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Highlighters,
Yay! . . . sort of
Kids
love to use highlighters. And kudos to the person who invented them-- seriously--
a marker that lets you read through it. Plus they're probably one of the most
affordable learning tools. I know that the second the words "let's
highlight the important stuff" leave my mouth, my students are scrambling
for their favorite color. Blue is quite popular. But as awesome as highlighters
are, they take a considerable amount of modeling and training-- or at least
that has been my experience.
Early
on in the school year my principal walked into observe and I was thrilled at my
luck. Instead of the my usual misfortune in timing where she walks in while
we're transitioning to a new lesson or even worse when she steps in on the
infamous water bottle spill or the ever popular "oh, I forgot my
glasses" complaint. Then of course the student stares at you expectantly
as if you can just open your magical optometrist cupboard and pull out a new
pair. But this time my students were engaged in small study groups where they
had to find evidence to support several focus questions in our one of our
Reading to Learn booklets. The highlighters were flying and the discussions
were going. Unfortunately the highlighters were flying a bit too much. Many of
the students had entire pages of pink highlight.
I
found though that with plenty of modeling they learned how to be a bit more
discriminating when highlighting. Now I tell students to ask themselves to read
back what they've highlighted and check the question to see if the information
is related. And persistence has paid
off. My third graders will move on to fourth grade much more skilled at finding
important key details and relevant facts. Unless, of course, they forget
everything over the summer.
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