Objective: Students will learn effective highlighting techniques to help them understand, organize and remember the most important information when they read.

Instruction and Practice: With your student, first preview and then read through a text, modeling how to choose the most important information and details to highlight. In the process, also point out what you are not highlighting and why, so students understand that too much highlighting is ineffective. After highlighting through the text, go back and review the highlighted pieces to show students how you now have the main ideas, key details and vocabulary they need.

Teacher Notes: Highlighter tape is a good option for school textbooks and virtual highlighting can be used for online textbooks.

Preview or skim text before highlighting. This will help you identify the main idea and most important details before you read in depth.

As you go back to read, highlight only the main ideas, key phrases and essential vocabulary. Highlighting too much takes away the point of highlighting.

Use different-colored highlighters for grouping similar types of information. (i.e. Pink for vocabulary words and green for main ideas.)

When you finish, go back and read through your highlights to see if you have an effective summary.