Finding a Book is as Easy as "One - Two - Three"!

Our third graders have been learning how to find books on the shelves in the library.  This might sound simple, but it's actually a multi-step process that takes practice!  Before I taught them a way of approaching the problem, I would often find students wandering endlessly back and forth in front of the shelves with their limbs dangling at their sides (I call that "spaghetti arms").  Other times they'd insist the book wasn't there and I'd discover they weren't even looking on the correct shelf.  Now I guide the students through a three-step Shelf Searching Strategy, and they are becoming much more efficient at finding books independently!

Step One: Make a smart guess where your book would be and put your hand on a shelf.
To do this, the students need to "Crack the Code" by deciding which section of the library to go to based on the book's call number.  Then they need to make an educated guess as to where in that section the book is likely to be.  (For example, in the nonfiction section we would go toward the beginning for a book in the 200's, in the middle for a book in the 600's, or near the end for a book in the 800's.)  I insist that the students physically place their hands on the shelf they select to help them focus on the task.

Step Two: Look at the first book on that shelf and decide in which direction you need to go.  Keep going until you find the right shelf.
This part is like using the guide words in a dictionary.  Look at the first book on the shelf and decide if the call number you're looking for is higher or lower.  If it's higher, go up a shelf.  If it's lower, go down a shelf.  Then look at the first book on that shelf.  Repeat until you've "gone too far", meaning that the book you want is on the shelf you just came from.

Again, this might seem simple, but this activity requires a degree of spatial reasoning.  (Often the students want to respond that the numbers will get lower as you go "down" a shelf, or that the shelves are read straight across from one section to the next.)  The hardest part is having your hand on the top shelf and figuring out which direction to go in to find the shelf that comes before it.  To give them a way to visualize it, I put an image of an open book on the SmartBoard and we identify where we would start reading [upper left] and how we would read the sentence [left to right].  When we get to the end of each line, we go down and back over to the left.  And, when we get to the bottom of the page, we continue reading at the top left of the next page.  Of course the students see this as pretty obvious, but then I show them that this also applies to the shelves in the library! 

When you reach the bottom of one section, go up to the top of the next section - the same way we read a book!

Step Three: Find your book!

"I found it!"

This is the fun part!  Once the students have determined which shelf the book must be on, they can scan the shelf to find the exact call number they're seeking.  All along the way, I insist that the students touch the shelf and then the spine labels of the books to help them focus on the call numbers they're looking at.

To help the students practice finding books on the shelf, they are participating in a "Call Number Scavenger Hunt".  They are given a list of call numbers to find in the library.  Each student's paper is unique, so two students won't be looking for the same book at the same time.  They enjoy moving all around the library, and I get a good sense of how their book seeking skills are developing!  It's a fun activity that leads to the one they are the most excited about: using the computer to find a book's call number!

These are some of the students who were "caught" touching the shelves while searching for their books.  They each earned a Cougar Claw Card for responsibility!