In content areas that rely on students understanding and then applying information from images and documents, it can be difficult to know what is happening in students’ heads as they read and analyze. During subject periods of ELA or social studies, students often struggle to put their thoughts down on paper, even informally, in response to these images, documents, or primary sources, which can stymie conversation and deeper thinking and prevent us from seeing where their hesitation comes from. So how do we get them from Point A (document, etc.) to Point B (deep thinking and conversation)? Let’s talk annotation as a way to address this!
Annotation Tips and Suggestions
Annotation is a conversation between a student and a text. There is no “right” way to annotate, although you or your school may have a “preferred” way to annotate. Annotation is one of those strategies that students are quick to abandon if it doesn’t serve their purposes, and so in developing an annotation framework, it’s important to consider the following questions:
- Is this simple enough for students to remember?
- Is this applicable for most scenarios?
- Have I built “next steps” for this annotation into my lessons to show students its value? (That is to say, if the only thing we use annotation for is just for the sake of annotation, students will quickly dismiss it in other academic settings as “just one of those things teachers make us do for no reason.”)
If you are still in the process of developing a system for annotation, keep in mind the following things:
- Annotation should be usable and serve a purpose for your content. What symbols will give you the most mileage? What will students need to look for almost all of the time in order to understand? What about to analyze? What about to connect?
- Do you want to lock your students in to a set of symbols and words, or do you want to give them more freedom to develop their own system?
- Annotation is not supposed to be pretty. I tell my students to “make your paper messy.” It is the thought process put on paper, and thought processes are generally not linear or neat–your brain hops around as you read, making connections and asking questions and passing judgements.
- If you want it to “stick” as a reading and analysis practice, you’ve got to return to it again and again. It needs to be a habit for you as well as your students.
Now, let’s explore a few annotation strategies to take it off the anchor chart and into the classroom!
1. Focused Annotation
Annotation can be overwhelming in the beginning, especially if you have several things you want students to be looking for. For the first few times, I always have students look for a single thing, often framed as a clue. For example, “As we read today, I want you to look for clues that foreshadow that this story is not going to have a happy ending. Annotate those clues with a frowny face.” Striving readers and younger students are often not used to doing anything else with a text besides trying to get from the first word to the last word. Giving them 5 or 6 things to look for as they read can be too much and they’ll end up with even less comprehension than before. But if you give them one lens or “look-for,” you can build their stamina and steadily grow their “mental monologue” as they read to include multiple things.
2. Layered Annotation
The next step after focused annotation is layered annotation–adding in other elements. This can be done through several individual reads of the same text or image or with a small group. In this type of annotation, there are several things to look for (sometimes all at the same “level,” sometimes increasing in importance to build to a bigger understanding), but still not at the same time. For example, on your first “read,” of a photograph, students might look at the people in the image and jot down some notes. On the second “read,” they might look at the buildings. On the third “read,” they might look at smaller details, like things in the background or what people are holding. Students can do this work as individuals or you can assign each person in a small group something to look for and then have students come together to share their findings.
3. Jigsaw Annotation
Once students are comfortable with annotating for multiple things, let them practice with a small text or part of an image. Take a longer text and break it up. Give them time to “make it messy,” annotating anything they can find, whether they think it’s important or not. At this point, annotation should include questions, predictions, and other forms of their own thoughts.
Once they’re done with their piece, they will put it together, in order, with their partners’ fully annotated pieces. Once the text is reassembled, they will connect their annotations, asking themselves questions like, “What annotations can I draw a line between to show that we had the same thought? Did someone else answer a question that I asked? Did I answer a question of someone else’s? What did we all notice throughout the text?”
4. Window Annotation
Part arts and crafts project, part deep detail analysis, window annotation involves layering a piece of paper or vellum over an image or document and then cutting out tiny holes to show only the most important words, phrases, or sentences of the document below–sort of a ransom note in reverse. Once students do this, they can use the rest of the top paper to annotate just about the text that is revealed through the “windows.” This can help you see what students are deeming the most important parts of a text and will give students plenty of room to write their thoughts.
5. Murder Board
In old detective shows, there is often a giant cork board with pictures of suspects, evidence, and locations connected with red string. Bring this practice into your classrooms by having students annotate between texts as well as within them. A murder board is a great precursor to a synthesis essay or project that involves connections between several texts. Give students a larger paper, several smaller documents or images, and red string or red marker. Students will draw lines connecting these texts and then annotate the connections to how how these separate texts “talk” to one another. Bonus points if they are “solving” an actual issue at the end!
6. Annotation Conversation (Marginalia)
An adapted religious practice, Marginalia is the practice of having a conversation in the margins. This can be done with a single complex document or several related documents. Similar to layered annotation, Marginalia involves revisiting documents through a series of lenses or questions, except this time students are rotating the documents among a group. They are never annotating the same thing because on each rotation the focus or question changes. As an extra layer of challenge, however, they are not just annotating and interacting with the source text, but also with each other’s annotations. This not only builds annotation skills, but serves as almost an analog message board where students leave notes for each other in the margins.
7. Class Discussions
As we said in the very beginning, annotation needs to lead to something for students to find it valuable. Consider having students “Question the (Annotation) Author” by reading each other’s annotations and leaving questions for the author to answer as an extension. You might also engage students in a Gallery Walk to take notes on and discuss what others annotated. Deeply annotated documents and images are great as precursors to Socratic Seminars, discussions spearheaded by students. I also frequently use student work in rounds of “One of These Things is Not Like the Other” of Sesame Street fame. Students examine other works and find things that they all have in common and then identify at least one thing in each example that one student noticed or did and the others did not. Noticing what other students’ thought processes look like can help to build similar thought processes in other students much more than I ever could.
In the end, our goal is to take annotation strategies out of the realm of “just something we do” and into the realm of “something we do because…” Through developing some habitual practices and mixing it up with engaging strategies, annotation can be a tool that will keep your students talking long after they leave your classroom.
Get hundreds of activities that can use annotation strategies!
Try a free 30-day trial of Active Classroom today
Sarah A. Honore began her career in education as a high school English teacher in Houston, Texas. She has since worked as a teacher, an instructional coach, a curriculum writer, and a director of English Language Arts at the district level. Her passions include literacy across content areas, diverse books, and supporting teachers and leaders. While not a social studies teacher by trade, Sarah loves exploring the connections between these two contents in order to enrich the classroom experience for both teachers and students.