Thursday, July 9, 2015

Managing Class Library Checkouts

Hey, Friends! 

It's Amber from PeppyZestyTeacherista! I have a TON of classroom library books and it can be a pain to keep track of all of them. Thankfully I have all my books organized but thats for another blog post ;) 


I posted this picture on my instagram and lots of comments spurred as to how in the world to I manage to NOT let these precious books walk out of the classroom and never come back.

As much as I love my books and want them to stay in perfect condition. Wear and tear is just a sign that these books are being read, and isn't that what we want to happen to these books? If a student really wants to take my book home because they want to finish it, who am I to deny this literary lovers desire to read at home? 

With that being said, I can do the best that I can on my end to keep track of them and their condition to ensure that their shelf life is as long as possible! 



On my personal blog, I wrote about how I use Classroom Booksource to manage library checkout in the classroom and out side of the class. 


Classroom Booksource is a free website that allows you to scan all of your books into an online database. Students can check in/out books in your classroom just like the do in the school library. Oh, and its also a FREE app #SWOON
Read my blog post about it {HERE}


The next program is a paid app ($1.99) but I'm just sharing because we teachers love options! The app works exactly like Classroom Booksource! 



When kids take these books home, do I just tell them to put my precious books in their backpack and pray it comes back in one piece? Oh, no no no, I am not psychotic. 
This book pouch is from Really Good Stuff, pretty pricy in my opinion….


Thankfully, wonderful Amazon has similar cheaper book pouches!
Get similar book pouches here:




If technology is limited at your school, here is a FREE PDF download to manage library checkouts using a paper copy! 
Just click the image to download!




4 comments:

  1. WOW!! I wish I had seen this before I retired!

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  2. I have a large classroom library, too, and I use Classroom Library from Booksource. It's awesome! The year I didn't implement using the checkout from Booksource, I lost lots of books! Thanks for sharing.
    Janie
    Are We There Yet?

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  3. I have the Classroom Library from Booksource, but have never had the chance to really make it work for me. I will do that this year for sure! I will check out your blog post as well to see what I have been doing wrong. Thanks for this encouraging post!

    Blessings,
    Becky
    CookingUpSuccess

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  4. It was a big step to let my students take books home from our library after my first year of being too protective (oops). After one year of having most the books come back, this past year, I lost a whole tub of Ready Freddy books over the course of the year. I hope they are being well loved wherever they are, but I may want to give this a try now that we have an iPad in the classroom. But to scan all 1500+ books in the system... hmmm. Any suggestions on doing that? As Becky said, thanks for the encouragement!
    Kelli
    Tales of a Tenacious Teacher

    ReplyDelete