Strategies for Teaching Annotation
Standards: With guided practice, text annotation has the potential over time to address all the standards for Reading Literature (RL) and Reading Informational Text (RIT), in addition to Writing W2, W9, and Language L3, L4, and L5.
A Brief Rationale
It sounds so old
school. In an article first published in 1940 in The Saturday Review, “How to Mark a Book,” Mortimer Adler points
out that everyone knows you have to “read between the lines,” but only the most
active readers “write between the lines” (qtd. in Fielding and Schoenbach 179).
These are Adler’s reasons for teaching annotation:
- Annotation keeps you awake. Wide awake.
- Active reading is thinking, and thinking
expresses itself in words and symbols.
- Writing helps you remember. An annotated
page is a reader’s chronicle.
- Annotation slows you down.
- Annotation encourages rereading
(Fielding 181-184).
“In the case of good
books,” Adler concludes, “the point is not to see how many of them you can get
through, but rather how many can get through to you – how many you can make your
own” (184).
The Process
There are many ways
to begin. This list outlines a few tried-and-trues:
- Introduce the word ANNOTATION
as a key vocabulary word in
your class, brainstorming for possible definitions, examples, word parts,
etc..
- Tap students’ prior knowledge and experience by distributing an
anticipation guide or a student annotation survey.
Complete the survey yourself. Pool the results to compose a classroom
annotation bookmark, or to revise one of the annotation bookmarks at this
site.
- As an expert reader in your content area, model the
process and begin with your own annotated texts, such as this teacher-annotated poem, "Frederick Douglass." Display a
short but complex passage from the text without annotations, and read it
aloud. Then display the same page marked with your own annotations. Share
your internal monologue with the text; link your thinking explicitly to
your annotations.
- Distribute an annotation guide or annotation bookmarks. Examples of annotation bookmarks
composed by RHS teachers currently include Biology,
Graphic Novels and Graphic Nonfiction, Informational Text, Media Images, Rhetoric, Shakespeare, Statistics, and Technical and Science Graphics. Beginning with a short, familiar passage from
a classroom text and working with a partner, students annotate the text.
Share and compare. Display exemplary student-annotated texts.
- Practice text annotation regularly, even daily,
using the gradual release of responsibility model (I do, we do, you do).
- Collect and share anchors
– student annotations that demonstrate levels of proficiency. RHS English
teacher Sara Rice displays examples of the same text annotated in three levels of proficiency. Then Rice has
her students create a “human annotation scale” by arranging multiple
examples of student-annotated texts on a scale from zero to "Beyond Awesome"!
- Engage students in formative self-assessments of their annotated
texts, guided by the RHS Schoolwide Rubric for Reading and/or one of the annotation rubrics at this site,
including a rubric for annotating Informational Text,
Literature, and Shakespeare.
- Summative assessments of student annotations can be done as
part of a reader’s journal. If students are expected to annotate an
assigned text each time they read, teachers can assess the final product
relatively quickly, guided by an annotation rubric, by skimming the
annotated text and focusing on a certain number of pre-selected pages.
Before, After, While
As Carol
Porter-O’Donnell notes in the EJ
article, “Beyond the Yellow Highlighter,” most teachers employ a host of pre-
and post-reading strategies to enhance and assess reading comprehension. Before
students read a challenging text, we tap prior knowledge, introduce background
knowledge, skim informational passages for titles, sub-titles, illustrations
and captions, introduce key vocabulary words, and reflect on themes we will
meet in the text. After students read, we assign questions for writing and
discussion and we design projects for students to demonstrate what they have
learned. Annotating the text is a strategy that can “help readers while they’re reading” (89).
Helpful Annotation Resources
Adler, Mortimer.
“How to Mark a Book,” from The Mercury Reader. Building Academic Literacy: An Anthology for Reading Apprenticeship.
Ed. Audrey Fielding and Ruth Schoenbach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003.
179-184.
Brown, Matthew D.
“I’ll Have Mine Annotated, Please: Helping Students Make Connections with
Texts.” English Journal 96.4 (2007):
73-78.
http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/EJ/0964-march07/EJ0964Have.pdf
Porter-O’Donnell,
Carol. “Beyond the Yellow Highlighter: Teaching Annotation Skills to Improve
Reading Comprehension.” English Journal
93.5 (2004): 82-89.
http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/EJ/0935-may04/EJ0935Beyond.pdf