Teaching Student Annotation: Constructing Meaning Through Connections

Teaching Student Annotation: Constructing Meaning Through Connections

  • Resources & Preparation
  • Instructional Plan
  • Related Resources

Students learn about the purposes and techniques of annotation by examining text closely and critically. They study sample annotations and identify the purposes annotation can serve. Students then practice annotation through a careful reading of a story excerpt, using specific guidelines and writing as many annotations as possible. Students then work in pairs to peer review their annotations, practice using footnotes and PowerPoint to present annotations, and reflect on how creating annotations can change a reader's perspective through personal connection with text.

Featured Resources

  • Making Annotations: A User's Guide : Use this resource guide to help students make connections with text through definition, analysis of author purpose, paraphrasing, personal identification, explaining historical context, and more.

From Theory to Practice

In his English Journal article " I'll Have Mine Annotated, Please: Helping Students Make Connections with Text" Matthew D. Brown expresses a basic truth in English Language Arts instruction: "Reading is one thing, but getting something of value from what we read is another" (73). Brown uses the avenue of personal connection to facilitate the valuable outcomes that can result from reading and interacting with text. He begins with student-centered questions such as, "What were they thinking about as they read? What connections were they making? What questions did they have, and could they find answers to those questions?" (73). Brown's questions lead to providing students with instruction and opportunities that align with the NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform: A Policy Research Brief by "link[ing] their personal experiences and their texts, making connections between the students' existing literacy resources and the ones necessary for various disciplines" (5). Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

  • 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
  • 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
  • 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
  • 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
  • 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
  • 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
  • 7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.

Materials and Technology

  • Copies of "Eleven" by Sandra Cisceros or other text appropriate for the activities in this lesson
  • Colored Pencils
  • Sample Annotation PowerPoint on The Pearl
  • Making Annotations: A User's Guide or one students create after discussion
  • Annotation Sheet
  • Student Sample Annotations from "Eleven"
  • Annotation Peer Review Guide
  • Example Student Brainstorming for Annotation
  • Sample Revised and Published Annotations Using Footnotes

Preparation

  • Find sample annotated texts to share with your students. Shakespeare's plays work well since many of his texts are annotated.  Red Reader editions published by Discovery Teacher have great user-friendly annotations geared toward young adult readers.  Look for selections that are engaging—ones that offer more than vocabulary definitions and give a variety of annotations beyond explanation and analysis.
  • Alternatively, search Google Books for any text with annotations.  A search for Romeo and Juliet , for example, will bring up numerous versions that can be viewed directly online.
  • While much of the work will be done by students, it is useful to take some time to think about the role of annotations in a text.  You will have students identify the functions of annotations, but it is always helpful if you have your own list of uses of annotations so that you can help guide students in this area of instruction if necessary.
  • Make copies of all necessary handouts.
  • Arrange for students to have access to Internet-connected computers if they will be doing their annotations in an online interactive.
  • Test the Literary Graffiti and Webbing Tool interactives on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tools and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in from the technical support page.

Student Objectives

Students will:

  • examine and analyze text closely, critically, and carefully.
  • make personal, meaningful connections with text.
  • clearly communicate their ideas about a piece of text through writing, revision, and publication.

Session One

  • Begin the session by asking students if they are familar with the word annotation . Point out the words note and notation as clues to the word's meaning. If students know the word, proceed with the next step. If students are unfamiliar, ask them to determine what the word means by seeing what the texts you pass out in the next step have in common.
  • Pass out a variety of sample texts that use annotations. If you are using Google Books , direct students to texts online to have them examine the annotations that are used.
  • Have the students skim the texts and carefully examine the annotations.  Encourage students to begin to see the variety of ways that an editor of a text uses annotations.
  • Working with a small group of their peers, students should create a list that shows what effective annotations might do.
  • give definitions to difficult and unfamiliar words.
  • give background information, especially explaining customs, traditions, and ways of living that may be unfamiliar to the reader.
  • help explain what is going on in the text.
  • make connections to other texts.
  • point out the use of literary techniques and how they add meaning to the text.
  • can use humor (or other styles that might be quite different from the main text).
  • reveal that the writer of these annotations knows his or her reader well.
  • The process of generating this list should move into a discussion about where these annotations came from—who wrote them and why.  Guide students to think about the person who wrote these ideas, who looked at the text and did more than just read it, and who made a connection with the text.  It is important here that students begin to realize that their understanding of what they have read comes from their interaction with what is on the page.  You may wish to jumpstart the conversation by telling students about connections you make with watching films, as students may be more aware of doing so themselves.
  • touch them emotionally, making them feel happiness as well as sadness.
  • remind them of childhood experiences.
  • teach them something new.
  • change their perspective on an issue.
  • help them see how they can better relate to others around them.
  • help them see the world through someone else's experiences.
  • Before beginning the next lesson, create your Annotation Guide reflecting the different functions of annotation the class discussed today (or use the Sample Annotation Guide ).

Session Two

  • Pass out "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros or any other text appropriate for your students and this activity.
  • Read and discuss the story as needed, but resist spending too much time with the story since the goal of annotation is to get the students to connect with the text in their own ways.
  • Pass out the Sample Annotation Guide or the one the class created and review the various ideas that were generated during the previous session, helping students to begin to think of the various ways that they can begin to connect to the story "Eleven."
  • Pass out the Annotation Sheet and ask the students to choose a particularly memorable section of the story, a section large enough to fill up the lines given to them on the Annotation Sheet .  (NOTE: While you could have the students create annotations in the margins of the entire text, isolating a small portion of the text will make the students' first attempt at annotations less daunting and more manageable. You can also use ReadWriteThink interactives Literary Graffiti or Webbing Tool at this point in the instructional process, replacing or supplementing the Annotation Sheet handout.)
  • Share with students the Student Sample Annotations from "Eleven" and use the opportunity to review the various purposes of annotating and preview directions for the activity.
  • Pass out the colored pencils.  Make sure that students can each use a variety of colors in their annotating.  Sharing pencils among members of a small group works best.
  • Have the students find a word, phrase, or sentence on their Annotation Sheet that is meaningful or significant to them.  Have them lightly color over that word, phrase, or sentence with one of their colored pencils.
  • Students should then draw a line out toward the margin from what they just highlighted on their Annotation Sheet .
  • Now students annotate their selected text.  Using the Sample Annotation Guide , students should write an annotation for the highlighted text.  They can talk about how they feel or discuss what images come to mind or share experiences that they have had.  Any connection with that part of the text should be encouraged at this entry-level stage.
  • Repeat this process several times.  Encourage students to use a variety of annotations from the Sample Annotation Guide .  But, most importantly, encourage them to make as many annotations as possible.
  • What did they get out of writing annotations?
  • What did they learn about the text that they didn't see before?
  • How might this make them better readers?
  • Students should take the time to share these reflections with each other and with the whole class. Collect responses to evaluate levels of engagement and to find any questions or concerns you may need to address.

Session Three

  • Return annotations from the previous session and address any questions or concerns.
  • Explain that, working in pairs, the students will examine each other's annotations and look for ideas that have the potential for further development and revision. 
  • Distribute copies the Annotation Peer Review Guide and explain how it will help them work together to select the best ideas that they have presented in their annotations. Peer review partners should label each annotation, comment on it, and look for several annotations that would benefit from revision and continued thinking.
  • Have each pair narrow down their ideas to the four or five most significant annotations per student.
  • Once this is done, give the students time to start revising and developing their ideas.  Encourage them to elaborate on their ideas by explaining connections more fully, doing basic research to answer questions or find necessary information, or providing whatever other development would be appropriate.
  • Circulate the room to look at what the students have chosen so that you can guide them with their development and writing.  If you see the need to offer more guiding feedback, collecting the annotation revisions during this process may be helpful.

