Every teacher tries to stretch a dollar. ELA teachers have it particularly tough because we are constantly building great classroom libraries. A classroom library is essential for kids. They need to see books around them all of the time. Their environment has to be language-rich and accessible. Kids need to be able to immerse themselves in books, pile them on their desks and rummage through them in order to find the perfect books for themselves. I encourage all of this.
Starting at a new school this fall, I had zero books in my classroom library. Through some diligent shopping at thrift shops and used bookstores, I've been able to accumulate a few hundred titles. Kids have been reading many of them ravenously. We have our very popular titles and we have some that I thought would be more popular but are not. Oh well, maybe some kids will discover them later in the year.
Over the past few years, I had built up a Kindle e-book library of over 120 books. These books stay attached to my "school" account so that I can access them anywhere. My "school" Amazon account is a second account that I set up for all of my school purchases. It is not a school e-mail; it is a second Gmail account that I use for school purposes. Anytime I have a Kindle or the Kindle app, I can access any of these e-books by logging in on Amazon. Easy peasy.
Since August, I have been hunting around on Ebay and Amazon for inexpensive Kindles. I've lucked out. I was able to buy ten Kindles for between fifteen and thirty dollars each. Having these ten Kindles in class allows ten kids at a time to access any of those 120+ books that I have. Amazon allows you to register many devices to the same e-mail address (account) and put the same book on up to six devices at the same time. That means that six kids can read the same book simultaneously. Now, I get my Kindle e-books when they are on sale and I never spend more than 2.99 for a title. If you're patient, the books that you want will go on sale at some point. Bookbub.com and the Amazon Kindle Daily Deal e-mail are both helpful for me to see what is on sale each day. I subscribe to both. So, for 2.99, and sometimes less, I can have six kids reading the same book. Those books never go away, never get destroyed and never get lost. That's what I call stretching a dollar!
So far this year, the program has been awesome. The kids take good care of the Kindles and always check in to see if one is available. Management is a breeze. I sticker each Kindle with a "Return to Don Eckert, Room 39, East Naples Middle School" label and a sticker identifying which Kindle it is (Spiderman, Star Wars, Hello Kitty, etc). On a part of our whiteboard, I write the Kindle (Spiderman) and the name of the student who has checked it out (Aracely). When Aracely returns the Kindle, I erase her name and check it out to the next kiddo on the waiting list. On and on we go. If a student has kept a Kindle for an inordinate amount of time, I will check in with them to see if they are still reading it or ask for it to be returned.
While most of the kids are excited about the Kindles, many kiddos still prefer the paper books. That is why it is essential for me to keep beefing up our classroom library. The search for great, cheap (or free) YA Lit books goes on. It's kind of fun, like a treasure hunt. I will be happily hunting for the rest of the year! Fun times.
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