Notes on Annotation

What processes or strategies did you use when annotating your chosen article? What kinds of things did you underline or highlight? Why? What kinds of notes did you write in the margins?  Why?  Imagine that you have a class of inexperienced writer.  How would you explain annotation to them? How would you get them to actually do it?  How would get them to actually bring the hard copy of their annotated article to class?

I read "Schema Theory Revisited" in PDF rather than printing it out. When I read on the computer, I usually annotate using the “annotate” function on the PDF, which allows me to underline or highlight sentences that I think are important – topic sentences, summary sentences or definitions. I also write short comments every page or so summarizing main ideas.

For some reason the PDF wouldn’t let me “write” to the document this time around and I got a bit stuck about how to annotate. I was able to draw boxes around a few big points, but it was frustrating not being able to mark on the text like I’m used to. Since I didn’t have a printer at my disposal, I opened a word document and began summarizing as I read. I would skim through a section of the article, slowing down as I necessary to unpack a more difficult idea, then write a quick 2-sentence summary of that section on the word document. This way, I got my “summary blog” written simultaneous with my “annotating.” Or maybe it just means I wasn’t annotating.

I should have just printed out the hard copy, but again I didn’t have a printer with me as I was first reading. This is my excuse, and students are always going to have some excuse or special circumstance, right? How to get students to bring a hard copy of an article to class? Make it mandatory for participation maybe, or provide the hard copy for them (my college offers free reproduction services to faculty, so that’s doable). I find the problem isn’t always having a copy on hand so much as getting them to ANNOTATE. Sometimes I’ll discuss what annotation is and model how to do it to students, and then week after week they show up in class without a single mark on their papers! I’ve heard it can help to walk around the room and give points to students for having completed the annotations. A few times I’ve called on students to ask them what they marked and why, which led to more students having marked papers for the next class. However, as soon as I stop asking this question, students stop marking, so….?

To explain annotation, I give students a list of different types of annotation markings (star, underlining, “def.” 1, 2, 3, etc.) and why one might use them. Then I pass out a short article to the class. They preview the text. Then everyone reads and annotates the first page. When they’re done, I go around the room and ask everyone for ONE word, idea or sentence that they marked. We talk about why we marked things and notice where people marked the same ideas or different ones. Their homework is to read and annotate the rest of the article, and when we come back the next class period the students get in groups and have a “what did you mark? Oh, this is what I marked” conversation before we begin the class discussion. I do this the first week of class, no matter the level.