The Ultimate Guide: Annotation for Young Adults in All Forms
Article by Sydney Loder
You walk into your sixth grade English/Literature class on the first day of Middle School, and you're feeling confident in your first round of summer reading. Two weeks later, your papers are handed back to you and you see that you got a 75! How could that be? You read the books and answered the questions. The teacher said that you lacked understanding and failed to see the deeper meaning. You think to yourself that there is no deeper meaning, its just pages with words about a kid named Alex Ryder. However, over the years you discover that every book has a deeper meaning, but still cannot grasp how to find it. Annotating is a key element in discovering these things and is often overlooked by a multitude of students because they don't have a true understanding of how it should be accomplished.
The act of annotation is one that teachers don't often teach, rather they expect it to be known and understood. Annotation is highly recommended within reading and can be conducted in many ways. These include and are not limited to:
Leisurely Annotation
What exactly is leisurely annotation and why would a reader ever use it? To start off, leisurely annotation is something the reader does for themselves, not in preparation for an assignment. This form of annotation is meant to be used when "reading books for fun." Leisurely annotation is conducted with the purpose of remembering and finding favorite quotes, tying several novels together, noticing common themes, and truly just discovering what type of books the reader enjoys.
The reader might be wondering how exactly they should start the process of leisurely annotation. The first step is to gather all tools necessary, this could include different color pens, highlighters, and sticky notes (the most important). Then the reader must start to get an idea of the things they want to get out of the story/novel. For example, they could be looking for a romance to sweep them off their feet, a specific style of writing that they want to implicate more into their daily reading, or quite literally, anything else. From here, the reader will begin to organize their thoughts in terms of colors within the pens, highlighters, and sticky notes. This means they give each color a specific role in their annotating process in order to help them remember what exactly they were thinking in that very moment.
Now that everything has been set up, the reader can begin reading their book! While they're reading, they look for quotes that have an impact on them, highlight them, write down what they think of them on a sticky note, and mark the page. They continue this process for specific scenes in the book that may remind them of something, or even scenes that they enjoy. Along with this they highlight/underline style structures that they enjoy within the novel and connect them with other novels or writers. Lastly, the reader write's down notes they might have when they find connections within the story, whether that be connections to their life, the novel itself, or even other forms of literature.
Direct and Purposeful Annotation
Direct and purposeful annotation is not always everyone's favorite form of annotation. It is often associated with preparing for assignments within schools based off of a certain form of literature. This form of annotation is also considerably harder than all the other forms as there are so many ways it can be carried out. However, we are going to cover the basics in order to get the reader prepared to use direct and purposeful annotation while still discovering their own style and ways to use it.
To start off, the reader will need to grab a pen, highlighters, and sticky notes to help them organize their thoughts. However, if the literature they are reading does not belong to them, they only need to use a pen and sticky notes (as they cannot write on the actual paper). The main things to look for during their reading is sentence structures, writing styles, figurative language, common themes, and cyclical ideas. These specific features in literature are a must to find when annotating because their combinations can lead to a deeper meaning of the story at hand. Therefore whenever the reader finds them, they must mark the page, rewrite or highlight the quote, and then write down on a sticky note what they believe the meaning is, and/or its effect on the story.
Now that we know the things that are a necessity to look for, we can move on to the things that can develop the readers personal style of annotating. These things could include finding connections within the story that better their understanding of the literature, or finding specific repetitive ideas that they've come to learn and understand. Adding in their own personal style of annotating to direct and purposeful annotating will give the reader the chance truly understand the literature. It will also give the reader the chance to build off of what has been learned while adding in their own ideas. This is what teachers will look for, a basic understanding coupled with theories and ideas, they want the reader to be able to think outside the box.
Textbook Annotation
Textbook annotation is completely different from all other forms of annotation, as its main goal is to find ways to take notes out of paragraphs of words. This is often used by young adults in classes such as AP World History, AP US History, AP Government, and AP Psychology. The students are handed textbooks, told to read specific pages or chapters, and then are given a quiz on them the next class. How should they prepare and take notes that would give them accurate information for the quiz.
The student must gather together paper to take notes on, sticky notes, a pencil, and highlighters. As they read through the assigned chapter, each section should be summarized on a sticky note and placed next to the title of that section. This is important because it will give the student a quick overview of each section while still taking in the necessary information. The notes that should be written on the separate piece of paper include all vocab words detailed throughout the chapter, dates of specific events, and documents written and when they were written. This note sheet should also include historical figures and their attributes to the specific topic, and events that occurred in the timeline. Lastly, any words or phrases that are unfamiliar to the student should be marked with the researched definition.
When writing these notes, the most important thing is to not overthink it. Textbook annotation should be a simple process and also one that does not take an extreme amount of time. All notes should be paraphrased in a way that the student understands, not the exact words/paragraphs written in the textbook. Every student is different, which means every process of textbook annotation will be different, and that's okay, there is truly no wrong way to do it. As long as the student can take in the information being read through the notes they have taken, the process will continue to be successful.
"The act of reading is a partnership. The author builds the house, but the reader makes it their home."
- Jodi Picoult
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