Text Annotation Close Reading Strategies for Better Comprehension.

Text AnnotationClose Reading Strategies for Better Comprehension

Text Annotation by Teachers

What is Text Annotation?

While reading, students mark the pages for

Important information

Text meaning or key details

Ideas and questions

What About Highlighters?

Students often think text annotation simply involves highlighting almost every word in a text.

What About Highlighting?

Harvard University puts incoming students on notice about the effectiveness of highlighting…

Highlighting Dilutes Comprehension

“First of all, throw away the highlighter in favor of a pen or pencil.

Highlighting can actually distract you from the business of learning

and dilute your comprehension”(2005).

Note-Taking Improves Comprehension

Note-taking activities have a positive impact on reading comprehension

Twenty-one of twenty-three studies (91%) showed a positive outcome

Learning different annotation styles helps you discover what works for you.It’s important try out different ways to annotate texts while you read. Over time, you will gravitate to those that fit your individual needs best. However, you need to learn that there are MANY styles and strategies.

Annotation Styles and Strategies

Bracket [important] passages


Connect related ideas with lines

Underline important ideas/details


Outline main ideas in margin

and/or

Write margin notes (comments and questions)


Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Circle unfamiliar vocabulary


Place asterisks or exclamation

points next to unusual or surprising

details

****


Use symbols, drawings, and small drawings(text coding) to highlight important details

When using text coding, consistency is important. Students need to understand the key.


Can’t write in books?

Label with sticky notes—Students can use all the same strategies by placing their annotations on sticky notes on the pages of their books.

Copy important sections from text (doesn’t break copyright if used for educational purposes)

Reading With Your Pen Palette

The Reading With Your Pen Palette was developed by three teachers in Bronx, NY.

There are 21 different annotation strategies students can use to annotate or code text while they read.

What I Really Want Is Someone Rolling Around in the Text

By SAM ANDERSONPublished: March 4, 2011 (New York Times)

As you read this article, ANNOTATE (highlight, underline, circle, symbolize, margin notes) parts you find interesting, have questions about, don’t understand, or would like to refer back to. When you are finished, answer the questions on the last page.

1.) What kinds of markings does Mr. Anderson put in his books?

2.) Why do e-books present a challenge to those who like to annotate their reading materials?

3.) What is the history of marginalia?

4.) What role does marginalia play in what Mr. Anderson calls “social reading”?

5.) According to Mr. Anderson, what is the relationship between marginalia and the experience of discovery while reading? Do you agree or disagree with him?


YOUR TURN:

In your group, READ the annotation article given to you (aloud or independently).

DISCUSS and agree on 3-5 main points in the article and give your overall rating (1-5) of how effective you think this form of annotation is.

CREATE a colorful poster with the topic of your article, main points, and rating.

SHARE your poster with the class.


GROUP #1:

Highlighting and Annotating


GROUP #2:

Writing Notes in the Margin:

Marginalia


GROUP #3:

Taking Reading Notes


GROUP #4:

Keeping a Reading Journal


GROUP #5:

Comparing Methods


GROUP #6:

Using Digital Tools for Annotating

Marginaliaby Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,skirmishes against the authorraging along the borders of every pagein tiny black script.If I could just get my hands on you,Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,they seem to say,I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive 'Nonsense.' 'Please! ' 'HA! ! ' -that kind of thing.I remember once looking up from my reading,my thumb as a bookmark,trying to imagine what the person must look likewhy wrote 'Don't be a ninny'alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modestneeding to leave only their splayed footprintsalong the shore of the page.One scrawls 'Metaphor' next to a stanza of Eliot's.Another notes the presence of 'Irony'fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,Hands cupped around their mouths.'Absolutely,' they shoutto Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.'Yes.' 'Bull's-eye.' 'My man! 'Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation pointsrain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from collegewithout ever having written 'Man vs. Nature'in a margin, perhaps nowis the time to take one step forward.'

We have all seized the white perimeter as our ownand reached for a pen if only to showwe did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside,planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoriajotted along the borders of the Gospelsbrief asides about the pains of copying,a bird signing near their window,or the sunlight that illuminated their page-anonymous men catching a ride into the futureon a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,they say, until you have read himenwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,the one that dangles from me like a locket,was written in the copy of Catcher in the RyeI borrowed from the local libraryone slow, hot summer.I was just beginning high school then,reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,and I cannot tell youhow vastly my loneliness was deepened,how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smearsand next to them, written in soft pencil-by a beautiful girl, I could tell,whom I would never meet-'Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.'

QUICKWRITE TICKET

*Based on your own experience with annotation and what we’ve discussed today, describe your preferred method of text annotation and why it works for you. Looking towards college, what methods do you think will be most effective there and why?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Name_____________Period___AP LiteratureName_____________Period___AP LiteratureQUICKWRITE TICKET

*Based on your own experience with annotation and what we’ve discussed today, describe your preferred method of text annotation and why it works for you. Looking towards college, what methods do you think will be most effective there and why?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Text Annotation Close Reading Strategies for Better Comprehension.

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Transcript of Text Annotation Close Reading Strategies for Better Comprehension.