Classroom Library and Accelerated Reader

I am a huge fan of Accelerated Reader. After debating back and forth whether to arrange my classroom books by genre or by AR level, I decided on the latter. It made it much easier on the students to put the books back where they actually belong. I bought a lot of tubs from the Dollar Spot at Target a few years back and they have come in really handy for organizing the books. I just started at the 2s and kept filling each tub with books until there wasn't any more room. I looked to see what level was in each tub, and created a label according to that level:

I have uploaded these labels to my TPT store for free as a word document so you can change the numbers around to fit your tubs. All you need are the fonts Wish I Were Taller, and Pea Hollee (both free downloads from Kevin and Amanda)!

It is much easier if you have labels on each book that tell you what the book's level/Quiz#/Points are. Fortunately, AR has made it extremely easy for you to print those out! I just slap the label on the front of the book and highlight the AR level to make it easier to see. Here are step-by-step directions on printing out labels from AR after you have logged on to Renaissance Place:

Click on Accelerated Reader Enterprise
Reports
School Management
Labels - Book

and all you have to do is look up the book title to find all the information on that book. Unfortunately, it only gives you the title and Quiz number, so if there are different books with the same title, there is no way to view it until you look at the whole report. Fortunately for a website called AR BookFinder! All you need to do is look up your book on that website (gives you a nice picture of the book cover as well) and copy the quiz number to find the label for it on Ren Place. When it comes time to print the labels, make sure that the borders/margins are set to "None" when you view the printer options, or else it might be misaligned on your labels sheet.

Hopefully you found this helpful! Let me know how your classroom libraries are turning out!

Wow - A year of changes

I'm sorry I've been MIA for so long! I've been meaning to blog but life got in the way. Not only did I change from Kindergarten to 3rd grade last year, I also gave birth to my second boy.  I'm excited to share everything I've learned. I have been collaborating with my sister (an incredible graphic designer) and she has helped me completely revamp my classroom to become a detective academy. Be on the lookout for some goodies!