Small Group Warm-Up Activities!

Hey there! 

What are you up to on a Friday night? Here I am blogging...but hey, the house is quiet and I've had something that I've been wanting to share for awhile. 

My daughter is actually home from college, but she wanted to go to the football game. My husband is at a men's recharge (preaching services). I cannot wait to spend some time with Harley tomorrow so I figured now was a good time to hop on and show you what has me so excited.

Ever since learning more about the process of learning to read, I've been trying to find quick and easy ways to get a lot of practice into my intervention time with students. I'm pretty excited about two new things I'm using this year and want to share them with you.

First, SuperSpeed 100 for sight words. This is a FREE activity from Whole Brain Teaching. They also have SuperSpeed 1000. I am using this (along with their FREE Biffytoons for my youngest readers) to practice sight words and it literally takes only about 3 minutes of my intervention time and the kids are loving it. The best part is that I've already seen my 1st graders improving on their AimsWeb Plus Word Reading Progress Monitoring. Whoop! Whoop!

Second, is what I'm calling Phonics Warm-Up Activities. I created these to use with my students as they progress through our explicit phonics and phonemic awareness lessons. My initial thought was to have students warm-up using the boards by reading the line of words with our targeted sound, but now I see that the possibilities are endless! Here's a peek at some of my students using the boards:

The boards can be used in small groups, as a center activity, or when students have extra time in the classroom. They can be used as a warm-up activity, roll-and-read, decoding practice, fluency practice, or as an orthographic mapping activity. My latest idea is to play "Bingo" by giving students sound hints to find specific words. I'm going to try this out next week. 

Like the SuperSpeed games, these activities are simple to prep (print and go) and don't take a lot of my intervention time to get lots of practice in. The boards start with short vowels and progress through more difficult skills. You can check them out in our TPT store for a full list of skills covered if you're interested. 

Enjoy your weekend! I know I'm going to enjoy seeing Harley...miss my kiddos so much (thankfully they still text and/or call quite a bit ;-))!

Check Out My Offices...or Classrooms!

I call them offices. I guess they could be considered tiny classrooms. Either way, here is a peek at my work spaces for this year.

Before we get into that, here is my first day of school picture. A selfie--which I'm not great at--because my husband had already left for work. This is the first year I have no kids in my picture! I had just left them in Oklahoma for college on Sunday.

I wanted to take it in front of my new "inspirational" arrangement--turns out I would need those phrases!

This one too.

My first day was actually miserable. It had nothing to do with school though. Without unnecessary details, let's just say we had money stolen and feared our identities and accounts were compromised. It made for a busy week of closing accounts, opening new ones, etc. All is well now.

These pics are of my K-2 office/classroom: 

My daughter made the wall files for me out of pine 1x3's and 1x2's for the depth. I always get questions, so thought I'd try to help you out even though I'm probably not explaining it well. 

I love my brain poster. :-)

Segment and Write boards from Pathways to Reading. 

It took me all week to get this counter cleaned off! :-)

New cart...no idea yet what I will use it for. Thoughts?

Two main rules of time with Mrs. Ratcliff. 

These next few pictures are of things I helped put together in the teachers' lounge and/or office. 

A couple of other teachers and I formed a P.O.P. (Power of Prayer) group a couple of years ago. We are a small district, so we divide the entire staff and board members into a weekly prayer list and cycle through it 3 times a year. We also display a verse of the week. At each building we have a weekly prayer meeting open to any staff that wants to join us. 

Finding time to meet as a staff is a challenge, so we have this calendar in the lounge to try and keep everyone updated on what is going on.  

I put together one of these in both buildings for staff to recognize staff. These are from Staff Morale Boosters pack on TPT. The pack included some other fun things as well. Looking forward to spreading some "cheer" this year!

Everyday at 1:30, I drive 20 minutes to the 3-12 building. This is my office/classroom where I work with 3rd-5th graders. I haven't made it as homey (other than the futon), but maybe some day.  

Excuse the mess on the table. Getting ready to plan/prep for MTSS groups.

Brain poster again! I'm planning to add the words: What's Happening in your Brain while you are Reading...

I have to admit, my first full week was extra long. I'm thankful it was also revival week at my church even though it made for late nights. The services helped keep my focus on the eternal after going through that first awful day, especially this sermon: Are you fixated on the right thing? I highly recommend it!

I'm rested up and ready to get back to it tomorrow! We're hoping to finish up testing this week, so I can start working with kids next week. Woohoo!