West Side Middle School (Union City, IN) seventh grade teacher Carla Durham likes to engage her students with fun reader and writer tools in the classroom. One tool that she has found many uses for is highlighter tape.
This self-stick tape has the same properties as sticky notes, in that it adheres to paper but is removable and reusable. The difference is highlighter tape is transparent and can literally “highlight” text in a variety of colors.
The uses for highlighter tape are limitless. Here are a couple more suggestions:
- Provide each student with 6″ of highlighter tape. Charge them with identifying the 6″ of most important information (main idea) in the selection that corresponds with the reading purpose. NOTE: Students may need to rip the tape into smaller portions. This doesn’t have to be six consecutive inches of text.
- Have students highlight the topic sentence/main idea sentence in each paragraph or section of text.
In addition to a functional instructional tool, Carla points out that the highlighter tape just makes the process more fun! “The kids loved the tape,” she said. Her plan is to reuse the highlighter tape every week. (She had the students save their tape by adhering it to the inside cover of their LA book where it could be found easily later.)
