Ratliff's Room

I had an amazing trip to Colorado at the beginning of the month! It was such a treat to get an invite to participate a meeting of the minds with other bloggers and TpT authors. I learned great things that have had an impact on me in the weeks that have followed the Meet Up. First of all I had no idea that there would be so many goodies! The giveaways were amazing!! I was lucky enough to get a giveaway bag filled with goodies from almost all of the donors for driving over 500 miles to attend the meet up. Here are all of the generous donors! I have already spent my Teachers Pay Teachers gift cards. I am so excited to use the GoNoodle lanyards and stickers in our class store next school year! Syllabuy had amazing donations! I got a really useful bag, t-shirt, and travel mug. WOW! I'm going to go through everything to see how I can put it to good use. I really enjoyed the school supply exchange. I got some new purple pens, Post It notes, and magnets! Here is your c

Being a reflective teacher is my goal for this year! I am hoping that transitions into being more consistent with my blog posts. I have had a rocky start, but I am optimistic for the future. Weekly lesson plans are a great place to start. The lesson plans that I turn in to administration are a little lengthy! I am still working on making them more meaningful to what I need on a daily basis. It is a living document, so I make changes often. I keep my basic structure and the required components, but I have been trying to add for myself. My morning starts with the amazing Daily Morning Work from Young, Teacher, Love . I purchased it from TpT here: 5th Grade Common Core Daily Morning Work . My students love this resource and I love that is aligned to the Common Core! It is a great filler as my students trickle into the classroom from breakfast. After everyone is in we start our Read Aloud. I preferred to have my read aloud after lunch, but our lunch time has since moved so I now st

How do you stay on track with small groups and centers? I use to try and track it in my head and put them on my weekly lesson plans that I turn in, but never look at during the week. Our Principal recently started requiring the teachers to turn them in at the beginning of the week and I was not on board…at first. I tried submitting what I gave my students to stay on track during the week which is a Center Menu. That was soon rejected and was asked to turn in a specific form. I tweaked it to fit my needs more and I love it! It keeps me on track and I can better record who I am seeing. I am sharing my Small Group and Center Planner as well as my Center Menu. Fun fonts from: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Kimberly-Geswein-Fonts and Graphics from: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Krista-Wallden

It happened again....I went missing.  I have a good reason this time. My classroom flooded a few weeks ago and I have moved twice in a week! Our current room is a more permanent option because the repair schedule is a little slow and with the government shutdown who knows when it will happen. (I teach at a federally funded school) The move kinda played a role in upsetting the balance of the class so we spent a couple weeks relearning appropriate behavior. I also had some student switching one moved to a new school and I got two new ones I am now up to 23. I wanted to give an update on student centers. I am new to implementing centers in my classroom, honestly they were always something I thought of for the primary grades and thought my kids would be too "old". How wrong I was! Our center work is educational versus busy type work. I finally was brave enough to release the reins and allow my students to work through a menu model versus me dictating what centers needed to be

I have been struggling for over a month to find the perfect lesson plan template for my guided reading groups. I didn't find one so I finally made one that I think is just right for me. I am sharing it and hoping it will help you! Here is a link to it in my TpT store. It is a free download! :) Happy Wednesday to you! http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Guided-Reading-Lesson-Plan-Template-861095

Well I basically fell of the blog world lately (not that I have ever been real consistent, but it's a goal!). I have officially completed our first month of school and am excited for the long weekend! Between our air conditioner being on the fritz and water issues the school year has started a little rocky! This year I have started my reading mini-lessons with teaching QAR's, my guided reading groups and literature circle are in full swing, and I have officially started using centers (Yikes!)..(and I love them!). Centers....we have had some amazing help from some consultants based out of Phoenix (Empower). I love them!!! They have helped me rethink what I need to be doing in the classroom and now I don't feel as guilty for not pulling out the basal. Basically I have 5 reading groups (4 guided reading groups and 1 literature circle group ...and 1 student working on independent study (he does not play well with others any ideas???)). I have 2 centers a day, SSR, and a compu