Facilitate Letter Sizing and Line Adherence

Highlighting the baseline can help students know where to place their letters.  Additionally, highlighting the space between the dotted middle line and the baseline can give a nice visual cue of where lowercase letters should go, which can help with letter sizing.

Provide Tracing Support

This is probably the most common way I utilize highlighters in the classroom.  When students are learning how to form letters, we often work on tracing first.  Dotted lines can be confusing for students as they don’t always make it clear what the student should be doing.  Using a highlighter to make a clear tracing path is a quick and easy adaptation that makes a huge impact.  

Create Visual Boundaries

When students are learning how to color, we work to teach them to fill the space and stay within the lines.  This can be a confusing concept for students initially.  Using a highlighter to trace the outline of the shape can give a very clear visual boundary which makes coloring a little more explicit.  Additionally, when students are learning to cut, highlighting the line that is supposed to be cut can help make the task more explicit and bring visual attention to the line.

What are some ways you use highlighters in your classroom?