Session Four

  • Once students have revised and developed a few of their annotations on their own, students should begin work toward a final draft.
  • The students exchange their revised annotations.
  • What is one thing that I really liked in this set of annotations?
  • What is one thing that I found confusing, needed more explanation, etc.?
  • If this were my set of annotations, what is one thing that I would change?
  • Encourage students to rely heavily on the Sample Annotation Guide and the Annotation Peer Review Guide to make these comments during the peer review process. They should be looking to see that there are a variety of annotations and that the annotations dig deeper than just surface comments (e.g., definitions) and move toward meaningful personal connections and even literary analysis.
  • Take the original format of the annotation sheet and have the students type up their work using colored text.
  • Teach the students how to footnote, and then have them use this footnoting technique for the final draft of their annotations. See the Sample Student Brainstorming for Annotation and Sample Revised and Published Annotations Using Footnotes on The Great Gatsby . If using Microsoft Word, visit the resource Insert a Footnote or Endnote for information on how to use this feature in Word.
  • Create a PowerPoint in which the first slide is the original text. The phrases are then highlighted in different colors and hyperlinked to other slides in the presentation which contain the annotations. See the Sample Annotation PowerPoint on The Pearl, and visit PowerPoint in the Classroom for tutorials on how to make the best use of PowerPoint functions.
  • What did they learn by doing this activity?
  • How did these annotations change their perspective on the text?
  • In what ways did their thinking change as they worked through the drafting, rewriting, and revising of their annotations?
  • Make sure that students are given time to share these reflections with each other and with the whole class.
  • annotate a whole text, using the margins for annotating
  • use sticky notes in textbooks or novels as a way to annotate larger works
  • use annotations as part of a formal essay to provide personal comments to supplement the analysis they have written.
  • Assessing Cultural Relevance: Exploring Personal Connections to a Text
  • Graffiti Wall: Discussing and Responding to Literature Using Graphics
  • In Literature, Interpretation Is the Thing
  • Literary Scrapbooks Online: An Electronic Reader-Response Project
  • Reader Response in Hypertext: Making Personal Connections to Literature
  • Creative Outlining—From Freewriting to Formalizing

Student Assessment / Reflections

  • Review and comment on student reflections after each step of the annotation drafting and revision process.
  • If you use this lesson as an introduction to the idea of annotation, the focus of the assessment should be on the variety of annotations a student makes.  Even so, teachers should be able to observe if students were able to move beyond surface connections (defining words, summarizing the story, and so forth) to deeper connections with the text (personal feelings, relating evens to past experiences, and so forth).  Use an adaptation of the Annotation Peer Review Guide in this process.
  • For those who take this lesson to its completion by having students generate a final published draft, the focus should move from just looking for a variety of annotations to focusing on the quality of the annotations.  By working through the writing process with these annotations, students should have been able to comment meaningfully beyond what they began with in their “rough draft.”  This should be most evident in the reflections students write in response to the process of creating annotations. Again, a modified version of the Annotation Peer Review Guide would be suitable for this evaluative purpose.
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Annotation Worksheets

Ela standard: secondary level writing.

There are many ways we can make important sections of the texts we read stick out to ourselves. There are often many key parts of a written work that are essential for readers to comprehend so that we can recall and use that information to understand the significance of text that comes along later. One active learning method that can be used for this purpose is adding annotations to text that you read. This is an effective reading strategy. It takes on many different forms. It often begins by using a highlighter to point out either key concepts or key words. If you do not have a highlighter handy, underlining with any writing implement has the same affect, but I just find it a little messy and harder to focus when revisiting it. This then eventually progresses to paraphrasing or summarizing main ideas. As you begin to master annotation you with write short comments that indicate the value of what you have read in your own words. On this page you will find a series of worksheets that will introduce you to using this technique in your own reading.

Annotation Worksheets To Print:

Explore It - Read the assigned text. Then follow the directions to see how to put this technique to work for you.

Using Symbols - Read and annotate the assigned text. Use the symbols presented below.

Outline - This is a graphic orgainzer designed to help you keep track of how you broke down some work.

Meaning of Symbols - It helps you make connections as you are reading. It also makes it easier to find things in the text again without having to re-read the whole thing.

Class Poster - You can use this as a classroom poster to remind them of how to take notes while they read.

Annotate the Passage - You are given a sizable passage to work with.

Working with Fiction - This points out all the things you need to pay attention to while reading fictional works.

Core Thoughts - Those focuses on the main concepts of a work.

Practice Passage - We ask you consider this passage and work with it.

Working with Articles - Read the article. Record your annotations below. Then write several paragraphs reflecting on what you have read. Include quotes from the text. At the bottom of your paper, record the citation for this text

Checklist - This is a great to assess if you looked as deep as you needed to.

The Annotated Bibliography - Create an annotation for one of the sources you used in your research project.

More Bibliographies - Work on the research that you need to get after it.

Is It Useful? - Write a few sentences about the strength/weaknesses of this source, any biases the author may have, and the relative usefulness of this source.

Bibliography Worksheet - This sets up everything you need to pay attention to.

Why, When, and How to Annotate Text

The why and when.

Annotating text has been shown to greatly enhance reading comprehension levels. It not only helps you remember what you read, but it can be used to form discussions and explore issues that the text brings about. You should use this method when you are reading anything that is important for you to fully understand. When you first begin using this technique you will most likely focus on keywords and phrases. If you are annotating a text that you have some time with, you should focus not only the main idea of each paragraph but writing what each point means to you. Eventually you will be able to read a piece and understand the writer’s intention for put this piece together and what they were trying to accomplish with it. This will allow you to attribute a level of value to what you have read.

In the best situation you should fully read a text before you go back and make annotations. An old professor of my compared it to driving on a racecourse. When a racer wants to win a race, they review the course to best understand what they should be doing at each turn and straightaway. The same goes for readers that wish to fully understand the text that they are reading.

Annotating text does not come a single form and many people find particular value in one form or another. The most common method that we see used is highlighting, underlining, and circle of key points or terms. While this does help many readers focus on important parts of the text it is sometimes overly used and distracts more than it helps. When you go back and review this form of annotation it is almost passive. I find that students have a greater level of success with summarizing key points and writing their comments in the margins of what they are reading. Once you create a super short summary, write a comment about the summary. This may be question that you have or something that is clear or unclear. You can even go back and write abbreviations or symbols next to the text that grabs you or puzzles you. Remember that these symbols and abbreviations are just for you, so there is no correct symbol to use.

The biggest concern that students have when using this technique is that it takes a great deal of time to do right. I would say you are correct, at first. When you get some experience with it and create your own style, it can be a game changer for your ability to understand what you read.

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annotation practice worksheet high school

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September 21, 2023 ELA PD - Literacy , ELA K-5 , ELA 6-8 , ELA Focus - Close Reading , ELA Resources - Tip Sheets , Core Literacy

Annotating text strategies that enhance close reading [free printable], by: erin lynch.

One of the most important skills I teach my students as we begin to work on close reading is how to annotate texts. Teaching annotation strategies will help students keep track of key ideas while reading. In this article, you'll discover annotating strategies that will enhance close reading and free printable resources you can use in the classroom!

 Download the Annotating Practice Kit now!

annotating-text-strategies-for-close-reading-teaching-annotation

Annotating Text Strategies

Annotating a text is when the reader “marks up” a text to indicate places of importance or something they don’t understand. Sometimes students annotate by circling a word, underlining a phrase or highlighting a sentence. Annotating also includes writing notes in the margin; these notes might be thoughts or questions about the text. This process of annotating helps the reader keep track of ideas and questions and supports deeper understanding of the text.

Teaching annotation strategies will help students keep track of key ideas, and will help them formulate thoughts and questions they have while reading.

Benefits of Annotating a Text

The benefits of annotation include:

  • Keeping track of key ideas and questions
  • Helping formulate thoughts and questions for deeper understanding
  • Fostering analyzing and interpreting texts
  • Encouraging the reader to make inferences and draw conclusions about the text
  • Allowing the reader to easily refer back to the text without rereading the text in its entirety

Annotating With a Purpose

Students are taught to read with a purpose, and they should also be taught to annotate with a purpose. Teaching students to annotate with a purpose will help them focus on what is most important about the text.

When teaching annotation I instruct students to use the following symbols:

Underline key ideas and major points.

Write a ? next to anything that is confusing, such as unfamiliar words or unclear information.

Circle key words or phrases.

Put an ! next to surprising or important information or information that helps you make a connection.

Printable Annotation Examples and Activities

Model for annotating a text , grades 2–5.

Download my Model for Annotating a Text which uses the poem The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt. My students have enjoyed using this poem as an introduction to the close reading of poetry and the skill of annotating.

The Model for Annotating a Text download includes an instructional tip sheet and annotation examples for students. You can make individual copies for your students to keep handy, or enlarge the annotation example to a poster size and hang it in the classroom!

Here's how to use the Model for Annotating a Text :

Explain to students that the annotations of skillful readers identify what they don’t understand and point out major facts or ideas they want to remember and use in their discussions and writing. Annotation also encourages readers to make inferences and to draw conclusions about the text, as well as to make interpretations on a deeper level.

Next, review the symbols students should use when annotating a text. Caution students that over-annotating will be confusing rather than helpful.

Then read the poem The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt and pause to model how to annotate with your students.

Download my Model for Annotating a Text which uses the poem The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt.

"I Have a Dream" Close Reading Kit, Grades 3–8

My "I Have a Dream" Close Reading Kit also includes resources for teaching close reading annotation! In the kit you'll find an instructional guide for teachers and annotations for the first 10 paragraphs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Use this kit to model close reading in your classroom!

