Reading Calendars

I'm behind in my independent reading!

I'm a big fan of reading calendars to help students plan their reading time and to give them ownership over their reading goals. 

The key aspect of the calendar: it shows what PAGE students should be on for each day. That's better than just knowing how many pages to read per day because if they get behind, the calendar shows their page target for catching up. And if they are ahead, they can see by how much!

This is also a fast way to teachers to see how independent reading is progressing. 

Here's a template to use. 
Copy and customize however you like.

The directions: 

• Take the number of pages in the book
• Divide by the number of days to finish
• Add the resulting pages-per-day to each subsequent day on the calendar

For example: if the pages-per-day is 15, the calendar should look like this:

Another important aspect of the calendar is taking the time to gauge the READING PACE for a new book. 

Students start their new books with a timed reading of 5 minutes. This gives them a sense of how long it will take them to read their pages-per-day. If the time seems too long, they might choose to adjust the number of days for finishing.