Highlighting PLUS for During Reading Brilliance

If you have been following my recent posts you know that I have been sharing my learning on a teaching strategy called Talk Read Talk Write created by Nancy Motley (@NancyMotleyTRTW) and outlined in her book of the same title.


​A Bit of a Recap
Talk Read Talk Write is a stategy designed to do the following:

• Build student reading skill with academic text
• Make reading the primary source of learning
• Make dense, challenging and often uninteresting reading more engaging 

Highlighting PLUS Purpose: To give students a method to focus in on pertenent information without overhighlighting.

Highlighting PLUS Overview
Whatever students highlight they must explain why they did so by giving a reason for each word, phrase, sentence or section they highlight.

HOW Highlighting PLUS Works
1. Teacher will give the purpose for reading the text the lesson is designed around.

2. Teacher will then give the criteria for what students should highlight. This criteria could include instructions to highlight general information connected to the reading purpose or instructions to highlight based on analysis, inference or the student's evaluation of what they read. 

3. The Teacher can also focus or limit how much students highlight by asking for a specific number of highlights such as 3-5 items to help exert a bit of control over student highlighting and encourage students to be more judicious when they highlight.

4. During reading or later in the lesson students must return to the information they highlighted and justify their thinking on what they highlighted by either defending their choices to a partner or group or by writing and recording their reasons for highlighting in a journal or other reading accountability task. 

Nancy explains that, "the teacher has complete flexibility to set the standard on what to highlight," which means that there is no magical formula to this, but that the student highlighting should help reveal what the learning should be and/or give a student the opportunity to show their thinking about their learning on a given topic (Talk Read Talk Write, Motley 46).

A World Language Example of Highlight PLUS

Text: ¿Qué es la 'affluenza', la "enfermedad de los niños ricos"? - El Comercio, Lima, Peru - Associated Press

Reading Purpose: To find out what the symptoms / descriptions of affluenza are and decide whether you believe it is a real condition or not.

Highlighting PLUS 

DURING READING:
1. Using one color highlighter, highlight 3-5 phrases that explain what "affluenza" is.
2. Using a different color highlighter, highlight 2-4 phrases, sentences or sections that support whether you think affluenza is a real condition or not.

AFTER READING:
1. Go back to the 3-5 phrases you highlighted that explain what "affluenza" is and write your guesses about what you think those phrases mean based upon context clues.

2. Work with your group to compile a list of possible symptoms of "affluenza" according to the article.

3. Return to your highlights that support your position on "affluenza." Use English to argue your point of view on the issue to your group. Use your highlights as your evidence.

Wrapping Up
My initial thoughts are that for Novice Level classes Highlighting PLUS can be a great focus and processing to for making meaning more than analyzing a text simply due to their interpretive skill level, but of course for classes with students of greater proficiency the sky is the limit. I also think that Highlighting PLUS, while a great tool for TRTW, can be employed in more than that context for an added layer of scaffolding with authentic resources. And let's face it, we are  all looking for more ways to support the use of authentic resources in our classes! Right?

So, that's Highlighting PLUS for World Languages. If you decide to use this strategy in your world language class, please reach out to me and let me know how it went for you and give me all the juicy details about how you laid it out in your lesson. I would love to learn from you!

Happy Coaching, friends!

References
Motley, N. (2013). Talk read talk write: A practical approach to learning in the secondary classroom. San Clemente, CA: Seidlitz Education. 

Associated Press. (2015, December 30). ¿Qué es la 'affluenza', la "enfermedad de los niños ricos"? El Comercio. Retrieved March 1, 2016, from http://elcomercio.pe/mundo/eeuu/que-affluenza-enfermedad-ninos-ricos-noticia-1867463?ref=nota_mundo&ft=mod_leatambien&e=titulo 

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