What is text-marking?

For example: a child may be given a recount in the form of a newspaper article and then asked to do the following:
 

• Highlight the headline in yellow
• Circle the columns
• Highlight the caption in blue
• Put a box around the last paragraph
• Highlight any time connectives in red

This activity would usually follow a session where a teacher would have shown the children various recount newspaper articles and then discussed the features with the children. The purpose of the above task would be to see if they were able to pick out the features for themselves. Text-marking each feature in a different colour would make the teacher aware of whether the children had understood the task or not.

Text-marking can also be done with fiction texts. For example: a teacher may want the children to take an in-depth look at one particular character in a story. They may give them a passage like the following and ask them to do the following task:
 

• Highlight description of the woman in yellow
• Highlight her speech in pink
• Highlight the man's reactions to her in blue

This activity encourages children to think about what in the text constitutes description. They also need to think about the fact that speech is always presented in speech marks and consider what the word 'reaction' means.

The next step after this would be to start to infer information about the woman and the man and come to some conclusions about what sort of person she is and what their relationship is. They may be asked to make deductions about what has happened in the past or what may be about to happen.