#Annotating an article how to
#Annotating an article free

All the while providing examples of great annotation at each level. I am also a fan of introducing fun highlighters, pens, and markers. Once they seem to master symbols, I will urge them to find a certain number of comments throughout the pages of their reading.

#Annotating an article free

I like to use this free handout from Just A Primary Girl on Teachers Pay Teachers. Students pick up right away on the use of symbols-more so than comments. These phrases are a little bit more user friendly in terms of reinforcing why we write on a piece of text. Two of my favorite things to call annotations are “think marks” and “SNOTS or Small Notes on the Side” (Cue fun lines like, “where are all of your boogers?”). It will be a process of lessons and feedback in order to show them the importance of quality annotation while reading either fiction or nonfiction texts. When we talk about annotation with middle schoolers, we have to acknowledge that this is a brand new skill.

#Annotating an article how to

How to Introduce Annotation to Middle Schoolers There are more than these three main ways of helping students find purpose in the text however, I constantly keep coming back to them as my standbys that never seem to get old. This is more than a diagnostic it is an intervention. They get to show me that their thoughts matter. This work is increasingly critical for our students who struggle with reading because they often haven’t been taught this habit before: Good readers have thoughts and opinions about what they read. The reason why I love annotation so much is that students get to show me that they have an opinion. I will often outline suggested 'purposes' for annotations when looking at both fiction and non-fiction pieces of work. Read to question (asking, pondering, wondering) Read to connect (text to self, text, and world) Read to comprehend (main idea, points, messages, vocabulary, context, etc) I find these are the three main ways of helping students find purpose while they annotate: While these are great reactions that demonstrate thinking and interaction with the text, teachers must help students define what the purpose of annotation while reading a text. Often, students will get caught up in the reader's response and engage in reactionary almost comic book-like reactions such as: WOW, WOAH, AWESOME, OMG, IDK, etc. Annotation is the action of writing your thinking on the page. Thinking through the text and showing evidence of your thinking is a throwback skill to elementary school teachers and middle school teachers stopping to demonstrate their thinking as they read. While the wilderness is beneficial when exploring, we don't want to get stuck in the wilderness with no water, no food, and no shelter. Sometimes the wilderness of reading is too wild and students choose not to enter it at all. While I don't often like to send students into the wilderness of reading without guidance, I think that this strategy provided her some valuable information that I find my students struggle with to this day: Students get lost in reading and can't find their way out. She then went back and taught us how to annotate our reading as a means to clarify the confusion. In my tenth grade year of high school, my high school English teacher and later on my mentor teacher started to teach us annotation using Ralph Waldo Emerson's 'The American Scholar' and 'Self-Reliance.' She assigned the reading one night, and the next day we entered her classroom utterly confused. In this post, I will outline how I go about teaching annotation skills, providing purpose for annotation, and how to keep mixing it up to keep kids interested. Annotation is a brand new skill for middle-schoolers. In the past, I have done Article of the Week from Kelly Gallagher to teach annotation skills, but I am finding that online learning is causing me to adapt to a new way to teach annotation while online.

I use non-fiction reading to implement this strategy because it establishes a routine for the rest of the year when we encounter a nonfiction text, and it transitions nicely to when we are dealing with larger works of fiction. I want to take a moment to pause and acknowledge the first skill that I teach students every school year is always the same: annotation in reading. I look forward to this transition each year. This phase takes place right around the six-week mark and involves focusing more on content than on routines and expectations. There is a movement from the “getting to know you phase” to the “we can finally start learning and growing phase” each year. When we get into the second marking period, I always notice a shift in how my classroom does its business. The first six weeks of back-to-school are filled with getting to know students, testing, and figuring out our classroom routines.