Hootin' & Hollerin'

Hoot & Holler 

During this time of shelter in place, staying at home, and not being able to actually see our students, co-workers, and family in person we are grateful for the friends that ESGI has connected us with and provided to us!  We are actually WILD about these friends because these friends have created custom tests for teachers to use!  

 

 You can find our assessments and others included at no extra cost with your ESGI subscription! Don't have ESGI? No problem! Sign up today for an EXTENDED FREE TRIAL!  Just click on the picture at the top of this blog post to use the promo code GLITTERWILD to sign up!  

This is the last week to sign up, so you will not want to miss out!  Tell all of your teacher friends!!  

 

Who doesn't like winning prizes?!?!

Teachers that register for a new trial and try this free resource with students will automatically be entered:
Top prize - $500 Amazon Gift Card
Ten - $50 Amazon Gift Cards will also be awarded, and
Receive a $40 discount off your first ESGI purchase

(Winners will be announced Sunday, April 19th.) 

Stay safe and healthy out there ya'll!  

We are praying for all of our teachers, staff, and students near and far!  Stay strong, we will get through this together!   

Hootin' & Hollerin'

Hoot & Holler

ATTENTION ALL TEACHERS!!  
I know we have told you how much we love ESGI, and this is just another reason why we LOVE this company SO much!  They support teachers, and they truly care about making our jobs easier!  Check out what they are doing...

During this difficult time, ESGI is giving free access to parents and caregivers to support teachers with at-home learning.  This opens up the opportunity for teachers to work alongside parents and caregivers at home and support the digital learning platform that we are all using during this time. These parent At-Home accounts will not have access to your teacher account or affect your data.  Any adult can administer the skills review from an internet connected device! It’s as easy as CLICK, CLICK, DONE!

When students come back to school you will be ready to hit the ground running! 
Follow the steps below to get started:
Step 1: Sign up today for an EXTENDED FREE TRIAL using promo code GLITTERWILD at www.esgisoftware.com
 
Step 2: Look for an ESGI email to follow with more information on At-Home accounts!
Teachers that register for a new trial will automatically be entered for the following:

• Top prize - $500 Amazon Gift Card
• Ten - $50 Amazon Gift Cards will also be awarded, and
• Receive a $40 discount off your first ESGI purchase 

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! 

Hootin' & Hollerin'

Hoot & Holler

ESGI has us hootin' and hollerin' all the way from Mississippi for TWO HUGE REASONS this week!  

We are officially friends of ESGI!  We could not be more thrilled and blessed to announce this to all of our fellow kindergarten teachers!  We have created assessments for all of the Mississippi College and Career Readiness Standards for Kindergarten, and they are now available to you through ESGI! 

 

Let your colleagues, administrators, and even district leaders know about these assessments that are available to you.  Get your ESGI subscription today, so you can have access to these assessments and hundreds of others...and most importantly, sign up today so you can begin to save HUNDREDS of hours, and put your glitter back into your teaching!  

We are literally going WILD over all of the charts, graphs, and data ESGI provides!  Instantly find out what skills your class needs more instruction in with ESGI's automated tracking and reporting system.  You can use real-time student data to differentiate your instruction, create small groups, guide your instruction, and help convert your raw scores into your report card grade scales.

You can go to ESGI's website by clicking the button below and sign up for a free trial now through June 30th using Promo Code GLITTERWILD.  If you are enjoying your free trial, and we promise you will...then you will want to sign up!  Teachers that sign-up for a new ESGI trial account between February 23rd and April 19th:

1. Will be entered to win $500 Amazon Gift Card and 10 Runner Up $50 Amazon Gift Cards.
2. Will receive a $40 discount off their first year purchase.
3. Will receive ESGI free through June 30th. 

 

Ya'll enjoy using ESGI!  

Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have 

on here or on Facebook. 

Happy Teaching Ya'll!   

Hootin' and Hollerin'

Hoot & Holler

ESGI always has these two Glitter Girls hootin' and hollerin'!  We are hootin' because it always save us so much time in our classrooms and give us SO much information to use with parents and for ourselves!  We are hollerin' because we are now officially "Friends of ESGI"!!  We are so honored and blessed to be affiliated with this awesome company!  We honestly cannot express how much this simple assessment tool has changed our lives!  

We use it to assess sight words biweekly, to assess report cards every 9 weeks, for progress monitoring, and to keep parents informed on their child's progress.  ESGI just makes our teacher hearts glow with excitement and joy because it truly has been a lifesaver for us in so many ways!   We have used ESGI in our classroom for 7 years now. It has saved us countless hours and millions of trees. We honestly do not know how we fit everything in before we discovered this online assessment tool. We would spend days, sometimes weeks, assessing just to repeat the process again in a few short weeks...it was a never ending cycle! Those days are over thanks to ESGI!!  Now we can test and get immediate results in the classroom, AND we can give parents immediate results. If you are looking for ways to maximize your instructional time, then ESGI is for YOU!   

