Learning Center

writing

Identify strong word choice with the purple highlighter

march 1, 2019

Provide students frequent feedback on their word choice. If teachers don’t acknowledge the extra effort the student made in selecting just the right word (e.g., snatch versus get), why would they continue to strive for it. However, all this complimenting on student writing takes time.

Purple Highlighter: Got purple words? Smekens Original

Rather than circling strong words, making comments about them in the margins, and adding stickers to student papers, simply stroke them with a purple highlighter. Tell students that all the purple-highlighted words or phrases represent places where they used strong word choice. Watch as students begin counting up and keeping track of how many purple words they had in each writing. They begin comparing with their peers and challenging each other to see who will have more in the next writing.

Explain to students the rationale for the highlighter color to be purple, too. Discuss that yellow, pink, green, orange, and blue highlighters are common. They can be found everywhere. However, the purple highlighter is much more rare. It’s hard to find and rarely seen. Clarify that the specialty of their word choice deserves the special purple highlighter—not a common color. Rare word choice gets the strokes of the rare purple highlighter!

All this lighthearted fun has a greater significance. That is, students are thinking about intentional word choice when composing their first drafts! They are wanting the strokes of purple on their papers. Students are upping the ante on their vocabularies, and the teacher doesn’t have to do anything but read their writing and stroke words that are powerful.

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Dee Anna Payne
Dee Anna Payne
3 years ago

Did the video on this page replace the original one? Wasn’t there a video explaining the purple word procedure?

Liz Shockey
Liz Shockey
Admin
Reply to  Dee Anna Payne
3 years ago

Donna,
Thanks for mentioning the missing video. It is now included in the article! Keep us posted if there are other resources you would like us to include in the Learning Center.

Dianna
Dianna
2 years ago

Love this!

Zisel Roth
Zisel Roth
2 years ago

Thanks! Sensible, doable, logically effective!

jacki
jacki
2 months ago

Where is the video that talked (showed) the two wrapped gifts? One wrapped beautifully and full of sparkle, and the other one plain. The idea being, we are drawn to sparkly (juicy) packages AND sparkly, juicy words. Am I thinking of another video?

Liz Shockey
Liz Shockey
Admin
Reply to  jacki
2 months ago

Thank you for your question! You’re right – we do have a video that uses differently wrapped gifts to emphasize a writing-instruction point. It’s found in our video subscription (webPD) under Classroom Mini-Lessons: Strong Titles.
I love your idea for using gifts as a trigger for word choice. However, the video you remember utilized the bow on a gift as a reminder for students to write engaging titles vs. boring ones. If you’re interested in more ways to connect mini-lesson instruction with concrete triggers, try this article in our Learning Center.

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