You’re looking at what happens in May due to state testing, that state testing prep, special events, concerts, Jury Duty, and other random end-of-year goings-on. The four colors represent my class sections, and the numbers represent which class/lesson of the week they have. Ordinarily, all four sections should meet 4x each week in a fixed schedule, but you’ll notice that by every Friday, very few have a fourth class, and aside from the first of the week, no two days look the same the whole month!

So, all that code on my desk calendar was just to keep track of which class met when, and what they did. I didn’t dare write ahead more than one week! Also, this month began after the last two shortened weeks of April that followed Spring Break. Therefore, the last consistent week of school was April 8th! Yikes, right? I’ve written about how to deal with wrenches being thrown into plans. Well, May was such a massive wrench, that any teacher unprepared for it must have been caught up in the stress. I might even have been yelling “mayday!” were it not for a bunch of no-prep plans, many comprehensible texts ready to go, and solid Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) expectations already established. Thus, I was able to keep up momentum despite the lack of consistency this spring. I’ll share some more accurate numbers next week, but it’s looking like students were able to read at least another 5,000 total words since Spring Break. I consider that a victory given what May looked like!