My "I Have a Dream" Close Reading Kit also includes resources for teaching close reading annotation!

Annotating Practice Worksheets Kit, Grades 1–8

Once your students have learned the correct way to annotate a text, have them practice annotating with a purpose! With the Annotating Practice Kit , students will practice their annotation skills while reading the following articles:

  • The First Playground
  • The Dove and the Ant
  • Sea Otters!

Use the worksheets and text excerpts in the Annotating Practice Kit to get students annotating with a purpose.

In Conclusion

Teaching your students how to annotate with a purpose will help them keep track of key ideas, and will help them formulate thoughts and questions they have while reading. It also encourages the reader to make inferences and draw conclusions about the text, as well as, make interpretations on a deeper level. Annotating allows the reader to easily refer back to the text without rereading the text in its entirety.

Grab the free downloads today and use them with students as they begin to annotate texts.

annotation practice worksheet high school

  • Our Mission

Teaching the Long-Term Value of Annotation

To help high school students learn how to annotate, first show them why it’s a useful tool that will serve them now and in the future.

High school students taking notes in class

Annotation can be a difficult and stressful process for high school students and educators alike. It’s an essential skill across subject areas, something we expect students to just do, but rarely do we actually teach them how. Students don’t understand how to annotate and, more often than not, why it would be a useful tool in the first place. 

“If I understand the story, why should I annotate?” was a common refrain I heard from students. I noticed that many would highlight random sentences hoping to skate by in assessment. Others wouldn’t even attempt to engage in the process. I began to consider ways that I could support students in developing close reading and annotation in a collaborative and genuine way that would give them agency. 

The first step required that I think about why I saw annotation as valuable in the first place. Why did I see it as a skill that students needed in my classroom ? I created three primary beliefs to work from: 

  • Annotation is intentional, allowing us to engage more deeply with texts and ourselves. 
  • Annotation is practical in all areas of life and with all types of texts. 
  • Annotation offers agency and is a tool that we can use to interact with texts from where we are now. 

With these beliefs in mind, I worked to create a scaffolded process that provided structure and guidance in annotation while also facilitating choice.

Step 1: Create purpose 

Establish clear prompts to engage students. The teacher or the students can preselect these prompts, but the guided focus can be the first step to making meaningful observations. The more specific the prompts, the better.

For example, when studying world building, I have students look for physical descriptions, sociopolitical elements, and paranormal or supernatural elements. Assigning each prompt a specific color helps students to stay organized and easily pick out elements of focus later on. 

Step 2: Identify 

After students have read the text, I ask them to go back and identify the quotes or highlights that they see as the most interesting and/or important. I often have them circle, star, or otherwise mark these in some way. I also ask students to leave a note that explains their selection and the importance of this quote.

The goal in this step is to have students revisit the text and their initial noticings, making a habit of using their notes. This step also allows students to self-select what they see as important and defend their selection, providing ample opportunities for discussion and comparison. 

Step 3: Make meaning 

You can tailor the next step to the key elements of any lesson or specific text. Students use sticky notes to add on final thoughts, questions, or connections they may have in relation to the text. As with the previous steps, these can be adapted to the goals of the lesson or the needs of students.

For example, you may ask students in this step to speak directly to possible themes or a specific character. Again, this step builds the habit of going back and rereading and reviewing texts. It also aims to have students use their annotations to begin to synthesize, looking to explain larger abstract and complex topics such as theme or historical context. 

Step 4: Share meaning 

The final step requires collaborative discussion among students. When they follow the previous steps, every student has the ability to come to the discussion with quotes, ideas, and resources that will allow them to participate.

I often begin discussion with the prompts created in step one, allowing students to draw from textual evidence and meaning making from steps two and three. During or after the discussion, I have students again add to their notes and annotations, helping them see knowledge building as collaborative. 

When guided through this structured process several times, students become familiar with the process and embody the steps. They come to understand the need to annotate with purpose, to revisit the text, and to use the text in a discussion. The ultimate goal is for the instructor to slowly relinquish support until students are doing the process independently. Requiring students to identify prompts, asking them to independently revisit the text and add notes, or having them lead the discussion can achieve this goal. 

Ensuring that students have opportunities for skill development and practice enables them to utilize these skills not only in the ELA classroom and across the curriculum, but also throughout their lives.

annotation practice worksheet high school

How to Do a Close Reading

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

Close Reading Fundamentals

How to choose a passage to close-read, how to approach a close reading, how to annotate a passage, how to improve your close reading, how to practice close reading, how to incorporate close readings into an essay, how to teach close reading, additional resources for advanced students.

Close reading engages with the formal properties of a text—its literary devices, language, structure, and style. Popularized in the mid-twentieth century, this way of reading allows you to interpret a text without outside information such as historical context, author biography, philosophy, or political ideology. It also requires you to put aside your affective (that is, personal and emotional) response to the text, focusing instead on objective study. Why close-read a text? Doing so will increase your understanding of how a piece of writing works, as well as what it means. Perhaps most importantly, close reading can help you develop and support an essay argument. In this guide, you'll learn more about what close reading entails and find strategies for producing precise, creative close readings. We've included a section with resources for teachers, along with a final section with further reading for advanced students.

You might compare close reading to wringing out a wet towel, in which you twist the material repeatedly until you have extracted as much liquid as possible. When you close-read, you'll return to a short passage several times in order to note as many details about its form and content as possible. Use the links below to learn more about close reading's place in literary history and in the classroom.

"Close Reading" (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia's relatively short introduction to close reading contains sections on background, examples, and how to teach close reading. You can also click the links on this page to learn more about the literary critics who pioneered the method.

"Close Reading: A Brief Note" (Literariness.org)

This article provides a condensed discussion of what close reading is, how it works, and how it is different from other ways of reading a literary text.

"What Close Reading Actually Means" ( TeachThought )

In this article by an Ed.D., you'll learn what close reading "really means" in the classroom today—a meaning that has shifted significantly from its original place in 20th century literary criticism.

"Close Reading" (Univ. of Washington)

This hand-out from a college writing course defines close reading, suggests  why  we close-read, and offers tips for close reading successfully, including focusing on language, audience, and scope.

"Glossary Entry on New Criticism" (Poetry Foundation)

If you'd like to read a short introduction to the school of thought that gave rise to close reading, this is the place to go. Poetry Foundation's entry on New Criticism is concise and accessible.

"New Criticism" (Washington State Univ.)

This webpage from a college writing course offers another brief explanation of close reading in relation to New Criticism. It provides some key questions to help you think like a New Critic.

When choosing a passage to close-read, you'll want to look for relatively short bits of text that are rich in detail. The resources below offer more tips and tricks for selecting passages, along with links to pre-selected passages you can print for use at home or in the classroom.

"How to Choose the Perfect Passage for Close Reading" ( We Are Teachers )

This post from a former special education teacher describes six characteristics you might look for when selecting a close reading passage from a novel: beginnings, pivotal plot points, character changes, high-density passages, "Q&A" passages, and "aesthetic" passages. 

"Close Reading Passages" (Reading Sage)

Reading Sage provides links to close reading passages you can use as is; alternatively, you could also use them as models for selecting your own passages. The page is divided into sections geared toward elementary, middle school, and early high school students.

"Close Reading" (Univ. of Guelph)

The University of Guelph's guide to close reading contains a short section on how to "Select a Passage." The author suggests that you choose a brief passage. 

"Close Reading Advice" (Prezi)

This Prezi was created by an AP English teacher. The opening section on passage selection suggests choosing "thick paragraphs" filled with "figurative language and rich details or description."

Now that you know how to select a passage to analyze, you'll need to familiarize yourself with the textual qualities you should look for when reading. Whether you're approaching a poem, a novel, or a magazine article, details on the level of language (literary devices) and form (formal features) convey meaning. Understanding  how  a text communicates will help you understand  what  it is communicating. The links in this section will familiarize you with the tools you need to start a close reading.

Literary Devices

"Literary Devices and Terms" (LitCharts)

LitCharts' dedicated page covers 130+ literary devices. Also known as "rhetorical devices," "figures of speech," or "elements of style," these linguistic constructions are the building blocks of literature. Some of the most common include  simile , metaphor , alliteration , and onomatopoeia ; browse the links on LitCharts to learn about many more. 

"Rhetorical Device" (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia's page on rhetorical devices defines the term in relation to the ancient art of "rhetoric" or persuasive speaking. At the bottom of the page, you'll find links to several online handbooks and lists of rhetorical devices.

"15 Must Know Rhetorical Terms for AP English Literature" ( Albert )

The  Albert blog   offers this list of 15 rhetorical devices that high school English students should know how to define and spot in a literary text; though geared toward the Advanced Placement exam, its tips are widely applicable.

