[donna]

My summer project this year is to level my classroom library.
I have seen the way Beth Newingham does it using 4 colors and then a range of 1-4 on the colored dots.

I was wondering how everyone marks their leveled books .

Do you use colored dots? Do you just write the guided reading level letter on the dot? Or do you do it the way she does it?

This is the 1st of many questions I'm sure...

Help!!

[cheri]

I use colored dots on the spines of the books. Each dot represents an approximate grade level, but I don't tell the kids that. I just say that they are a range of challenging books. I have a poster with the colors in order so the students can see the range. I recommend colors to kids, but they can choose others, too. However, if I have a student who never picks 'just right' books, then they must pick from the color I tell them. This works pretty well for me.

On the front cover, I have colored squares. These squares represent the genre of the book.

[EMO109]

I use colored electrical tape on the spine -- one color for each level (two levels have 2 colors, since I ran out of indiv. colors). I created a poster that shows the colors in order under the headings "Easier," ""Middle," "Challenging," so the students don't know what level it is, but they do have an idea of where the book falls.

[beckyau]

I'm also in the process of tackling this project. I'm pretty much doing it the way Beth Newingham does. I'm putting the colored dots on the front. However, I'm writing the guided reading level with a sharpie on the back as welll as the book genre.

[popcorn]

I have three different codes on each book--the one at the bottom of the spine has a color dot to indicate it is from my classroom, one at the top indicates the genre or unit/theme collection, and one on the back cover that indicates the Fountas and Pinnell level. My baskets are labeled variously for favorites such as Henry and Mudge, Horrible Harry, etc, authors, unit collections, biography, general fiction for picture books leveled, science, general nonfiction, animal nonfiction, poetry, reference, in addition to the F and P levels.

[donna]

Thanks for all your ideas.

[SanDiego3rd]

How long it takes to level your entire library? My school just purchased AR last year, and I have 300 books. Should I get a parent volunteer to tackle this project?
Sandi

[Maestra]

This is not an overly time consuming task, especially if you are using the web-based (renlearn) AR. I can't say how long it took me to do all my classroom books because I did them in spurts when I had the time. It goes pretty fast. I have many books at home that I plan on marking the levels for this summer.

If you have parent volunteers, that would be great! But if you end up doing it yourself, it is not all that bad. For some reason I didn't mind doing it!

[Tink898]

I am just about done levelling my library (it seems much larger when you are holding each book individually). I based my organization on Beth Newingham's, but I did not have all of the levels she did- I looked up the letter level (Fountas and Pinnell level) on http://src.scholastic.com/ecatalog/d...subt=0&Test=NA and just put that letter on the dot. It seems easiest that way- I did not understand all of her letters and such. Good luck!

[NIUTeach]

...but I scaled mine down for second grade. I attached my system as a word doc on here if you want to see it.

I write the F&P letter in the back of the book on the inside, just for my own reference.

On the outside, on the back, I have the colored dot sticker with the number on it and then on address labels I have printed it's genre and basket location. I will attach one of those labels for you to see, too. Mine are in Spanish and English because I teach a bilingual class!

Oh! I attached one of my basket labels that I made too -- just in case anyone wanted to see! (I really got into this project this summer )