Here’s a resource like no other. Noted teacher/author Lucy Calkins and a team from The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Community have created the most comprehensive and accessible leveled lists and guides for nearly 1,200 children’s trade books for kindergarten through sixth grade. Their purpose: to help teachers build state-of-the-art classroom libraries, using guides exactly tailored to the classrooms in which they teach.

A Field Guide to the Classroom Library is the result of the efforts of hundreds of teachers who pooled their knowledge of children’s books. Their selections are not simply book lists—each guide is packed with practical information, including book summaries, literary insights, and teaching ideas. Put the recommended books together and the resulting libraries are far richer than any one teacher could achieve working on his or her own.

In Field Guide G (Grades 5-6), learn about the core books the authors regard as essential, approximately 150 for this level. Then consider for your library any of an additional six modules of books, each module representing a category, for example, nonfiction. The authors have leveled about sixty percent of these books, leaving room for teachers and/or students to choose appropriate books by comparison with leveled titles.

Use this Field Guide to create a classroom library with books that spark students’ interests and match their passions. Then see how much easier it becomes to teach them to read—to teach them what they need to become powerful, knowledgeable, and literate people.

A Field Guide to the Classroom Library is available in seven different volumes, each devoted to specific grade levels:
A: Kindergarten
B: Grades K–1
C: Grades 1–2
D: Grades 2–3
E: Grades 3–4
F: Grades 4–5
G: Grades 5–6
Field Guides A-G