Annotation Tips

When highlighting or marking text, be sure to only mark the points you think are most important or have questions about. Sometimes, just a word or phrase is all you need to remember what is important in that paragraph. 

Things to mark:

- Words you don’t know

- Facts and evidence that are important to the text

- Important quotations that show the meaning or theme of a text

- Phrases that you can relate to personally

- Phrases that remind you of a book, movie, poem, or article.

Create your code

To make annotating easy and fast, come up with a code that you understand to show why you marked something. Here are some that I use:

? – What does this mean? (Could be used for a specific word or a whole paragraph)

! – I love this!

* - This is important.

Questions and comments

Aside from fully understanding what is happening in the story, annotating also helps us find connections between the story and our lives. While reading, you’ll want to record questions and comments in the margins of the text. 

 Questions: any questions you have about the text that you want to ask in class. 

 Comments: connections you have or thoughts you have about what is happening. Could range from “I’ve done that before” to “She is very confused.”

 Summaries: a short sentence or two at the end of a chapter or section that sums up what has happened so far.

Annotation Alternatives

By now you may be thinking, “What if I can’t write in my book?” Here are some other ways to annotate:

 Reader’s Notebook: Keep your comments, questions, and important facts and quotes on a page in a notebook. Be sure to write down any words you want to look up also.

 Sticky Notes: Use sticky notes to mark important passages and add questions and comments where you can’t write.