Centralized Reading Resource

The Centralized Reading Resource Library at Cherry Valley is a resource of some 1000 book titles that are used as instructional reading material in classes This resource is an integral part of how we implement our Literacy Guidelines in preschool through 4th Grade. The books are situated in a central location easily accessible to all classroom teachers. They have all been leveled in a continuum from Emergent reader books through the Early readers to our upper level Fluent books that have a reading age of 12-14 years. The books are shelved in plastic book boxes on open faced shelving.

Levels are color coded for easy recognition.
Teachers make their selection of books based on the knowledge they have about the levels of their readers, usually ascertained through running records. The advantage for the classroom teacher is now they have a resource they can draw on which meets the individual needs of all their students. Books are taken back to the classrooms leaving the book boxes in place and a colored clothespin indicates which teacher is using that particular book.

Selection of books for this reading resource are made based on the books instructional value and it's appeal to young readers. To date we have books from RC Owen (Ready to Read series) ,The Wright Group (Sunshine, Story Box and Twig), Pegasus, Rigby and a number of trade books. Each teacher has a copy of the database that was used to create this resource both by levels and alphabetically.
One of the major advantages of using a system like this is that as budgets get smaller we are able to pool our resources school wide and instead of having duplication of resources in each classroom we now have books centralized for all to use.
If you would like more detailed information related to this concept, a copy of the database or would like to arrange a site visit please contact Doug Crosby at kiwi@digisys.net , Elaine Meeks at emeeks@digisys.net or the school at
(406) 883-6329
Literacy at Cherry Valley
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