"The 55 AP Language and Composition Terms You Must Know" (PrepScholar)

This blog post lists 55 terms high school students should learn how to recognize and define for the Advanced Placement exam in English Literature.

Formal Features

In LitCharts' bank of literary devices and terms, you'll also find resources to describe a text's structure and overall character. Some of the most important of these are  rhyme , meter , and  tone ; browse the page to find more. 

"Rhythm" ( Encyclopedia Britannica )

This encyclopedia entry on rhythm and meter offers an in-depth definition of the two most fundamental aspects of poetry.

"How to Analyze Syntax for AP English Literature" ( Albert)

The Albert blog will help you understand what "syntax" is, making a case for why you should pay attention to sentence structure when analyzing a literary text.

"Grammar Basics: Sentence Parts and Sentence Structures" ( ThoughtCo )

This article provides a meticulous overview of the components of a sentence. It's useful if you need to review your parts of speech or if you need to be able to identify things like prepositional phrases.

"Style, Diction, Tone, and Voice" (Wheaton College)

Wheaton College's Writing Center offers this clear, concise discussion of several important formal features. Although it's designed to help essay writers, it will also help you understand and spot these stylistic features in others' work. 

Now that you know what rhetorical devices, formal features, and other details to look for, you're ready to find them in a text. For this purpose, it is crucial to annotate (write notes) as you read and re-read. Each time you return to the text, you'll likely notice something new; these observations will form the basis of your close reading. The resources in this section offer some concrete strategies for annotating literary texts.

"How to Annotate a Text" (LitCharts)

Begin by consulting our  How to Annotate a Text  guide. This collection of links and resources is helpful for short passages (that is, those for close reading) as well as longer works, like whole novels or poems.

"Annotation Guide" (Covington Catholic High School)

This hand-out from a high school teacher will help you understand why we annotate, and how to annotate a text successfully. You might choose to incorporate some of the interpretive notes and symbols suggested here.

"Annotating Literature" (New Canaan Public Schools)

This one-page, introductory resource provides a list of 10 items you should look for when reading a text, including attitude and theme.

"Purposeful Annotation" (Dave Stuart Jr.)

This article from a high school teacher's blog describes the author's top close reading strategy: purposeful annotation. In fact, this teacher more or less equates close reading with annotation.

Looking for ways to improve your close reading? The articles, guides, and videos in this section will expose you to various methods of close reading, as well as practice exercises. No two people read exactly the same way. Whatever your level of expertise, it can be useful to broaden your skill set by testing the techniques suggested by the resources below.

"How to Do a Close Reading" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This article, part of Harvard's comprehensive "Strategies for Essay Writing Guide," describes three steps to a successful close reading. You will want to return to this resource when incorporating your close reading into an essay.

"A Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis" (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center)

Working through this guide from another college writing center will help you move through the process of close reading a text. You'll find a sample analysis of Robert Frost's "Design" at the end.

"How to Do a Close Reading of a Text" (YouTube)

This four-minute video from the "Literacy and Math Ideas" channel offers a number of helpful tips for reading a text closely in accordance with Common Core standards.

"Poetry: Close Reading" (Purdue OWL)

Short, dense poems are a natural fit for the close reading approach. This page from the Purdue Online Writing Lab takes you step-by-step through an analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.

"Steps for Close Reading or Explication de Texte" ( The Literary Link )

This page, which mentions close reading's close relationship to the French formalist method of  "explication de texte," shares "12 Steps to Literary Awareness."

You can practice your close reading skills by reading, re-reading and annotating any brief passage of text. The resources below will get you started by offering pre-selected passages and questions to guide your reading. You'll find links to resources that are designed for students of all levels, from elementary school through college.

"Notes on Close Reading" (MIT Open Courseware)

This resource describes steps you can work through when close reading, providing a passage from Mary Shelley's  Frankenstein  for you to test your skills.

"Close Reading Practice Worksheets" (Gillian Duff's English Resources)

Here, you'll find 10 close reading-centered worksheets you can download and print. The "higher-close-reading-formula" link at the bottom of the page provides a chart with even more steps and strategies for close reading.

"Close Reading Activities" (Education World)

The four activities described on this page are best suited to elementary and middle school students. Under each heading is a link to handouts or detailed descriptions of the activity.

"Close Reading Practice Passages: High School" (Varsity Tutors)

This webpage from Varsity Tutors contains over a dozen links to close reading passages and exercises, including several resources that focus on close-reading satire.

"Benjamin Franklin's Satire of Witch Hunting" (America in Class)

This page contains both a "teacher's guide" and "student version" to interpreting Benjamin Franklin's satire of a witch trial. The thirteen close reading questions on the right side of the page will help you analyze the text thoroughly.

Whether you're writing a research paper or an essay, close reading can help you build an argument. Careful analysis of your primary texts allows you to draw out meanings you want to emphasize, thereby supporting your central claim. The resources in this section introduce you to strategies suited to various common writing assignments.

"How to Write a Research Paper" (LitCharts)

The resources in this guide will help you learn to formulate a thesis, organize evidence, write an outline, and draft a research paper, one of the two most common assignments in which you might incorporate close reading.

"How to Write an Essay" (LitCharts)

In this guide, you'll learn how to plan, draft, and revise an essay, whether for the classroom or as a take-home assignment. Close reading goes hand in hand with the brainstorming and drafting processes for essay writing.

"Guide to the Close Reading Essay" (Univ. of Warwick)

This guide was designed for undergraduates, and assumes prior knowledge of formal features and rhetorical devices one might find in a poem. High schoolers will find it useful after addressing the "elements of a close reading" section above.

"Beginning the Academic Essay" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Harvard's guide discusses the broader category of the "academic essay." Here, the author assumes that your essay's close readings will be accompanied by context and evidence from secondary sources. 

A Short Guide to Writing About Literature (Amazon)

Sylvan Barnet and William E. Cain emphasize that writing is a process. In their book, you'll find definitions of important literary terms, examples of successful explications of literary texts, and checklists for essay writers.

Due in part to the Common Core's emphasis on close reading skills, resources for teaching students how to close-read abound. Here, you'll find a wealth of information on how and why we teach students to close-read texts. The first section includes links to activities, exercises, and complete lesson plans. The second section offers background material on the method, along with strategies for implementing close reading in the classroom.

Lesson Plans and Activities

"Four Lessons for Introducing the Fundamental Steps of Close Reading" (Corwin)

Here, Corwin has made the second chapter of Nancy Akhavan's  The Nonfiction Now Lesson Bank, Grades 4 – 8 available online. You'll find four sample lessons to use in the elementary or middle school classroom

"Sonic Patterns: Exploring Poetic Techniques Through Close Reading" ( ReadWriteThink )

This lesson plan for high school students includes material for five 50-minute sessions on sonic patterns (including consonance, assonance, and alliteration). The literary text at hand is Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays."

"Close Reading of a Short Text: Complete Lesson" (McGraw Hill via YouTube)

This eight-minute video describes a complete lesson in which a teacher models close reading of a short text and offers guiding questions.

"Close Reading Model Lessons" (Achieve the Core)

These three model lessons on close reading will help you determine what makes a text "appropriately complex" for the grade level you teach.

Close Reading Bundle (Teachers Pay Teachers)

This top-rated bundle of close reading resources was designed for the middle school classroom. It contains over 150 pages of worksheets, complete lesson plans, and literacy center ideas.

"10 Intriguing Photos to Teach Close Reading and Visual Thinking Skills" ( The New York Times )

The New York Times' s Learning Network has gathered 10 photos from the "What's Going on in This Picture" series that teachers can use to help students develop analytical and visual thinking skills.

"The Close Reading Essay" (Brandeis Univ.)

Brandeis University's writing program offers this detailed set of guidelines and goals you might use when assigning a close reading essay.

Close Reading Resources (Varsity Tutors)

Varsity Tutors has compiled a list of over twenty links to lesson plans, strategies, and activities for teaching elementary, middle school, and high school students to close read.

Background Material and Teaching Strategies

Falling in Love with Close Reading (Amazon)

Christopher Lehman and Kate Roberts aim to show how close reading can be "rigorous, meaningful, and joyous." It offers a three-step "close reading ritual" and engaging lesson plans.

Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading (Amazon)

Kylene Beers (a former Senior Reading Researcher at Yale) and Robert E. Probst (a Professor Emeritus of English Education) introduce six "signposts" readers can use to detect significant moments in a work of literature.

"How to Do a Close Reading" (YouTube)

TeachLikeThis offers this four-minute video on teaching students to close-read by looking at a text's language, narrative, syntax, and context.

"Strategy Guide: Close Reading of a Literary Text" ( ReadWriteThink )

This guide for middle school and high school teachers will help you choose texts that are appropriately complex for the grade level you teach, and offers strategies for planning engaging lessons.

