What Is a Bookroom?

A bookroom is a centralized collection of books that can support modeled, shared, guided, and independent reading—both at home and within the literacy block at all grade levels.

Why Create a Bookroom for Your School?

A central bookroom that serves the entire school instead of individual classrooms or grades has many advantages, including:

• Economical

  Budgets are tight, and implementing a bookroom that can be used by everyone within a school is a much more economical option than putting books within each classroom.

• More Comprehensive

  A school-wide bookroom means that there are a greater number of titles for each reading and grade level. This ensures that teachers can find "just the right title" for each student—whether the student is below-, on-, or above-grade level.

• Professional Development

  Our built-in Teaching Notes enable teachers who are new to Guided Reading to ramp-up quickly.

• Management

  It's easier to manage a bookroom when it is a shared responsibility.

• Time

  Having easy access to "just right books" saves teachers planning time.

• Impact Student Learning

  By using leveled texts precisely matched to their instructional reading level, students are able to move along the reading continuum applying effective reading skills and strategies with progressively more challenging texts. Not only will students gain confidence, they will also master skills in reading, thinking, responding, and writing.

How Do We Decide Which Books to Purchase?

There are some general guidelines that you should follow when figuring out what to buy:

• Your bookroom should have approximately 50% fiction and 50% nonfiction titles.
• Make sure that a wide variety of genres are represented, including chapter books, graphic readers and novels, authentic literature, folktales, poetry, historical fiction, contemporary fiction, fantasy, informational texts, classics, etc.
• Ensure your bookroom collection supports school or district initiatives such as Reading Recovery^® or the Common Core State Standards.
• Select Leveled Reader series for their quality and reader appeal, both in interest and reading level.
• Serve your full student population with books that reflect cultural and linguistic diversity.
• No matter which leveling system you use (Fountas & Pinnell, Lexile^®, DRA^®, etc.), make certain that you have a sufficient number of books at each level.
• To accommodate students who are reading significantly above or below grade level, take care to choose titles that were written specifically for older children reading well below grade level and for younger children reading well above grade level. This will ensure that students are reading books that are age- and interest-appropriate.

Reading Recovery® is a registered trademark of The Ohio State University.  Lexile is a trademark of MetaMetrics, Inc., and is registered in the United States and abroad.  DRA is a registered trademark of Pearson Education, Inc.