You may notice that they even say "Please do not peel labels". This seems to help, but they never last long. So I make "temporary" ones for the students to learn the table numbers. For the beginning of the year, I will be teaching the students their table numbers, how to go to and from the centers, and what I expect in each center.

My 1st and 2nd graders had centers last year, so I will only be really teaching it from scratch to the Kindergartners. I will have 6 classes of Kinders, about 165 total! Total chaos? NO, time to train!

For Kindergarten, I will most likely be seeing them 3 times a week for 50 minutes each. Last year, every K class came in on Tuesday and Friday. Then they had their 3rd time on one of the other days, let's call that the "Random" day. On their Random day, they had a reading buddy. On Tuesday, they checked out, which means that one of their centers was Checkout. On Friday, they had centers, but NOT the checkout center (obviously...this was also to help the parents know that all library books were due on Tuesdays (we had some twins, etc that were in 2 different classes, this helped everyone remember a little bit easier).

Let's start from the very beginning (...that's a very good place to start...=)

Until this year, the first day of library class (for all K - 2 classes), I introduce myself and read my favorite story (Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus).

This year, I am trying some new things. First off, I am most likely only seeing K - 2 this year. I will most likely be setting up Reading Buddies for our 3rd - 5th graders, but that's another post.

For the Ks, who have not met me, I will be reading my ABC book:

It says:

P

Ms. ---- loves pizza!

Especially cheese!

(picture of cheese pizza)

It's an ABC book about me! Things like:
A - Ms. loves Authors!
J - Ms. loves Jumping!

As we go through, I ask the students, do you like xyz, and usually, YES, we do. We get up and jump at the Jumping page. We see if we recognize any of the books or authors in the book, etc. It lets them get to know me, and know that I am just like them. =)

Ks are a little confusing since they come in 3 times a week. It would look something like this:

Kindergarten Center Weekly Schedule 

For the 1st - 2nd graders, I will be introducing myself, and going over the checkout procedures. We will start checking out the 2nd week. We'll spend the first day practicing and remembering the procedures.