It’s the life of a Middle School ELA Teacher, wanting to grow your classroom library. . . getting great-fit books into the hands of kids at this age is a dream AND a reality once you figure out how to connect them with books or genres they discover they love!
The challenge, though, is where to find or collect or get all the books you need! You can’t possibly go out and spend thousands of dollars year after year growing your dream library.
Instead, here are the top 10 ways to get the books you want for your class library (and you can do these things anytime of year, year after year, to keep things fresh)!
- Click Here to check out the Teachers Bargain Basement on Facebook for ideas, resources, and products that other teachers are sharing or giving away
- Download the “Nextdoor Neighbor” app on your smartphone and make your very first post like this: “Hi everyone! So happy to be here! I’m a Middle School ELA teacher and I’m looking to collect books to build my classroom library. I have students of all reading levels, so I’m open to books you may have sitting around the house collecting dust. Would you like to donate them to my classroom? Feel free to DM me with a meeting location or time and help me get these books into the hands of my students!”
- Click Here to go to BookOutlet.com which typically has very steeply-discounted books (best-sellers, even!) and free or bundled shipping rates.
- Don’t forget about weekend garage sales in your area, especially those at the end of summer when high school students are usually heading off to college and cleaning out their middle school or high school things (fantastic books to buy in bulk in those cases).
- Thrift stores or discount / used book stores – Walk in with a box and tell the employees you’re a teacher! Ask, “What can we do to load up this box with awesome books for my Middle School ELA Classroom at the best discount you can provide?” Seriously! Stores are always ready to clear out products and to rotate their stock to new, incoming items and you may be very pleasantly surprised by the goodies (and super low, bulk price) you can get just from asking!
- High school teachers or upper elementary teachers you may know in your network — When I taught high school, I eventually grew a pretty large collection of books that, while awesome, became stale over time since many of my students came to me year after year for various grade levels of English. Another teacher knew she was retiring and so I accumulated her collection of books. Lucky me! But I then had more books than bookshelves or space to put everything so after only four years of teaching, I needed to move out some books! Young Adult (YA) books can cover grades 5 – 12 in some cases, so my story here is to show that if you know a teacher in the grade levels surrounding yours (upper or lower), then ask if they have books they’d like to donate to you!
- Your school library is another source of curating books. One year, our school media specialist totally re-organized the entire library and with new furniture, new shelving, and new space needed for technology resources, she welcomed my standing request to please keep me at the top of her list for “extra books.” Sometimes school libraries also tend to have completely separate budgets for books, so take your list of wants and needs to your librarian / media specialist and ask to place an order.
- Do you have at least a few books to start with in your classroom library? It could be super fun to offer to do a “book swap” with a teacher at another school in your district if possible. Count out 30 books and trade with that other teacher, promising to keep them for a month. Make sure your name is on them and when you get the swapped books, keep them in a separate place in your class if possible so students know they’re not “your” books. It’s kind of fun to see how students tend to be extra careful with books like this, knowing you’ll “be in trouble” if you lose your teacher friend’s books!
- Ask your local library for support. Many libraries offer digital library cards for local students and can check out digital versions of books, assuming you’re in a school with 1:1 tech access. Doesn’t hurt to ask!
- Speaking of local public libraries, many of them have summer sales with very steep discounts. . . Especially if you tell them you’re a teacher looking to build up your classroom library!
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