So, now that I've started the blog up, one thing to note is that my teaching partner and I are HUGE Disney fans.  This summer we read through the Daily 5 and CAFE books to refresh our literacy.  One thing that stood out to both of us when reading those books is instilling a "sense of urgency" with the students.  Meaning, students need to know that we have a finite amount of time to prepare them for 2nd grade.  Since the first day of school, we have been counting down from 180 days of school--not to count down to summer, but to remind the students that we only have "x" number of days left to learn all of our first grade stuff.

We went to Disney World at the end of October.  I saw the antenna toppers at one of the gift shops and thought they would make great pointers for the classroom.  I popped them onto a wooden dowel and voila...fun shared reading pointer!