What is Text Highlighting and Why is it Important?  

Objective: Students will demonstrate understanding by highlighting specific text, such as main idea or supporting evidence, from a longer text.

Highlighting text is a strategy that helps students focus on essential information in a text. From finding the main idea and identifying supporting details to learning vocabulary, highlighting text is useful for different purposes.

This strategy is suitable for all grade levels and across the curriculum. In English, students can highlight the main idea of a story, while in social studies, they might use this strategy to identify the cause or effect of an historical event. Highlighting text is also useful in science and math, for example, for highlighting steps in an experiment or evidence that supports a scientific argument. At higher levels, students can highlight text that helps them draw conclusions or make inferences. The key to making highlighting text effective is by providing a purpose or focus for their highlighting, which in turn builds understanding.   

Related BrainPOP Features

BrainPOP offers several features for practicing highlighting text:

  • Related Readings:  Jam-packed with interesting facts, Related Readings offer the perfect opportunity for students to put their text highlighting skills to work.
  • Primary Sources: For some topics, the Primary Source activity asks students to read an original text, such as an historical document, and identify parts of the text as evidence to support their responses. These types of activities present an ideal opportunity for students to put their text highlighting skills to work.
  • Quill: This proofreading game requires students to focus on details in a larger text just as highlighting text involves finding specific information within a text.
  • After the Storm: In this game, students play the role of editor-in-chief of a magazine, researching facts and editing stories, skills they sharpen by knowing how to effectively highlight texts.

The Sports Network 2: In their role of Director of a cable news sports network, this game requires students to read and highlight text to identify specific information.

Filed as:  3-5, 6-8, 9-12