"Close Reading Steps for Success" (Appletastic Learning)

Shelly Rees, a teacher with over 20 years of experience, introduces six helpful steps you can use to help your students engage with challenging reading passages. The article is geared toward elementary and middle school teachers.

"4 Steps to Boost Students' Close Reading Skills" ( Amplify )

Doug Fisher, a professor of educational leadership, suggests using these four steps to help students at any grade level learn how to close read. 

Like most tools of literary analysis, close reading has a complex history. It's not necessary to understand the theoretical underpinnings of close reading in order to use this tool. For advanced high school students and college students who ask "why close-read," though, the resources below will serve as useful starting points for discussion.

"Discipline and Parse: The Politics of Close Reading" ( Los Angeles Review of Books )

This book review by a well-known English professor at Columbia provides an engaging, anecdotal introduction to close reading's place in literary history. Robbins points to some of the method's shortcomings, but also elegantly defends it.

"Intentional Fallacy" ( Encyclopedia Britannica )

The literary critics who developed close reading cautioned against judging a text based on the author's intention. This encyclopedia entry offers an expanded definition of this way of reading, called the "intentional fallacy."

"Seven Types of Ambiguity" (Wikipedia)

This Wikipedia article will introduce you to William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity  (1930), one of the foundational texts of New Criticism, the school of thought that theorized close reading.

"What is Distant Reading" ( The New York Times)

This article makes it clear that "close reading" isn't the only way to analyze literary texts. It offers a brief introduction to the "distant reading" method of computational criticism pioneered by Franco Moretti in recent years.

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Annotating Practice Kit

Students are taught to read with a purpose, and they should also be taught to annotate with a purpose. Teaching students to annotate with a purpose will help them focus on what is most important about the text. Use the worksheets and text excerpts in the Annotating Practice Kit to get students annotating with a purpose. Kit includes:

  • Annotating Practice: Eagles
  • Annotating Practice: The First Playground
  • Annotating Practice: The Dove and the Ant
  • Annotating Practice: Sea Otters!

Use the worksheets and text excerpts in the Annotating Practice Kit to get students annotating with a purpose.

7 Strategies for Teaching Students How to Annotate

  • November 7, 2018

For many educators, annotation goes hand in hand with developing close reading skills. Annotation more fully engages students and increases reading comprehension strategies, helping students develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for literature.

However, it’s also one of the more difficult skills to teach. In order to think critically about a text, students need to learn how to actively engage with the text they’re reading. Annotation provides that immersive experience, and new digital reading technologies not only make annotation easier than ever, but also make it possible for any book, article, or text to be annotated.

Below are seven strategies to help your students master the basics of annotation and become more engaged, closer readers.

1. Teach the Basics of Good Annotation

Help your students understand that annotation is simply the process of thoughtful reading and making notes as they study a text. Start with some basic forms of annotation:

  • highlighting a phrase or sentence and including a comment
  • circling a word that needs defining
  • posing a question when something isn’t fully understood
  • writing a short summary of a key section

Assure them that good annotating will help them concentrate and better understand what they read and better remember their thoughts and ideas when they revisit the text.

2. Model Effective Annotation

One of the most effective ways to teach annotation is to show students your own thought process when annotating a text. Display a sample text and think out loud as you make notes. Show students how you might underline key words or sentences and write comments or questions, and explain what you’re thinking as you go through the reading and annotation process.

Annotation Activity: Project a short, simple text and let students come up and write their own comments and discuss what they’ve written and why. This type of modeling and interaction helps students understand the thought process that critical reading requires.

3. Give Your Students a Reading Checklist

When first teaching students about annotation, you can help shape their critical analysis and active reading strategies by giving them specific things to look for while reading, like a checklist or annotation worksheet for a text. You might have them explain how headings and subheads connect with the text, or have them identify facts that add to their understanding.

4. Provide an Annotation Rubric

When you know what your annotation goals are for your students, it can be useful to develop a simple rubric that defines what high-quality and thoughtful annotation looks like. This provides guidance for your students and makes grading easier for you. You can modify your rubric as goals and students’ needs change over time.

5. Keep It Simple

Especially for younger or struggling readers, help your students develop self-confidence by keeping things simple. Ask them to circle a word they don’t know, look up that word in the dictionary, and write the definition in a comment. They can also write an opinion on a particular section, so there’s no right or wrong answer.

6. Teach Your Students How to Annotate a PDF

Or other digital texts. Most digital reading platforms include a number of tools that make annotation easy. These include highlighters, text comments, sticky notes, mark up tools for underlining, circling, or drawing boxes, and many more. If you don’t have a digital reading platform, you can also teach how to annotate a basic PDF text using simple annotation tools like highlights or comments.

7. Make It Fun!

The more creative you get with annotation, the more engaged your students will be. So have some fun with it!

  • Make a scavenger hunt by listing specific components to identify
  • Color code concepts and have students use multicolored highlighters
  • Use stickers to represent and distinguish the five story elements: character, setting, plot, conflict, and theme
  • Choose simple symbols to represent concepts, and let students draw those as illustrated annotations: a magnifying glass could represent clues in the text, a key an important idea, and a heart could indicate a favorite part

Annotation Activity: Create a dice game where students have to find concepts and annotate them based on the number they roll. For example, 1 = Circle and define a word you don’t know, 2 = Underline a main character, 3 = Highlight the setting, etc.

Teaching students how to annotate gives them an invaluable tool for actively engaging with a text. It helps them think more critically, it increases retention, and it instills confidence in their ability to analyze more complex texts.

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Back to School With Annotation: 10 Ways to Annotate With Students

By jeremydean | 25 August, 2015

WesAnnotate2

It’s back-to-school season and I find myself once again encouraging teachers to discuss course readings with their students using collaborative web annotation technologies like Hypothesis. Though relatively new to Hypothesis, I’ve been making this pitch for a few years now,  but in conversations with educators of late I’ve come to realize that we often mean different things by the word “annotate.” Annotation connotes something distinct in specific subject areas, at different  grade and skill levels, and within certain teaching philosophies. This will be the first semester during which Hypothesis has an active education department and so in the spirit these first days of the school year, I thought it might be worth exploring what we really mean when we say, “annotate.”

Annotation is typically perceived as a means to an end. As marginal note-taking it often is the basis for questions asked in class discussion or points made in a final paper. But annotation can also be a kind of end in itself, or at least more than a rest-stop on the way to intellectual discovery. This becomes especially true when annotation is brought into the relatively public and collaborative space of social reading online. Digital marginalia as such requires a redefinition or at least expanded understanding of what is traditionally meant by the act of “annotation.”

Billy Collins’ poem “Marginalia” outlines various ways that people have annotated throughout history, including in formal education contexts. But even within pre-digital student marginalia there can be a wide range of types of annotation from defining terms and explaining allusions to analytic commentary to more creative responses to the text at hand. As annotation becomes social and media-rich as it does using Hypothesis and other web annotation technologies, these species of marginalia only further proliferate.

For those curious about integrating annotation exercises into an assignment or a course, below I outline ten practical ways that one might annotate with a class. This list is by no means exhaustive–the larger point is that there are a lot of different ways for students and teachers to annotate. I’d love to hear about your experiences with annotation in the classroom in notes and comments here or even in your own blog posts on Hypothesis. My hope is that over the course of the coming semesters, Hypothesis will develop as a community of educators sharing their ideas, assignments, successes, and failures. As always, feel free to contact me at [email protected] to chat further about collaborative annotation! (For a more technical guide to using Hypothesis, see our tutorials on getting started here.)

1. Teacher Annotations

Pre-populate a text with questions for students to reply to in annotations or notes elucidating important points as they read.

hamlet

One of the amazing aspects of social reading is that you can be inside the text with your students while they are reading, facilitating their comprehension, inspiring their analysis, and observing their confusion and insight. It’s about as close as you can get to the intimacy of in-class interaction online. You can guide students through the reading with your annotations, offering context and possible interpretations. This allows you to be the Norton editor of your course readings, but attentive to the particular themes of your course or local contexts of your classroom community. Or you can provoke student responses to the text through annotating with questions to be answered in replies to your annotations. Looking at responses to a question posed in the margin of a text is a great starting point for class discussion in a blended course. In the classroom, students can be prompted to expand on points begun as annotations to jumpstart the conversation. And when there is no physical classroom space, as in online courses, annotation can be a means for the instructor to have a similar guiding presence and to create an engaging and engaged community of readers.

The real pedagogical innovation of collaborative annotation, however, is that students are empowered as knowledge producers in their own right, so most of my suggested classroom annotation practices revolve around a variety of student-centered annotation activities in which they are the ones posing the questions and teachers are co-learners in the reading process. There are also other use cases, however, for teacher annotation, such as using web annotation to comment on student writing published online.

