Annolighting1 a Text

Te Whāinga
This activity helps students to find, identify and summarise the main idea of a text, to target key information in
a text and to strengthen reading comprehension.

Ngā Rautaki Whakaaro

Explaining, monitoring, planning, processing knowledge.

He Kupu Matua mō te Mahi

Whakamārama, tāutu.

Te Mahi
Students identify key words in a text and compose summaries of the text, based on these key words, in pair
and group situations.

He Rauemi Tautoko
 A photocopy of the text for each student.
 Highlighter pens.
 Chart of plan of how to locate key information in a text – as outlined in Te Ara Tohutohu, point 2.

Te Ara Tohutohu
Before beginning the activity remind students of discussion routines.
1. Discuss the purpose of the activity with students, i.e. to locate important information in the text by
highlighting key words.

2. Discuss the following sequence of the activity with students:

– Read the text through once.
– Read the text again and highlight key words as you read.
– Write a list of the key words identified.
– Compare key words with a partner.
– Discuss differences.
– Discuss what you think is the main idea.
– Write your summary.
– Evaluate your summary by comparing it with the summaries of others in the group.

3. Model how to locate important information in the text by using a ‘telegraphic’ (economic) approach
to highlighting key words, i.e. show how you eliminate all the unnecessary words in a sentence by
highlighting only key words or phrases. Telegraphic highlighting should still allow you to make sense
of a sentence or section when you reread it.

4. Ask students to read the text through once without highlighting any words.

1
“This active reading strategy links [the] concept of highlighting key words and phrases in a text and annotating those highlights with
marginal notes.” (Greece Central School District, Reading Strategies: Scaffolding Students’ Interactions with Texts, online)
5. Have students skim read the text a second time and highlight only the targeted information (e.g. the
key words or ideas) using the telegraphic highlighting approach.

6. Students write a list of the key words they identified.

7. Have students form pairs and compare key words with their partner.

8. Students discuss differences and what they think is the main idea.

9. Students then answer the question: What is the main idea of the text? by writing a summary using
their list of key words.

10. Have students form pairs and compare summaries with their partners.

11. Ask each pair to join with another pair and orally share their summaries with the group. Alternatively,
students can read each others’ summaries. When they have finished reading one summary they pass
it to the student on the left until they get their own summary back.

12. Have one student from each group share his or her summary with the class.