ANNOTATING HELP
Annotating is recording what a reader is thinking while reading—it helps a reader remember what s/he has read.
Annotation also provides an opportunity for a reader to wrestle with the meaning of the text.
Nothing matters more than THINKING while reading.
Be cautious with the highlighter—underline and make notes with a pen or pencil. Highlighting can actually distract from the business of learning and dilute your comprehension. Highlighting only seems like an active reading strategy, but it can actually lull you into passivity rather than thinking about the text.
Mark up the margins of your text with WORDS. These are ideas that occur to you, notes about things that seem important to you, reminders of how issues in a text may connect with class discussion or course themes. This kind of interaction keeps you conscious of the reason you are reading and the purposes your instructor has in mind. Later in the term, when you are reviewing for a test or project, your margin notes may become useful memory triggers. Make a list of your ideas, write phrases or complete sentences—it is up to you! Just interact with the text by writing and marking it up! (Post-it notes work too!)
Get in the habit of hearing yourself ASK QUESTIONS. What does this mean? Why is the author drawing that conclusion? Why is the class reading this text? How would this happen? Where have I heard of this idea before? When will it happen? Who would it affect? Write the questions down in your margins, at the beginning or end of the reading, in a notebook, or elsewhere.
WHEN READING, STOP-THINK-REACT. (STRategy) I wonder…
Develop your own symbol system. Asterisk a key idea in the text, for example, or use an exclamation point for the surprising, absurd, bizarre, or question marks for unclear passages or straight lines or crooked lines beside certain passages… Like your margin notes, your hieroglyphs can help you reconstruct the important observations that you made at an
Annotation also provides an opportunity for a reader to wrestle with the meaning of the text.
Nothing matters more than THINKING while reading.
Be cautious with the highlighter—underline and make notes with a pen or pencil. Highlighting can actually distract from the business of learning and dilute your comprehension. Highlighting only seems like an active reading strategy, but it can actually lull you into passivity rather than thinking about the text.
Mark up the margins of your text with WORDS. These are ideas that occur to you, notes about things that seem important to you, reminders of how issues in a text may connect with class discussion or course themes. This kind of interaction keeps you conscious of the reason you are reading and the purposes your instructor has in mind. Later in the term, when you are reviewing for a test or project, your margin notes may become useful memory triggers. Make a list of your ideas, write phrases or complete sentences—it is up to you! Just interact with the text by writing and marking it up! (Post-it notes work too!)
Get in the habit of hearing yourself ASK QUESTIONS. What does this mean? Why is the author drawing that conclusion? Why is the class reading this text? How would this happen? Where have I heard of this idea before? When will it happen? Who would it affect? Write the questions down in your margins, at the beginning or end of the reading, in a notebook, or elsewhere.
WHEN READING, STOP-THINK-REACT. (STRategy) I wonder…
Develop your own symbol system. Asterisk a key idea in the text, for example, or use an exclamation point for the surprising, absurd, bizarre, or question marks for unclear passages or straight lines or crooked lines beside certain passages… Like your margin notes, your hieroglyphs can help you reconstruct the important observations that you made at an