Ready to Read! The evolution of the easy reader section

The new sign for our early reader section

As reading instruction changes, and to accommodate and work with changes in our school curriculum, I worked closely with one of our local school's reading specialists to update and improve the easy reader section and best meet the needs of students, parents, and teachers.

With changing staff and reorganization of the children's area, the literacy activity center was removed at some point in 2019 I think. So I was working with a simple shelf of books, new books, packaged boxes/bags of little books like BOB books, nonfiction, and fiction leveled readers.

The first thing I did was repackage BOB books into cd cases. Note that for many books this involves trimming them, which can be time-consuming, as well as the cost of the cases. I then created a new section at the beginning of the easy readers for Reading Instruction, with a call number of ER INS. This section includes

• BOB books and other paperback reader collections
• Phonics books
• Decodables (I only have a few of these. I would like to add more, but they are very expensive.)
• Paired reading (National Geographic has a series, I read, You read)
• Leveled easy readers A-C, with a black dot.

I weeded the leveled easy readers, making slight changes to our dot system. While our school mostly uses F&P in the early grades, it is difficult to find those levels if they are not printed on the book, as their database is subscription-only. Lexiles are easier to find online. I made the limits more general, since the whole leveling thing is... well, I'm not a fan.

Finally, I took the highest level books, those with more text and chapters, books that were not leveled, especially the growing collection of easy reader comics, and created a transitional chapters section, ER TRA, which includes some nonfiction. At some point in the future, I will probably revisit the JBC collection and move a few things over to ER TRA as space allows.

Development of the easy reader section from 2012 to 2017 below the break

Front of easy reader shelf with 5 Finger Rule bookmarks

Originally, we had all the easy readers arranged alphabetically by author. That was it. Parents were continually asking what level their child should be reading and this increased as the local school district added four year old kindergarten and extended Scholastic Reading Counts and Lexiles to all grades. Personally, I'm against leveling, in general. However, our collection is there for the patrons, not for me! So, I came up with a compromise. All the books with a "level 1" got a red sticker, "level 2" got a green sticker, and "level 3" got a blue sticker. If the publisher hadn't put a level on the book, I just guesstimated.

This satisfied parents who want to just point and say "you're only allowed to read the red sticker books" but it also satisfied my own resistance to leveling books and gave kids quite a wide range since publisher levels vary so wildly.

Colored stickers for levels

In 2014 I added a nonfiction section to the easy readers and circulation continued to expand rapidly. We were getting good turnover for easy readers, and parents were generally finding what they wanted, but schools continued to extend use of levels (Fountas and Pinnell) down to younger kids and we were getting more and more requests for younger and younger easy readers.

By 2015 easy readers were growing rapidly in popularity and requests and I hired an awesome associate who had previously been an elementary school teacher. We discussed ways to better organize the easy reader section and I set her loose to work her magic. Up through 2016 she worked on relabeling the books more accurately, making sure each color corresponded to an accurate level. She also added an early literacy center, easy reader bundles, and new signage and handouts. I started ordering boxes of paperbacks like BOB books, which we packaged for circulation and which proved extremely popular. By the end of 2016 our easy reader circulation had increased by 3,000 from 2015. In addition to the already high demand by parents and emergent readers, the school district adopted Lucy Calkins curriculum in the fall of 2016 and teacher requests for easy readers for character studies also skyrocketed.

In January of 2017 I bit the bullet and did a massive weed of the easy readers, removing all of the paperbacks (which were in horrible condition) and multiple worn, damaged, and outdated books. I spent a significant chunk of budget, as well as grant money, to replace damaged and worn materials and bolster the collection of emergent readers, buying multiple copies of the titles we've found that are truly emergent titles.

Easy Reader tub books - tv tie ins. Paperback and non-leveled

Literacy center

Literacy center and lexile binders