2. Annotation as Gloss

Have students look up difficult words or unknown allusions in a text and share their research as annotations.

Annotation bookshelf by Lau Design.

Practical across a wide range of skill levels, this exercise can span from simply creating a list of vocabulary words from a text for study to presenting, as a class or individually, a text annotated like a scholarly volume. We’ve seen this kind of exercise completed on great works of literature as well as scientific research papers. Think of the activity as creating a kind of inline Wikipedia on top of your course reading. For difficult texts, sharing the burden of the research necessary for comprehension can help students better understand their reading. And there is something incredibly powerful about students beginning to imagine themselves as scholars, responsible for guiding a real audience through a text, whether their own peers or a broader intellectual community. Students can be encouraged to practice skills like rephrasing research material appropriately and citing sources using different formatting styles. And, of course, glossing can be combined with more insightful annotation as well.

Protip: If you plan to annotate across multiple texts with a class, have students use a course tag (like “Eng101DrDeanFall15”) in all of their annotations. Tagging in this way allows both teacher and students to follow the group’s work on a class stream of activity. Here’s an example of what such a class tag stream looks like from one of our most active educators, Greg McVerry.  More on the pedagogy of tags in this tutorial. Note: very soon (in a matter of weeks) we will be launching a private group feature that will streamline this workflow–annotations will be publishable to a specific group and that group will have a stream that can be followed.

3. Annotation as Question

Have students highlight, tag, and annotate words or passages that are confusing to them in their readings.

An annotation need not be, and often is not, an answer. A simple question mark in the margin of a book can flag a word or passage for discussion. And such discussions can be generative of important explication and analysis. Directing students to annotate in this way creates a sort of heat map for the instructor that can be used to zero in on troubling sections and subjects or spark class discussion. Tags categorizing the particular problem could be used as a simple way to prompt clarification (vocab, plts, research methods, etc.).

While the teacher can respond to such student annotations, a possible follow up exercise could have students respond to each other’s questions instead.

4. Annotation as Close Reading

Have students identify formal textual elements and broader social and historical contexts at work in specific passages.

Online annotation powerfully enacts the careful selection of text for in-depth analysis that is the hallmark of much high school and college English and language arts curriculum. Using web annotation, students are required to literally select small pieces of meaningful evidence from a document for specific analysis. Teachers can direct students to identify textual features (word choice, repetition, imagery, metaphor, etc.) or relevant broader contexts (historical, biographical, cultural, etc.) for passages of a text, and then prompt them to develop a short argument based on such evidence. Collaborative close reading can be especially effective in that multiple students can build off each other’s interpretations to demonstrate how deep textual analysis can go. Teachers implementing the Common Core State Standards for reading might pay special attention to this use case for annotation in the classroom.

Common Core State Standards for Reading, Anchor Standard 1.

Some teachers will use web annotation as a tool throughout the semester for this purpose. Students thus gain regular practice in close reading and build ideas towards more substantive, summative assignments. Such assignments can also begin as collaborative exercises done by the entire class and culminate with individual or small group annotation projects.

5. Annotation as Rhetorical Analysis

Have students mark and explain the use of rhetorical strategies in online articles or essays.

Whether analyzed as a class or individually, a clearly argumentative piece should be chosen for this assignment, perhaps from an op-ed page in a newspaper or magazine. Students might be asked first to simply identify rhetorical strategies (like ethos , pathos , and logos ) using the tag feature in annotations created with Hypothesis. On a second pass, they can be asked to elaborate on how and why a certain strategy is being used by the author. Identification of rhetorical fallacies could be built into this or a related assignment as well. Note: in order to make such an exercise more streamlined, we plan in the near to future allow users to pre-populate a set of controlled terms with which a group can tag their annotations.

Combined with exercises six and nine, annotation as rhetorical analysis could be part of a composition course that also has students map arguments in a controversy using annotation and then begin their own advocacy through annotation of primary sources mapped and analyzed. (This is how the rhetoric department at UT-Austin, where I taught while getting my PhD., structures their freshman composition courses.) A twist on this assignment could ask students to analyze their own persuasive prose in this way–discussion of such self-reflexive annotation on one’s own writing is a whole other category of annotation, probably deserving of a blog post in itself.

6. Annotation as Opinion

Have students share their personal opinions on a controversial topic as discussed by an article.

A lot of how people are interacting with content online today—commenting on web articles, Tweeting about them with brief notes–is a kind of annotation. At Hypothesis we might think of web annotation as a more rigorous form of such engagement with language and ideas on the Internet. Framing one’s opinions as annotations of specific statements or facts is a reminder that our arguments should be grounded in actual evidence. In any case, allowing students to express their opinions in the margins of the Web, and helping them become responsible and thoughtful in those expressions, is a huge part of what it means to be literate both on the Web and in democratic society more generally. Students could be asked simply to respond to the reading with their thoughts, as in a dialectical reading journal, or employ specific cultural or persuasive strategies in their rhetorical intervention.

Again, this advocacy exercise could be a summative assignment within a unit that uses Hypothesis to complete annotation activities like those described in ways five and nine here.

7. Annotation as Multimedia Writing

Have students annotate with images and video or integrate images and video into other types of annotations.

A student annotation with evocative use of images on Genius.com.

One of the unique aspects of online annotation (and online writing in general) is the ability to include multimedia elements in the composition process. We’ve found many teachers and students excited to make use of animated GIFs in annotation. The use of images can simply be representative (this is a reference to Lincoln with a photo of the 16th president), but more advanced students can be taught to think about how images themselves make arguments and serve other rhetorical purposes.

It is advisable to spend a lesson introducing the idea of digital writing to students with particular attention to the use of images, covering everything from search to use policies and attribution. More traditional teachers may be less accustomed to assessing such multimedia compositions and should spend some time thinking about and explaining to their students a grading rubric.

8. Annotation as Independent Study

Have students explore the Internet on their own with some limited direction (find an article from a respectable source on a topic important to you personally), exercising traditional literacy skills (define difficult words, identify persuasive strategies, etc.).

Many of the above exercises presume that students are annotating for the most part together on a shared course text. But the nature of web annotation is that we can see the notes of others even if we are not reading the same text. In this way, we can attend to annotations as texts themselves. Like a friend’s Facebook page or Twitter feed, seeing someone else navigate the world can be interesting. And through web annotation students can be taught to navigate the digital world responsibly and thoughtfully. Protip: because each Hypothesis user’s annotations are streamed on their public “My Annotations” page, teachers can monitor and assess student work there rather than on individual texts if so desired. (You can click on a username attached to an annotation or search the Hypothesis stream for a username to locate this page. Here’s mine. )

Whether or not one goes so far as to let students roam free on the open Web applying their classroom learning, we have found it to be valuable to have a unit develop from collaborative work to independent or small group work. Students might start off annotating together on a few select texts, getting a sense of what annotation means and how a particular platform like Hypothesis works, but by the end of a term become responsible for glossing or analyzing a single text or set of texts themselves.

9. Annotation as Annotated Bibliography

Have students research a topic or theme and tag and annotate relevant texts across the Internet.

Tagging in page-level annotations as social bookmarking.

This is a different kind of annotation than largely discussed above. Here we are annotating on the level of the document rather than on a particular selection of text. (Users can create unanchored annotations for this purpose using the annotation icon on the sidebar without selecting any particular text within a document.) But this annotation exercise practices solid research skills and can be used as preparation for research assignments. In fact, using annotation as a annotated bibliography assignment is an excellent way for teachers to follow and guide student research during the process itself. The result of this assignment will be something useful for a paper such as a summary of the major stakeholders of a particular issue and how they articulate their positions.

Of course this kind of annotation as page-level commentary can be combined with more fine-grained attention through annotation to the texts of these tagged documents. In addition to outlining sources needed for a paper, the student can begin to break down those sources for close reading within an essay.

10. Annotation as Creative Act

Have students respond creatively to their reading with their own poetry or prose or visual art as annotations.

Book art by Kaspen for the Anagram Bookstore.

Annotation need not be overtly analytical. Whether in writing or using other media, students can respond creatively to texts under study through annotation as well, inserting themselves within the intertextual web that is the history of literature and culture. One creative writing exercise might be to have students annotate in the voices of a characters from a novel being read. Or to have them re-imagine passages written as newspaper stories. Nathan Blom’s Annotated Lear Project at LaGuardia Arts High School is a great example of students creatively responding to a text through annotation.

Students can also use their imaginations to annotate texts with their own drawings, photographs, or videos inline with the relevant sources of textual inspiration. Whether completed individually or collaboratively this exercise can result in some wonderful, illustrated editions of course texts.

