• Paper copy of non-fiction text of your choosing

• All students should have two highlighters and pencil

• Online document for students to highlight. One for each student.

Activity 1

This activity is great if students have not had much experience using word processing and are slowly making the transition. Older students would not need this step.

1. Nonfiction passages are jammed with information.

2. Tell the students you are going to have them differentiate important text from irrelevant.

3. Review with students criteria for making these determinations ;read the whole text, determine main topic, big ideas, ignore the little details, re-read, look for queues in the text style (bold, italics, underline, section headers/titles, etc.

4. Discuss that finding important information in a text helps you, as a reader, to understand the text. Remind students that the title of the reading passage and any subsection titles within it should be guiding them in what important details to be looking for as they read.

5.  Discuss the difference between interesting details and important details. Ask students to brainstorm characteristics of each.

6.  Hand out a hard copy of a brief nonfiction paragraph

7. Students will use one highlighter and a pencil.

8. Using their highlighter students will select important information

9. Using the pencil students and cross off irrelevant information.

10. Either conference with students or share some class examples to help reinforce determining what is considered important and what is irrelevant.

 

Activity 2

1. Students will open document

2. Students will highlight the central idea with one color using the highlight tool

3. With a different color students will highlight facts and details/ideas that support the central idea

4. Using the strikethrough option students will strikethrough text that denotes opinion or irrelevant facts that do not support the central idea

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.2
Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the text

You can use highlight tools in infinite way.

• Highlight parts of speech

• Highlight Topic Sentence

• Strikethrough information that does not belong

• Have students “be the editor”. With an online or physical dictionary have students proofread to correct spelling, and look for and correct grammar. Making the student the editor, especially for spelling (no spellcheck) they naturally get experience inserting the cursor, add, delete ,backspace, delete, etc.

• For Google Users-installing the add on "highlight tool" makes highlighting not only easier but more organized.
  This handy highlight tool allows the user to assign colors to topics. The add on when used, is easily acceptable on the right hand side of the document, the student, after assigning color(s) to topic(s), simply clicks on the appropriate highlighter then click and drag.