Fiction Sorting and Alphabetizing

We are back to square one in Libraryland as we are every year when it comes to teaching the basics. A good refresher never hurt anybody! Carrie came up with the idea to have a game where kids sort books according to alphabetical order, but also to our cataloging system. I then took a really fun presentation from SmartExchange and changed it to fit our needs...and also my pickyness about colors.

Here's what our stations looked like the first time we had the students play the game:

It worked well! The tables were a bit tricky because the students then had to maneuver bookends. We decided to put them on carts instead, that way we could wheel the game wherever we needed to suite the schedule for the Lower School Learning Commons. This worked out perfectly because it gave students an easier way to prop up the books while sorting them and also divided our three fiction sections with three shelves.

I was fortunate enough to help teach this lesson this past Friday. We were crazy booked in the library, so I proctored the game in Carrie's office. The kids still had fun, refreshed their memory, and I got to teach. Those are three pretty great things to end a crazy week on!

They did get a bit loud, but I only assume it was because they were so excited! I encouraged them to really work together as we had seen some previous groups take advantage of working in a group. I was pleasantly surprised by their helping each other without much disagreement about what goes where.

In case you are interested, here is where I found the SmartBoard lesson that I updated. It had already been adapted by somebody else, but I tweaked it even further. I prefer to use cleaner fonts like Verdana or Calibri for my lessons as they are less distracting and easier for most kids to read. It also helps me create the slide to look more like a non-fiction text, with different types of text using different fonts or colors.

If you are interested in checking out the slide that I did, leave a comment and I can e-mail it to you! :)