Our elementary school hosted a book swap and it was very successful. We had the children bring in used books to their classrooms where the teacher marked the number of books donated on the class roster. Then the day of the swap we handed out coupons to the children for the number of books donated. *We held this the night of parent teacher conferences. The children shopped while their parents met with their teachers. We had parents and honor society helpers walk with the children to choose their books. The only problem we had was a greedy parent donated 120 Barney books and cleaned us out of all of our chapter books. She came in the lunch room before we opened the doors! This year only children will be admitted. Lesson learned. :cool:
We started one last year. Got a book cart and once per month a child brings in a book and swaps for a "like book". Meaning chapter books for chapter books. We had nothing and now have in excess of 300 books. The children like it and it is just one more thing we can do that is "free". Our inital investment was nothing since we got the cart donated by one of the local bookstores and the books were all donated by parents more than happy to get them out of the house.
We do a book exchange once a month for our students. Each child can bring 2 gently used books. We put them out on tables each month and one class at a time comes and exchanges books. The kids love it! We got started by asking parents for donations of books to start us out.
We're going to try our first one in November. Our plans are to have kids bring in gently used books to their classroom starting two weeks before the event. The teacher will mark the quantity of books brought in next to the child's name on a roster sheet. The night of the event we will use the rosters to keep track of how many "book credits" each child has. We also plan on having some kind of coupon to issue that night for anyone who brings in books.
We will put the books out on folding tables sorted by age category as much as possible, a layout that is similar to our book fair set up. Then people will select the books they want and bring them to a table where we will mark them off the rosters or take their coupons.
Most of the plans for ours came from a board member who is also a teacher and had done a program like this at a former school where she taught.
This exchange will be in conjunction with a Family Reading Night and is part of the reading incentive program we're sponsoring for the year.
The only problem we had was a greedy parent donated 120 Barney books and cleaned us out of all of our chapter books. She came in the lunch room before we opened the doors! This year only children will be admitted. Lesson learned. :cool: 
