Highlights High Five™ September 2007 Parent/Teacher Guide

Ah-Choo Choo-Choo (pages 6 to 9)

  • Before reading the story, have the children look at the illustrations on pages 6 and 7 and ask: Who do you think are the characters in this story? (Three trains and a stationmaster) Do all the trains look happy?
  • After reading the story, go back and discuss what the stationmaster did first, next, and last. (He washed leaves off the train, washed oil off the train, and removed the bird"s nest from the train.)
  • To support print awareness, go back through the story, encouraging children to find and count the number of times the word train appears in the text. You could also list words that rhyme with train or words that begin with the tr sound.
  • Turn to the bonus pull-out pages and discuss how to play the board game.

Recalling the correct sequence of events and interpreting how characters feel will deepen children"s comprehension. Looking for and finding repeated words in the text will help children begin to learn the conventions of print. For example, train begins with the letters t and r, and the tr sound comes at the beginning of many different words.

Copycats (pages 18 to 21)

  • If you have read Tex and Indi stories from previous issues, begin by asking: What do you remember about Tex and Indi and Cow?
  • Then ask: What time of year do you think it is? How do you know?
  • After reading the story, talk together about what happens in the fall and then ask: Do you think Tex had a good idea? Why or why not?

Closed questions, the kind with a "right" answer, are helpful when checking for comprehension. But open-ended questions, the kind with multiple answers, are best when you want to help kids learn how to posit ideas, listen to one another, possibly disagree, and learn to express their ideas in a civil, respectful manner.

Frogs Everywhere (pages 32 and 33)

In this activity, children will be able to

  • count a set of objects,
  • sort by color and pattern,
  • sort by large and small,
  • describe how the frogs in each group are alike and different.

After counting and grouping the images on these pages, give children a set of objects to sort. Have them decide on a sorting rule. After sorting the objects according to their rule, encourage them to think of a new rule. Finding multiple ways to sort a set of objects helps children develop divergent thinking skills.