“Helping children to develop a strategic approach to book selection requires that teachers and librarians think, aloud, demonstrate, and reveal how they go about the process.” (Reutzel and Fawson, 2002)

Once Class Libraries were set up and students started borrowing from it, teachers then worked on explicitly teaching and modeling how to select books that were “Just Right”, that is books which suited the student’s level of ability, interests and needs. Fountas and Pinnell (1999) indicate that “Just Right” books should contain a proportion of approximately 90% known words to about 10% unknown words. Teachers directed younger students to where appropriately leveled materials were stored, in our school’s case, our coloured broadbanded boxes.

Techniques and strategies were explained and demonstrated for evaluating whether a book was too easy, too difficult or just right. Modelling thinking aloud when choosing a book, determining purpose for choosing a book, looking at the cover/blurb, reading the first page or two, discovering how many unknown words to known words on a page, etc were skills that were explained to staff in PD sessions to use with their students. Students in the Junior Primary chose a mixture of books from their particular coloured, broadbanded box as well as books that interested them from the broader Class Library. Older, more independent readers evaluated and chose books that were “Just Right” for them and have started to develop strategies for sampling books and making appropriate selections.

Over a few weeks, it became obvious to teachers that they needed to constantly revisit how to choose a Just Right book and they began to see the need of reinforcing the use of different book selection strategies with the class as well as observing students informally on a regular basis to assist them with this skill. Anchor charts were developed in a few classes and were referred to often.