There are hundreds of assessments for you to choose from, or you can create your own.  If you are a kindergarten teacher in Mississippi, then we have some awesome news for you!! Kinder Glitter Girls has done the work for you. You read that right! We have now created assessments that you can access on ESGI!!! How cool is that!! These assessments align with every Mississippi Kindergarten Standard (MCCRS). Click the link below to see a list of the assessments that we have personally created to help our fellow kinder colleagues quickly assess their students, so they can spend more time focusing on growing their students.

Click on MS to see a list of ELA and Math Assessments for kindergarten teachers on ESGI. 

ESGI offers a 60 day free trial you can use before you purchase. What do you have to lose? Once you use it, we promise that you are going to want to keep it. Once you decide you want to keep it (which you will), we have even more good news!!  You can use the promo code "GLITTER" to get $40 off your first subscription to ESGI! Click the ESGI button below to watch a short video to see why you need ESGI in your life TODAY, then it will take you directly to the website so you can sign up  for your free trial. 

Pre-Kindergarten - 1st Grade Classroom Tools

We would be happy to answer any questions anyone may have about this wonderful tool or any of our assessments!  Just contact us by commenting below or through emailing us at southernglittergirls@gmail.com   Happy Teaching to all of our fellow Mississippi Kinder Teachers out there!  Ya'll keep on making a difference and changing the world one child at a time!  

Hootin' & Hollerin'

Here's what has us Hootin'...

We are back! The students are getting into their routines and beginning to learn the rules of the classroom. This is our 20th year teaching. So we decided to celebrate, by hiring an artist to come paint our rooms. Chrissy Dodd did better than we could have ever imagined!!

Since I am the Jitterbugs, I asked her to do a bug theme. The students were crazy over the glow in the dark moth in the bathroom.

 I didn't get a very good picture of the Japanese beetle. It is peeking his head out from around the desk. I did dress up the lights just a bit. They are the same lights that I had last year. I ran sparkly green ribbon through them. I was able to just punch out flowers from the di-cut machine at out school to put around the light bulbs. It added so much to the room!

My class has a Rockstar theme, so she came up with some art work for my classroom.  I LOVE everything about my room!  She exceeded my expectations!  The students absolutely LOVE their room! I am actually missing one picture of an area that she painted, I will add that later. 

 

This had us Hootin' too...

I don't know about you, but we stopped everything today to talk about germs. The sneezing and coughing has gotten out of hand. So I decided to do a little lesson I saw shared on Facebook on how germs are spread.  We talked about how everyone has germs, and that we do not want to share those. Then I decided that I show them how they are shared.

First, I chose my two helpers to start the "spread of germs" (glitter). I did this by putting lotion on their hand and dipping it in glitter. 

Next, they gave each other a high five.They were able to see the germs that could spread when we cough or sneeze in our hands.

 Then they shared them with all of their friends!

 Before we knew it, everyone had "germs!"

They loved this lesson! They remembered all day to sneeze and cough correctly.

It is messy, but so is Kindergarten. 

This is what has us Hollerin'...

This week's holler goes out to ESGI! We have already finished our letter screeners AND turned in our data, thanks to ESGI!  If we had to do these paper/pencil, we may still be struggling to do them while trying to teach rules and procedures and everything else that comes with the beginning of the year chaos! ESGI provides automatic documentation, progress monitoring, and provides so much more detailed information that is available to teachers and parents. We are able to look at previous records from students that are repeating kindergarten, so there is not any time wasted re-assessing these students. This week our parents received a letter, generated from ESGI, about which letters their child knows and what needs to be worked on at home. 

ESGI offers a free trial for teachers who want to try it out.... We promise once you try it, you will never go back to paper/pencil assessments again!!   ESGI has made assessments easier and saved us hundreds of hours of testing! Imagine getting all of that instructional time back and giving it to your students!  IT IS SO WORTH IT!!   
Click the ESGI button on our blog page to get started!! 
 Go try it out!  

 

Two Hoots and A Holler

Hoot #1
Last week, Mrs. Jodi told you all about the butterflies that her class made. I wanted to share how we made ours! 
With all of the talk of Spring bringing showers, we thought that it would be a perfect day to get out in the rain  to create our butterflies. The students drew on filters with markers. They then were able to run out in the rain to get their filter wet. They had a BLAST!

our finished product!

 Hoot #2

During this time of study, we read several books from Eric Carle, including The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This followed along with our theme, but I wanted to also use it to discuss different illustrating techniques that authors use when writing. The students loved this. First, the students grabbed a piece of large yellow construction paper. I put a few large drops of blue paint on their yellow paper. Then, using a brush, the students spread the paint as thin as they could to create a textured green. After it dried, they cut their paper into several circles. They arranged their caterpillar anyway that they wanted. This was a simple idea that turned out super cute!

 



This Week's Holler...
This weeks holler goes our to Mr. Mike, the president of our PTA. This guy is really special to us. His daughter is a teacher at our school.  He has a grandson that attended Walls, and he has a granddaughter who is currently in 3rd grade at Walls. He does more than I could ever possibly list. We are lucky to have him and we know it, but now the whole county knows! Tonight he was named Parent of the Year for DeSoto County Schools!! That's right! For our whole district!! We are the largest county in MS. We couldn't be more proud. Mr. Mike, the Kinder Glitter Girls love you!