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17 Awesome Annotation Activities

March 23, 2023 //  by  Laura Spry

By teaching kids annotation skills we can greatly improve their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. It’s important to first explain what annotation means so that learners understand why they will be working through this process. We’ve sourced 17 awesome annotation activities to get you started. Let’s take a look.

1. Poetry Annotation

To successfully annotate poetry, students must analyze and interpret the different elements of a poem in order to gain a deeper understanding of its literary devices and meaning. This activity teaches students to focus on the importance of looking into depth and complexity by focusing on the elements of speaker, pattern, shift, and description.

Learn More: Gifted Guru

2. Annotate Texts

This handy guide breaks down the key elements of learning to annotate texts. Start by using the cards that have two stories in the same genre. Dissect these using the prompts. Next, give students two stories that are from different genres and have them discuss the differences.

Learn More: Teaching with a Mountain View

3. Annotation Symbols

Annotation symbols can be used to provide additional information or clarification about a particular text. Have your students pick up to 5 of these symbols to annotate another student’s work. Having them read others’ work is great practice and symbols make great annotation tools!

Learn More: Pinterest

4. Annotate Books

Before you can annotate a book, it’s important to read it actively. Meaning, engaging with the text, taking notes, and highlighting key points. This is key when teaching students about annotation. Start by asking your students to annotate a page from your class text. They can start by underlining keywords individually and then add more detail during class discussion.

Learn More: The Wordy Habitat

5. Rainbow Annotation

By teaching students to use different colored sticky notes they can easily scan an annotated text for specific information. Here, they have used red for angry emotions, yellow for funny, clever, or happy sections, and green for surprising moments. These can easily be adapted for any text. Work together as a class to make your own colored key to ensure a variety of annotations are used!

6. Annotation Bookmarks

Encourage a variety of annotations by handing out these cool annotation bookmarks. Easily kept inside student books, there will no longer be an excuse for forgetting how to annotate! Students can add some color to these bookmarks and match the colors when annotating a text.

Learn More: Ideas by Jivey

7. S-N-O-T-S: Small Notes on the Side

Reminding students not to forget their SNOTS is sure to help them remember to make Small Notes On The Side! Using a green, kids are taught to underline key points. They can then go back over the text to circle important words, add diagrams, and make notes of what they would like to include in their response.

Learn More: The Applicious Teacher

8. Projector and Whiteboard

By setting your camera above a text and displaying this on your whiteboard, you can show your students how to annotate in real-time. Go through the common steps involved in basic annotation and let them have a go at annotating their own text using the methods you have shown.

Learn More: Teaching Teens in the 21st

9. Label the Turtle

Younger kids will need to be exposed to the labeling process before learning to annotate. This cute sea turtle activity teaches kids the importance of using the correct labels in their written work. The turtle can also be colored in once the written work is complete!

Learn More: Homeschool Preschool

10. Annotate the Flower

Working with real-world materials is a surefire way to get kids engaged with their work! Using a flower, have learners label the different parts.  Additionally, they can complete a drawing of their activity and add labels and extra annotations to each part.

Learn More: Lessons 4 Little Ones

11. Practice Notetaking

Notetaking is a skill that almost everyone will require in their lifetime.  Learning to take good notes is key when learning to annotate texts. Have your students gather on the carpet with their whiteboards. Read a few pages from a non-fiction book and pause for them to write down important things that they’ve learned. 

Learn More: Primarily Speaking

12. Mind Map to Annotate

Here, the key points are choosing a central idea by drawing or writing a keyword in the center of a piece of paper. Then, branches are added for key themes and keywords. Phrases are the sub-branches and gaps and connections should be filled with more ideas or annotations. This simple process helps students plan their annotations.

Learn More: Chloe Burroughs

13. Create a Color Key

Encourage students to make the correct labels by using a colored key. The descriptions will vary depending on the type of text you are annotating. Here, they have used blue for general plot information and yellow for questions and definitions.

Learn More: Tumblr

14. Annotation Marks

These level annotation marks can be placed in the margin of students’ work when annotating to show key points. A question mark symbolizes something the student does not understand, an exclamation mark indicates something surprising, and ‘ex’ is written when the author provides an example.

15. Annotate a Transcript

Provide each student with a transcript of a Ted Talk. As they listen, they must annotate the talk with notes or symbols. These will be used to help them write up a review of the talk. 

Learn More: TED Talks

16. Annotation Station

This activity requires careful observation and attention to detail. It works best as a small group or individual assignment. It works well as an online method by using breakout rooms in Google Meet or Zoom. Provide your students with an image to annotate. Students can then add details and make observations about the image. If you have touchscreen devices, students can use the pen tool to draw on top of the picture. For non-touch devices, use the sticky note tool to add observations.

Learn More: Chromebook Classroom

17. Annotate a Timeline

This can be adapted to your class book or topic. Discuss an appropriate timeline and set groups of students to provide collaborative annotations for that part of the story or area of history. Each student must provide a key piece of information and a fact to add to the annotated timeline.

Learn More: Mr T does Primary History

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Moscow Facts & Worksheets

Moscow, russian moskva, is the capital and most populated city of russia, situated in the westward part of the country., search for worksheets, download the moscow facts & worksheets.

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Table of Contents

Moscow , Russian Moskva, is the capital and most populated city of Russia , situated in the westward part of the country. Moscow is not just the political capital city of Russia but also the industrial, cultural, scientific, and educational capital. For more than 600 years, Moscow also has been the spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church.

See the fact file below for more information on the Moscow or alternatively, you can download our 21-page Moscow worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

Description.

  • The city area is about 30 km in diameter and the population reaches to almost 10 million people.
  • Moscow was first mentioned in the chronicles of 1147, where it played an important role in Russian history.
  • The people of Moscow are known as Muscovites.
  • Moscow is famous for its architecture, especially its historical buildings such as Saint Basil’s Cathedral .
  • Moscow is a city with the most money in Russia and the third biggest budget in the world.
  • Moscow began as a medieval city and developed into what was known as the Grand Duchy of Moscow, an administrative region ruled by a prince.
  • Moscow is where all Russia’s tensions and inequalities meet to coexist, producing a unique feeling of a city that looks European but feels somewhat Asian in its mood and intensity.
  • In 1147 Moscow was called Moskov, which sounds closer to its current name. Moscow was derived from the Moskva river, on which the city is located. The Finno-Ugric tribes, who originally inhabited the territory, named the river Mustajoki, in English: Black River, which was presumably how the name of the city originated.
  • Several theories were proposed on the origin of the name of the river however linguists cannot come to any agreement and those theories haven’t been proven yet.
  • The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a meeting place of Yuri Dolgoruky and Sviatoslav Olgovich. Muscovites today consider Prince Yury Dolgoruky their city’s founding father, but it was only recorded that he dined with friends in the town.
  • In 1156, led by Knjaz Yury Dolgoruky, the town was barricaded with a timber fence and a moat. In the course of the Mongol invasion of Rus, the Mongols under Batu Khan burned the city to the ground and killed its inhabitants.
  • Nevertheless, Moscow was restored and became more important. Yet the Mongols came back in 1382 and burned Moscow City again.
  • Still, Moscow shortly recovered and In the 15th century, it probably gained a population of about 50,000. But, unfortunately, in 1571 the Crimean Tatars burned Moscow again.
  • By 1712, Tsar Peter the Great decided to move his capital to St. Petersburg from Moscow. With this, Moscow began a period of dissolution. In the 1770s Moscow suffered an outbreak of the bubonic plague. But still, Moscow University was successfully founded in 1755 and at the beginning of the 19th century, Moscow was prospering again.
  • Arbat Street at that time was also established. But then, Napoleon invaded Russia. The Muscovites, the retreating party, set their own city on fire by 1812 and it was rebuilt completely at the beginning of the 19th century.
  • During 1917 the Communists started a revolution in which they imposed a totalitarian government in Russia. By 1918, Lenin transferred his administration to Moscow.
  • After Lenin, the tyrant Josef Stalin governed the city. Under his regime, several historic buildings in the city were destroyed. Nevertheless, the first line of the Metro opened in 1935.
  • By June 1941, the Germans had invaded Russia and had arrived on the outskirts of Moscow by December. As they arrived, they suddenly  turned back.
  • After the Second World War , Moscow continued prospering even though many nations boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980.
  • Fortunately, Communism collapsed in Russia in 1991 and in 1997 Moscow celebrated its 850th anniversary.
  • Moscow is situated on the banks of the Moskva River, which flows through the East European Plain in central Russia. Teplostanskaya highland is the city’s highest point at 255 meters (837 feet). The width of Moscow city (not limiting MKAD) from west to east is 39.7 km (24.7 mi), and the length from north to south is 51.8 km (32.2 mi).
  • Moscow has a humid continental climate with long, cold winters usually lasting from mid-November through the end of March, and warm summers .
  • Moscow is the financial center of Russia and home to the country’s largest banks and many of its largest companies, such as natural gas giant Gazprom.
  • The Cherkizovsky marketplace was the largest marketplace in Europe , with a daily turnover of about thirty million dollars and about ten thousand venders from different countries including China and India .
  • Many new business centers and office buildings have been built in recent years, but Moscow still experiences shortages in office space.
  • With this, many former industrial and research facilities are being reconstructed to become suitable for office use.
  • In totality, economic stability has developed in recent years. But, crime and corruption still hinder business growth.
  • Saint Basil’s Cathedral is famed as the Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed amongst the locals. It served as one of the crucial landmarks of Moscow.
  • Location: Krasnaya Square, 2, Moscow 109012, Russia
  • Moscow Kremlin serves as the home in which all these tourist sites reside. It encompasses almost all the famous sightseeing attractions such as the royal residence of the President of Russia.
  • Location: Moscow, Russia
  • Red Square separates the royal citadel of Kremlin from the ancient merchant quarter of Kitai-gorod, one of the most interesting places in Moscow. Bearing the weight of Russia’s history to a great extent, Red Square serves not just as an attraction but as the heart, soul, and symbol of the whole country.
  • Location: Krasnaya Ploshchad, Moscow, Russia

