ENGAGE: 
Selective Highlighting

Selective highlighting is similar to underlining main ideas; highlighting adds the option of using vivid color to help the selected text stand out as students are isolating key information. When reading digital texts, highlighting is a tool that is readily available to students and can help them organize a text visually. This tool can also be very beneficial when marking nonlinguistic texts. Selective highlighting can be useful for many different purposes; however, educators should be aware that beginning readers tend to “over-highlight.” Because of this, modeling the process of highlighting for early readers might help them understand that highlighting should be used selectively for the purpose of isolating key information. Modeling is part of the gradual release of responsibility instructional model outlined earlier in this book.

When readers are unclear on the purpose for reading, they struggle to make decisions about how to approach a text. This is especially true for texts that are not written in paragraph form, such as data, charts, and pictures. Teaching students how to approach reading a nonlinguistic text will give them the power to question and analyze the connections being made.