Hootin' and Hollerin'

Hoot & Holler

We are hootin' and hollerin' about the Awesome Parent Letters ESGI offers to teachers and parents! You can print out a parent report for one student or for your entire class with only 2 clicks!  These parent letters highlight what skills each student knows and doesn't know, AND they can be printed in English or Spanish. There is also an option to print flashcards to attach to the letter!  

You can download them as a Word document to customize the letter to meet your needs.  If you want to type suggestions for the parents to use at home, words of praise, or a date of the next assessment, then you can simply do this in a Word document!  It is so simple, easy, and saves TONS of time!  

What have you got to lose by signing up and giving it a go?  

Teachers that sign-up:
*Will be entered to win $500 Amazon Gift Card AND 10 Runner Up $50 Amazon Gift Cards.
*Will receive a $40 discount off their first year purchase.
*Will receive ESGI free through June 30th

Sign up for ESGI now with Promo Code GLITTERWILD to receive ESGI through June 30th! Click the picture below to check it out! 

Two Hoots and A Holler

Hoot #1

Our first hoot is all about DATA!  This year our students have 2 computerized tests that they will have to take.  One is mandated by the state, and the other gives teachers a plethora of information about their students' strengths and areas of concern.  Our goal this year is to GROW, GROW, GROW!  In order to help us stay on track, our wonderful principals have created a "data room" that displays every teacher's data.  This is a great visual for teachers to see how their students are growing.  This forces us to look at our data and allow our data to drive our instruction; therefore, we are tailoring our instruction to meet our students EXACTLY where they are.  We love looking at our data, and we definitely can't wait to see how much these Jitterbugs and Rockstars will grow!

 

Hoot #2

Speaking of growing our students and data, we are only 2 months into school and have seen our students begin to SOAR!  We use ESGI in our classrooms to help with assessments that we give our students.  A huge focus is on letters and sounds at the beginning of the year.  We set a personal goal for ourselves and our students...we want all of our students to know all of their letters by Halloween.  And with the help many Jack Hartmann videos, Leap Frog's Letter Factory, perseverance, and a few tears, we are almost there!  Look at all of this growth!  In August I had 7 students who knew all 52 letters, now I have 18 that know all 52!!!!  I was super excited to see all of their growth, and  I am proud of my kiddos for all of their hard work! 

  

This Week's Holler...

This week's holler goes to ESGI! Thank you ESGI for your continued support of teachers and saving us HUNDREDS of hours of assessments!  If you do not use this tool, then you are wasting a lot a valuable time assessing your students. Did I mention that it is paperless???!!! At a glance, I can look at my standards that I am targeting to see if whole class review is necessary. 

 When I click on a students name, if gives me an overview of the student's knowledge. If I press "details," then it will give me the exact question that the student doesn't know. My students have so much fun with this! It is not uncommon to hear them say, "Look how much my brain has grown!"

You can click any of the icons on the right and with no effort at all, you can have a detailed parent letter explaining their child's knowledge. We have heard of some teachers that even use these as the report cards that they send home! Every primary teacher needs this in their life!

Click on the ESGI button at the top of our blog home page to receive a code for a free trial and a discounted price!!!

Two Hoots and A Holler: Growing Gators

Hoot #1

We have been in school for 6 weeks now.  This year seems to be going by super fast!  We have seen so much growth from our kiddos in the past 6 weeks.  Thanks to ESGI, we have data to show that our class is growing and learning!  I know we have said it before, but if you do not have ESGI...What are you waiting for?!?!  It is the best thing that we have ever discovered, and we will never teach another year without it!  It gives you SO MUCH data to use to show parents, administrators, support staff, etc. to show how each individual child is progressing.  We did a letter screener in August.  With ESGI, it took us no time at all to get this done!  We want our students to know all letter names by Halloween, so we have been working really hard to meet our goal.  We reassess our students every other week with ESGI. We started off in August with our uppercase percentage at 63% and our lowercase percentage at 52%.  

Just look at the growth they showed and look at the awesome pie charts from ESGI!! We grew at least 20% in upper and lowercase areas in less than a month!  I am so proud of these kiddos!

Hoot #2

We have a new phonics program we are using this year in kindergarten.  We will begin using SIPPS this year.  We have been nervous to start a new program because we didn't know much about it.  Last week we were lucky enough to attend a training geared towards our grade level.  This training was very informative and helpful.  After sitting in this training, the nervousness has passed some, and the excitement is starting to set in!  This program has shown phenomenal growth in student's reading abilities.  Students must know at least 20 lowercase letters before beginning, so we have been working really hard to learn as many letters as we can.  
How many of you have used SIPPS in kindergarten?  Have any tips for us before we begin?  We would LOVE to hear from other teachers who have used this program.  Leave your comments below!!   

 

This Week's Holler...

This week's holler goes out to Karen Jones at Mrs. Jones's Kindergarten.  We are in LOVE with her new curriculum creations for kinders called "Little Thinkers".  It is a social studies curriculum designed just for kindergarten!  It is in her TPT store, and now that we have discovered her...a lot of her items are now on our TPT Wish List!  Go read and check out her blog to read more about all of the awesome ideas this lady has!  

Two Hoots and A Holler: December begins...

Hoot #1

This week we have started two really big things...TESTING and CHRISTMAS! I bet that you've never seen those two words in the same sentence!! Well, it's true.  This week the window opened to start testing our students' reading levels.  Our district uses Fountas & Pinnell to determine each child's reading level.

I always get a little excited during this time of the year. Yes, each report card period we see growth, but there is something about the mid-year mark that causes me to reflect and see how much they have really grown since they entered my door for the first time!
Jodi and I also use ESGI to asses our students. If you do not know what this is, let me tell ya, it's the best assessment tool that I have ever seen and used! It has saved us tons of time! We can now get our report cards done pretty quickly! ESGI has all of the tests that you need for the entire year. Want to know more about it? Just click on the link on our blog to learn more and to receive a discount on the product! 

Hoot #2

We have also started all things Christmas! Santa's workshop would not be complete without his toy soldiers!

 Here we are creating our toy soldiers! Yes they are huge! That is one of the things that I love about them! They are basically the size of each child, give or take a few inches!

Be prepared to see many more holiday treats in the upcoming weeks!

This Week's Holler...

This week's goes out to Kim Adsit!! We have looked up to Kim for years, long before we dared to dream of blogging and TPTing!! Kim is now a retired kinder teacher.  When she is not presenting nationally, she is donating her time to her daughter's class.  Kim is still impressing little minds as well as educatiors around the globe!! She saves teacher LOADS of money by not only showing items that can be bought at dollar stores, but also shows educators ways to use those item in the classroom!  We are totally excited about her Christmas more/less activity! It looks like we will be going to Target after we eat a little turkey!! Check out her blog!

We had seen Kim present several times throughout the years, but we had the honor of talking to her as we walked to our rooms during a bloggers meet-up! We had recently talked in front of the group to introduce ourselves.  She said she loved our accents!! Now we are so blessed to call her friend! God bless your sweet heart Kim!