An effective monitoring strategy combining highlighting and note taking.

Highwriting is a reading strategy that helps students achieve a deeper understanding of what they are learning.  Research shows that typical highlighting is not effective, but paired with annotation helps to deepen a student's involvement with the content and make learning stick.

Select a piece of reading material.

1. Have students highlight key phrases of the text that relate to the purpose for reading.

2. Next to the highlighted points, students annotate the text.

When a reader decides that something is important enough to highlight, he or she makes a note in the margin summarizing the highlighted point.  

Every time students use the highlighter, they must make a corresponding note in the margin.  

Only key phrases should be highlighted and the highlighted information must relate to the purpose for reading.