HANNAN

HAPPENINGS
Whats New in Room 46 ?

JANUARY
Dear Parents,
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! May 2015
bring you all good health and
happiness.
I hope you had a wonderful and
relaxing holiday with your families.
Something tells me you were glad
to see the start of school!!!!
Im happy to have my children
back and I look forward to an
exciting and challenging second
half of the year!

LANGUAGE ARTS
Continue to encourage as much
reading as possible at home. It is
the single most important thing
you can do as a parent with
regards to PSSA preparation.
Grammar skills I will teach this
month will be pronoun-verb
agreement, verbs in the present,
past and future tenses, different
types of adjectives and articles.
We will continue to apply all
comprehension strategies as we
read and supply text evidence for

everything we are questioned

about for a passage.
Target reading strategies we will
work on will be inference, main
idea, summarizing, analyzing and
evaluating what we read.
Target reading skills will be
continued work with authors
purpose, point of view, compare
and contrast themes, setting and
plots. We will also work on
explaining how illustrations
contribute to the message of a
text. Text features and text
organization will continue to be
stressed when reading non- fiction
passages.
We will start an informational
writing unit. The children will learn
to write informative texts that
examine a topic and a how to
piece.
We will also continue to revisit past
pieces for the purpose of revision.
Their writing skills continue to
show wonderful growth.

their multiplication facts before

division.

MATH
We have started unit 5 Math
Investigations right before break.
I have introduced the concept of
multiplication through repeated
addition and arrays. Your child
should be able to show the product
of any multiplication fact by using
either of these two ways.
I want them to know their
multiples which will also help them
with multiplication fact fluency. We
will work on 4,6 and 8 this month.
You will notice that this will be
assigned for home practice as well.
I expect them to have mastered
the 0,1,2 and 3 times tables by
now.
If you have not purchased flash
cards, please do so. Have them
practice nightly. I will let you know
via the homework assignments
when I have introduced a new
times table. You can then pull
those facts from your flash cards
and practice.
Toward the end of unit 5 they will
be introduced to the concept of
division. The focus points will be
to have them understand that
division is splitting a quantity into
equal groups, use the inverse
relationship between multiplication
and division to solve problems, use
and understand division notation,
write and solve division problems
in context.
I do NOT expect division fact
fluency at this point. Your child will
obviously have to have mastered

SCIENCE
We will start a unit on Water and
Weather toward the middle of
January. I will start with chapters
5 and 6 in their science books first
to provide them with background
knowledge about the topics. Then
we will work with the Foss Water
Kits.
This is a fun and very enjoyable
unit for the children.
Topics I will cover will be the
importance of water, different
forms of water, water cycle,
weather patterns and various
storms.
We will then move to the
discovery part of the unit and use
the Foss Kits. They will observe
the interaction of water with
different materials and the
movement of water on a slope.
They will observe the different
properties of water. They will
create their own thermometer and
observe the effect temperature has
on various experiments. Another
investigation involves the effect of
surface area and air temperature
on evaporation. They will observe
condensation.
At the end of the unit they will
create their own waterwheel!
Throughout the unit I expect them
to use their scientific thinking
processes to conduct the various
experiments. They will
hypothesize, observe,
communicate to the group, take

notes, compare and organize their

data in their science notebooks.
A major grade will be given for this
work.
SOCIAL STUDIES
We will start a map skills unit
which will take a little over two
weeks. Our focus will be on
intermediate directions, 5 oceans,
7 continents, map scale, map
grids, reading maps, and learning
about various landforms.
An ongoing activity will be to learn
the abbreviations for all 50 states.

Monday, January 5thSchool reopens

Friday, January 16th - Half
Day In-Service
Monday, January 19th No
School Martin Luther
King Holiday
Contact me with any
questions or concerns. My
door is always open to you.
Together we will help your
child achieve his or her
personal BEST!!!
bhannan@wcasd.net