There are most likely 3,000 books in my classroom library currently. About a third of those are thanks to the retired teacher whose classroom I moved into last year. The rest of them have come from grant money, funded Donors Choose projects, Scholastic bonus points, teacher supply money, and my own personal money. Giving students access to books has always been an important part of my teaching philosophy. I started collecting books from a used bookstore when I was a college senior. Now the library is filled with a little bit of everything. I still continue to add books because I want students to always have access to the latest novels being published today.

Public libraries are the best source for finding what’s new. Who can afford to buy every new book they want to read? Owning books are wonderful, but borrowing books accomplished the task of reading. Did you know that you can now borrow books and audiobooks digitally? FREE!!!!! Let me tell you how.

Visit the Mansfield Public Library website and look for the link that takes you to their Digital Resources. From there you will find all the different apps that accept their eCard accounts to borrow materials. You can also use THIS LINK to go straight to the eCard sign-up page. Click on the green eCard link and fill out the information as directed.

Once you have an account they will show you the card number and a pin. You can access your account and change the pin to a more common password that you can remember. They will also send this information in an email so that you have it. With these numbers, you can now log in to any of the apps listed. My suggestions would be Cloud Libary and Hoopla. Both of these offer eBooks and audiobooks.

A word on audiobooks

Students choosing to use audiobooks for reading at home is a valid use of their time. However, if they are choosing to do this for every book then they will not gain quality reading skills for the 8th-grade level. An audiobook is a good idea when students have chosen a particularly long book that they are truly enjoying. It can also be a good way to keep up with assigned pages if they have fallen behind. Audiobooks are a great option when reading in the car isn’t possible, but they have a long road trip. Not every audiobook is going to be engaging to students. The best practice for listening to an audiobook is to also follow along in the printed book.

Hopefully, these directions give you a new way to get the latest books for free. There are also a few apps that provide tutorial videos for a number of career opportunities. I was amazed at all the options listed on the Lynda.com app.

If these directions don’t get you what you need please let me know. Leave a comment or send me an email. I’d be happy to help!

Happy Reading (Listening)!