Moscow Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Moscow across 21 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Moscow worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about the Moscow, Russian Moskva, which is the capital and most populated city of Russia, situated in the westward part of the country. Moscow is not just the political capital city of Russia but also the industrial, cultural, scientific, and educational capital. For more than 600 years, Moscow also has been the spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Moscow Facts
  • Moscow Breaking News
  • Moscow Basic Info
  • Moscow’s Significant Events
  • Moscow Characteristics
  • Populous Cities
  • Sports Facts
  • Moscow Landmarks
  • Symbolization
  • Moscow Slogan

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  1. Practice Paper 4 Comprehension: Annotation & Reading

  2. Annotation Practice

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  4. Schoology: Part 4 Annotation Assignments

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COMMENTS

  1. Teaching Student Annotation: Constructing Meaning Through Connections

    Overview. Students learn about the purposes and techniques of annotation by examining text closely and critically. They study sample annotations and identify the purposes annotation can serve. Students then practice annotation through a careful reading of a story excerpt, using specific guidelines and writing as many annotations as possible.

  2. How to Annotate Texts

    How do you prepare? The resources linked in this section list strategies and techniques you can use to start annotating. What is Annotating? (Charleston County School District) This resource gives an overview of annotation styles, including useful shorthands and symbols.

  3. Annotation Worksheets

    Annotation Worksheets To Print: Explore It - Read the assigned text. Then follow the directions to see how to put this technique to work for you. Using Symbols - Read and annotate the assigned text. Use the symbols presented below. Outline - This is a graphic orgainzer designed to help you keep track of how you broke down some work.

  4. Annotating Text Strategies That Enhance Close Reading [Free ...

    Download the Annotating Practice Kit now! Annotating Text Strategies Annotating a text is when the reader "marks up" a text to indicate places of importance or something they don't understand. Sometimes students annotate by circling a word, underlining a phrase or highlighting a sentence.

  5. PDF Annotating Texts

    To annotate is to examine and question a text, to add critical notes. You can do this with fiction and non-fiction. For example with fiction, good readers do more than just read a text for plot, they think about the text, interact with a text, make connections between the text and the "real world."

  6. Teaching Annotation in High School

    By Mackensi Crenshaw August 14, 2023 monkeybusinessimages / iStock Annotation can be a difficult and stressful process for high school students and educators alike. It's an essential skill across subject areas, something we expect students to just do, but rarely do we actually teach them how.

  7. How to Do a Close Reading

    "Annotation Guide" (Covington Catholic High School) ... "Close Reading Practice Worksheets" (Gillian Duff's English Resources) Here, you'll find 10 close reading-centered worksheets you can download and print. The "higher-close-reading-formula" link at the bottom of the page provides a chart with even more steps and strategies for close reading ...

  8. PDF Annotating the Text

    Annotations are written notes that show you are thinking about and engaging with the text. Insightful Annotations Summarize a section or paragraph and highlight supporting details. Make an inference and highlight the supporting details. Explain how the title connects to the text. Make text to self-text-world connections.

  9. Annotating Practice Kit

    9-12 K-6 7-8 Other Institution Type* Use the worksheets and text excerpts in the Annotating Practice Kit to get students annotating with a purpose. Download now!

  10. Close Reading Annotations

    RI.5.10 RL.4.1 RL.4.10 RL.5.1 RL.5.10 Use this chocolate-themed exercise to introduce your students to close reading with annotations.

  11. 7 Strategies for Teaching Students How to Annotate

    1. Teach the Basics of Good Annotation Help your students understand that annotation is simply the process of thoughtful reading and making notes as they study a text. Start with some basic forms of annotation: highlighting a phrase or sentence and including a comment circling a word that needs defining

  12. Results for annotating worksheet

    Teach students how to annotate poetry using this close reading lesson and annotation worksheets! ... Reading Poetry Unit - Introduction to Reading and Analyzing Poetry - High School. $6.75. Original Price $6.75. Rated 4.86 out of 5, based on 7 reviews ... POETRY: Annotating Poetry Bundle (Introduction Lesson + Practice Worksheet) Created by ...

  13. Results for annotation guide high school

    Annotation Guide for Middle/ High School Students. Created by. MsRiccio. This is an annotation cheat sheet that can be used in conjunction with any article or story. It guides students in an annotation method and has an example of an annotated paragraph. Subjects: Close Reading, ELA Test Prep, Reading Strategies.

  14. Back to School With Annotation: 10 Ways to Annotate With Students

    Tags categorizing the particular problem could be used as a simple way to prompt clarification (vocab, plts, research methods, etc.). While the teacher can respond to such student annotations, a possible follow up exercise could have students respond to each other's questions instead. 4. Annotation as Close Reading.

  15. High School Annotation Symbols Teaching Resources

    4.7. (15) $3.95. PDF. Activity. Tips and teaching strategies for easy annotating! These annotation guide bookmarks help middle and high school students understand how and what to annotate and why it is important. They are perfect for class novels and independent reading assignments! Just copy, clip, and use as a bookmark or attach to the inside ...

  16. 17 Awesome Annotation Activities

    4. Annotate Books Before you can annotate a book, it's important to read it actively. Meaning, engaging with the text, taking notes, and highlighting key points. This is key when teaching students about annotation. Start by asking your students to annotate a page from your class text.

  17. PDF NAME: Annotated Reading Worksheet

    Annotated Reading Worksheet Part I—Reflective Reading ... (in both the text and annotations) as you consider the scenarios and questions below. Depending on your teacher's instructions, you will either pair up to share your ... significant other flirting with someone else on the way to band practice yesterday afternoon. You're hurt, angry ...

  18. Results for annotation worksheet high school

    Here are 18 annotation activities that can be used at Middle or High School level to annotate anything from poetry to non-fiction. Included: # 18 Annotation Tags ready to be printed, laminated, punched and tagged together. # 18 Table plates ready to be printed (card stock is best), folded and p. Subjects:

  19. About Ms. Bonzo

    About Ms. Bonzo. Welcome to 4th Grade! Raise the Roof! A little background: My teaching career started in St. Augustine, Florida, after graduating from the University of South Alabama. Then, my husband and I lived, taught, and traveled overseas for almost a decade in Algeria, Singapore, and the Dominican Republic before coming to Idaho.

  20. Long Teaching Module: Women and Stalinism, 1929-1939

    Stalin's rule of the Soviet Union began 1928, when, after a long struggle, he succeeded Vladimir Lenin, the unquestioned leader of the Bolshevik Party during the revolution, who suffered a stroke and then died in 1924. Stalin's rule ended exactly 25 years later with his death in early 1953. This long teaching module includes an ...

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    The Moscow High School is located in a residential area of Moscow, a few blocks from the down­ town commercial core. It has three stories, including a high, raised basement, and is constructed of brick. Parapet walls demarcating the corners and entrance bays break the flat roofline. The school is oriented to the south, and is situated on Third ...

  22. Results for annotating text practice

    Anne Murray. Get your students involved with their texts by teaching them annotating skills. This activity includes a list of common annotating symbols, but feel free to add your own to the list. The activity also includes a copy of "The Emperor's New Clothes" to practice annotating together or independently.

  23. Moscow Facts, Worksheets, Description & Etymology For Kids

    Moscow Worksheets. This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Moscow across 21 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Moscow worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about the Moscow, Russian Moskva, which is the capital and most populated city of Russia, situated in the westward part of the country ...