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How To Annotate

Annotation involves marking a text to note questions, unfamiliar terms, important passages, and connections while reading, in order to engage more deeply with the text and facilitate discussion. Effective annotation techniques include highlighting, underlining, writing notes, and summarizing in margins. The goal of annotation is to focus reading, connect ideas, and deepen understanding of characters, setting, arguments, and the author's craft.

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123 views2 pages

How To Annotate

Annotation involves marking a text to note questions, unfamiliar terms, important passages, and connections while reading, in order to engage more deeply with the text and facilitate discussion. Effective annotation techniques include highlighting, underlining, writing notes, and summarizing in margins. The goal of annotation is to focus reading, connect ideas, and deepen understanding of characters, setting, arguments, and the author's craft.

Uploaded by

Scorpeons
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How to Annotate

What is annotation?
• Meta-cognition = thinking about your thoughts
• Annotating is paying attention to your thoughts while reading:
• Questions we have
• Things we find strange or confusing
• Things we connect with
• Things we like or don’t like
• Writer’s craft we notice the author using
• Details we want to collect in order to get a complete picture of the writing

Why annotate?
• Read with purpose & focus (so you remember something after)
• Connect & engage with text (so it means something after)
• Help deepen meaning & understanding
• Prepare for discussion

Techniques
• Highlight
• Box or circle
• Draw arrows
• Underline
• Asterisk
• Attach post-its
• Write notes

Mark the Text


• Characters (who)
• Setting (where, when)
• Unfamiliar words
• Important quotations or passages
• Important information/arguments/points
Mark in the Margins
• Summarize
• Make predictions
• Formulate opinions (evaluate or judge the ideas or writing)
• Make connections
• Ask questions
• Analyze the way the author writes (i.e. look for author’s craft)
• Write reflections/reactions/comments
• Look for patterns or repetition

Tips
• Highlighting and underlining alone is not annotation! Knowing that a passage is
important is not the same as knowing WHY it is important.
• Identify literary elements (plot, theme, character and tone, conflict, setting) and literary
techniques (symbolism, metaphors, motifs, irony, foreshadowing, tone and mood,
descriptive or figurative language)
• Don’t over-annotate

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