This summer I had to pack up my classroom library. No, I’m not moving classrooms. I actually did that in the middle of the year. 🙂 And I am not changing schools, either. (Thank goodness!). Just normal end-of-the-year cleaning. Because I dread putting everything into boxes, I posted a message on our school’s electronic BBS and said that any students interested in borrowing books for the summer could come sign them out over a 2-day period. I expected a few freshman to take a book or so each but I didn’t have high hopes.
Umm, approximately 25 students came and borrowed books. I signed out close to 100 books for the summer! Some students took one book, others took closer to 10 books! How awesome is that? Freshman, sophomore, and junior students came to the shelves and browsed, signing out anything that interested them. My students are all brilliant and heavily involved in lots of extra-curriculars. They told me that they were looking forward to taking some time to relax and read this summer. More than one of them came in with a list of books that they were hoping to read, books that had been on their must-read lists for most of the year. Other students came in and asked for recommendations, both from myself and other readers. It was awesome!
I’ve never lent books out for the summer before because my sixth graders moved onto a new school after leaving my classroom. It’s nice to have the ability to loan books to students over the summer. Do you loan books out of your classroom library for the summer?
Filed under: classroom library, summer reading | Tagged: book lending, classroom library, summer reading |
The Reading Zone 
I have considered loaning out books but just never got around to it. I guess I feared too many kids would fight and argue over who gets what book. I may do it next year though. We’ll see how much I can trust this next group of sixth graders. 🙂
I have done it for 3 years since I moved to 6th grade. It is gratifying to have them want to check out for the summer and the ones who return them usually want to talk about them. However I have lost quite a few to kids that leave the district. How do you sign them out?
When I was in the classroom I did do it, & most of them were returned. This year, as a literacy coach, I put out boxes of professional books I own and also listed those in our staff library that I believed were important reads for teachers to check out. I thought it was a good way to share what I have and know, in addition to communicating a good idea for a summer read. Our staff lounge has personal adult books that we share, and people borrow them also. It sounds like you did an awesome thing for the students. They sounded excited and I’m sure they were grateful.
I appreciate that you also shared with parents! I expect you will get back all the books–and you might even get some new ones back! I may pass books to you that we don’t need to keep! Thanks for sharing!!