How do you teach annotation??

[Sunnybuddy]

Do you have your kids annotate anything they think of or do you have more specifics?

[Renaissance Mom]

Search for how and why to annotate literature on YouTube. Also search/Google for "How to Mark a Book" by Mortimer Adler. We require in our co-op annotation on poetry, sometimes drama, short stories, critical essays written by others, etc. to be scanned and turned in several times a year. We require actual comments or questions rather than just an exclamation point or a smiley face. Dd annotated science articles frequently as prep to write essays in her DE science course.

[Sunnybuddy]

Yes, I don't want a symbol, I want the actual thought.

When your dd annotated for science, was she marking specifics?

[Renaissance Mom]

Yes, she noted any questions she had, any thoughts the reading provoked, what she wanted to investigate further, etc. Basically, her annotation is a record of her "conversation" with the reading...interaction instead of passive reading. this allowed her to look at her annotations of several readings to come up with a decent thesis statement. The science essays she did were not arguing scientific principles, but were focused on things like what scientific topic in this area is commonly misunderstood and why does it matter. Annotating allowed her to develop an arguable opinion and support it.

[Saddlemomma]

I'll be tackling this when school starts this year as well.  I've found some good, quick tutorials on YouTube.  My DD will also balk at writing in the books, so we'll use little post-it notes or a notebook, whichever she prefers.

[Sunnybuddy]

I think annotating is something we already do innately when we read, just in our heads. So I need to have her take those naturally occurring thoughts and put them to paper. Is that a good way of thinking of it?

[Renaissance Mom]

I think annotating is something we already do innately when we read, just in our heads. So I need to have her take those naturally occurring thoughts and put them to paper. Is that a good way of thinking of it?

Yes!

[yvonne]

Something I think made a difference for my daughter was looking at a heavily annotated book that I'd picked up at a private high school's used book sale. My daughter could see what annotation might look like and get an idea of why annotating could be so helpful. It was interesting to flip through and follow a couple themes .... loss, responsibility, man vs self,... and to notice figurative language ... irony, hyperbole.

Edited August 5, 2016 by yvonne