Call Number Centers

This year I am changing my outlook on my lessons just a bit.  I would like to incorporate a center-based review of concepts that I have taught to my students about library skills.  I got my idea from Cari S. Young's professional book:  The Centered School Library.

  First, I am teaching a lesson with the whole group about a new library concept and the next time the class comes to the library, we are reviewing the skill with stations.  Here is what our call number stations looked like:

Our first station came from an idea from Pat Miller's Stretchy Library Lessons.  This station is called "Sticks and Stones."  I had all four children work together on the carpet for this station.  I bought cheap rocks at Big Lots and wrote easy call numbers on each one.  Then, I wrote the author's full name on a corresponding popsicle stick.  The students dump all of the sticks and stones out on the carpet and have to work together as a team to match the author's name to their call number.  If a team needs more of a challenge, see if they can also alphabetize the call numbers after they match them.

At our second station, students worked in groups of two at a pocket chart to alphabetize easy call numbers.  I tried to make the first call number sort pretty easy.  In the second sort, students had to alphabetize to the second letter and in the third they had to alphabetize to the third letter of the author's last name.

I called our third station: "Be the librarian."  Students worked in teams of two to alphabetize books on an actual bookshelf.  Our teachers have these in their classrooms and I just asked to borrow two for the week.  The books on the top shelf were already in ABC order.  Students had to take library books from the bottom shelf and alphabetize them correctly on the top shelf.

We called our fourth station: "Call number paper plates."  Students took a pile of paper plates and worked in teams of two to alphabetize them correctly on the floor from left to right.  If you want to try this with your whole class, you can give every child a paper plate and make the class line themselves up in ABC order correctly from left to right.  This is fun to do at the end of class.  I call it a "super challenge!"

At our last station, students used I-Pads to individually play an online game called Shelve-It from Mrs. Lodge's Library.  This is an amazing game!  The kids can choose to shelve easy fiction or nonfiction call numbers and they can choose three separate levels of play.  Each level has a different number of books to shelve ranging from three to eight.  This way, each child can play at their own personal difficulty level.  The kids LOVED this game.

Overall, I felt like our first stations were a success!  I used these for first and second grades.  If you have any ideas for other stations for call numbers, please post them in the comment section and share.  Thanks so much!