Selective highlighting/underlining is used to help learners organize what they have read by selecting what is essential. This method teaches learners to highlight/underline ONLY the keywords, phrases, vocabulary, and ideas that are central to comprehending the content.

Learning Outcomes

• Active reading
• Identify important content
• Taking notes
• Making connections
• Recalling information for later use

Implementation

1. Introduce learners to the selective highlighting method and discuss the goal of the activity. Then model the implementation to ensure that learners understand how to utilize selective highlighting. Learners must:
2. Read through the selection.
3. Reread and start to highlight main ideas.
4. Highlight the facts, which are essential vocabulary, not the whole sentence.
5. After highlighting, look at what they have highlighted and summarize what they read.
6. Take what was highlighted and write a paragraph summarizing what they have read.
7. Have learners summarize what they read by utilizing the highlighted content to write a summary paragraph.

Considerations

• Give learners time and means to practice the technique and reinforce successful performance.
  • Monitor and support learners as they work.
  • Instructors may have learners utilize various colors of highlighters to identify main ideas from details.
  • When using an eBook, instructors must ask learners to:
• Read through the selection first.
• Reread and select a portion of the content that the learner wishes to highlight by highlighting or changing the font of the content or utilizing content boxes for comments.
• From the menu, select the “add content-box” option.
• Type in comments into the content box and click anywhere outside the content box to finish.