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Provide Pre-highlighted Texts to Model Effective Highlighting

Tags

ELA: Reading Study Skills & Tools ^21st Century Skills MS/HS/College Strategy

Skills

Verbal Reasoning

Provide Pre-highlighted Texts to Model Effective Highlighting

If your students highlight too little or too much when reading

Teach It!

  1. Objective: Pre-highlighted texts will offer students a model for effective highlighting practices.
  2. Model and Practice: a) Highlighting promotes memory for the marked material which is presumably the most important material. However, research shows that most students over-highlight and get no benefits from highlighting. b) Provide students with pre-highlighted texts, with different colors for the main ideas, details and key terms. Students will have a good model of what and how much should be highlighted. c) As students learn what effective highlighting looks like, teachers can give specific highlighting tips and have students practice highlighting on their own. d) For students with weaker reasoning skills, teachers might continue to provide them with the highlighted texts to ensure that they are always focusing on the most important information.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

While many students choose highlighting as their optimal study strategy, research shows that most students highlight too much information making it overall ineffective. Since most students will choose to highlight, modeling and teaching students how to highlight effectively is an important skill.