Never Underestimate the Power of a Highlighter

As my title suggests, this post is about the power of a highlighter. I discovered the power of a highlighter from Kathryn Starke, a literacy expert who spoke to VCU AmeriCorps during one of our trainings. She explained that students love props and that something as simple as a highlighter can help further engage students in reading material.  She was so right! 

I often have my students use highlighters on their reading passages to highlight  new vocabulary words or words which contain the phonemes we practiced that day. Other days, I challenge them to highlight all of the rhyming words within a passage. Sometimes I ask them to highlight the punctuation marks of a passage so that they notice when to pause or change their expression while reading. All of these methods help my students examine what they are reading a litte more and recognize the complexity of the words they are reading.  Additionally, this helps add extra challenges to their lesson for the day. So when in doubt, grab a highlighter!