Hi everyone! A few semesters ago I took a class on teaching reading, and the teacher said that we should already be building up our future classroom libraries. When I was taking the class, the teacher would bring in the Scholastic book order catalogs, and we would get to order Scholastic books through the school. But after that class ended, I couldn't do that anymore! I have bought a few books through Children's Book Of The Month Club, but they are more expensive that way... just about as expensive as buying them at the regular book store!
Then I got the idea to visit library book sales. I checked out this website called Book Sale Finder. You can choose your state and see all of the upcoming library book sales in your area from month to month. A library in a neighboring town happened to be having a book sale starting today, so I went over there this morning.
Even though I love books, I don't often visit book sales for my own reading pleasure, because the books tend to be entire collections of romances or mysteries that people donate. (Not genres I'm particularly interested in.) But the children's section is an entirely different story! First of all, kids outgrow their books a lot more quickly than adults do, so there are tons of awesome, gently used books. A lot of them were Scholastic books, as a matter of fact! There were also a ton of books that were pulled from the library's own shelves. And the prices? Couldn't be beat! The paper backs ranged from ten cents to a quarter, and hardback books were fifty cents. I spent about ten dollars and got about forty books!
There is another book sale at a different library next weekend, and I'm planning on stopping at that one, too. By the time I actually start looking for a job, I should be vcry well-stocked in books. I'm going to use them all, too... I plan on following my reading professor's practice of reading aloud to the kids several times a day... for instance reading a math-related book before math, a social studies related book before social studies, a fun bookafter lunch, etc.
What books do you recommend? Are there any books that your classes particularly loved?
Building the classroom library is so much fun! I remember hitting up Goodwill and various other thrift stores. I also wrote some letters to various publishing companies explaining that I was a first year teacher with a passion for literacy (I got a dozen NEW free books as donations that way!) Happy collecting :D
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