As July comes to a close, I’ve started thinking about my upcoming year in the library. (Okay, to be perfectly honest, I’ve been thinking about it all summer long in the back of my head, but now I am actually getting things created!) One of the things on my very long “To-Do-Over-The-Summer” list was to remake the Fiction Genre signs I had in my Fiction chapter book section.

A bit of background:  A few years ago I reorganized all the books in this section by genre, or type of story.   I want to help the kids find books on subjects they enjoy reading about, and be able to do it more independently.  I knew I wanted several common genres, including Adventure, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction, and Realistic Fiction.  After asking my students what THEY want, I ended up adding Humor, Scary, and Sports.  I labeled all the books with stickers and created signs to match.

It was a HUGE success and many kids and teachers told me how much it has helped them find books faster. But these signs definitely needed an update!  This time, I wanted something that would not only define each genre but would also give students more picture clues about the type of content they can expect. I have 2 versions so far.  This is Glitter Chalkboard…

And here’s a Soft Watercolor theme…

I’m debating which one to use this year and still need to do the Spanish versions, but I’m liking them so much better! 🙂

As I was making these signs, I wanted to create matching black and white bookmarks. When I teach these genres, I can hand the kids a bookmark as a reminder.  Here’s what they look like…

This reminded me of the Reading Wish Lists that I blogged about here.  As parents, teachers, and/or librarians, we try to encourage kids to read a variety of genres to help expose them to different experiences, formats and styles of writing.  What better way than to combine their reading wish lists with a genre list?  So I used the same reading log form I had before and put it together with my new genre bookmarks. Now students can focus on creating a “Reading Wish List” by genre too! I’m pretty excited and can’t wait to use them in the library.

As an added bonus, I created a set of flashcards for each genre that can be used for review, or can be given to kids as a matching game. (If you’d like copies of either of these poster sets, they can be found here in my store.)

If all of us are talking about genres with kids AND sharing what genres WE like to read, it may encourage them to try something new.  Who knows… they could find a new favorite!

I hope this helps!