Close Reading with Text Annotations

If you've ever thought about having students annotate the texts they read, but thought that this was too high of a skill for elementary age children, the good new is, its not! Students can learn to annotate a text even starting in Kindergarten.  Now let's talk about the purpose. WHY do we want  children to learn how to annotate texts as they read? To start, it's definitely a life-long skill that students will embrace throughout their schooling career.  The better students know and understand how to annotate a text, the better they will comprehend that text.  Annotating a text is key in the Close Read process.

Key Highlights of Annotating a Text:

• Keeping track of key ideas and questions
• Helping formulate thoughts and questions for deeper understanding
• Fostering analyzing and interpreting texts
• Encouraging the reader to make inferences and draw conclusions about the text
• Allowing the reader to easily refer back to the text without rereading the text in its entirety
• Insight inquiry as students read a text

It's important that students understand the purpose behind annotating a text, otherwise they will simply go through the motions, but won't be making the connections.  I use a specific set of annotations that I start the school year with.  I print them and insert them into page protectors for the students to keep in their binders.  As the year goes on and they have a firm understanding of annotating, I'll allow them to add in their own annotations as they see fit.  I then have my students utilize their text annotations to guide an academic/collaborative discussion within their table groups.  This helps students to understand the "purpose" of the annotations, and how to utilize them to verbalize their thoughts, opinions, or ideas.  These discussions help support students when they need to write a constructed response writing prompt, as they have already analyzed the text on a deeper level and had the opportunity to further analyze and discuss with their peers.  Thus, when they need to apply their thoughts, ideas, or opinions into writing, this structure has set them up for success.

Here's the steps I take teach this process!:

1) Choose a small set of specific annotation symbols that you would like your students to consistently use.  They need to be universal to start, until they understand the concept.

2)Create (or find) a sheet, template, or poster displaying the symbols and their meanings (something the students either have with them, or can refer to so they know what the annotations symbols are

3)Model for the students how to stop and annotate your thoughts as you're reading a text.

4)Guide them through making their own text annotations (e.g. read small chunks of a text together, and prompt students to stop and jot down a thought/annotation periodically.

5)Model how to utilize the text annotations to start an academic discussion.

If you follow this basic process and model, model, model, the students will start to blow your mind with their thoughts and discussions! Utilizing annotations through the close read process, is really the first step in supporting students' higher level thinking skills! 

Collaboratively Learning,

Megan Brown

megan.brown@omsd.net