Class Activity: Effective Highlighting

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Have students choose a partner and exchange a textbook. Then provide the following instructions for the pairs to follow:

1. Have your partner read only the highlighted portions of a chapter you have already read and have been tested on.
2. Have your partner try to explain to you based only on the highlighted portions what the chapter was about.

Explain that the students who have been tested on the textbook material are in a better position to judge if their partner understood the material based only on what he or she read. Ask students to discuss what they found. Each student should have a basic understanding of the chapter based solely on what was highlighted. Discuss whether this is the case. Pose the following questions to them:

• Did you learn that you need to do a better job of highlighting?
• Did you highlight so much that it became confusing?
• Did you highlight so little that there was not enough to gain a basic understanding of the material?