1. Making Annotations
September 5, 2014

2. What are annotations?
a note added to an article, book, or drawing that comments or explains
When you annotate, you make a connection to what you’re reading.

3. Making Annotations
There are many ways to annotate. Let’s look at a few examples:
1) Define words or slang; make the words real with examples from your experiences; explore why the author would have used a particular word or phrase.

4. Making Annotations
2) Make connections to other parts of the book or article. Feel free to use direct quotations from the book/article.

5. Making Annotations
3) Make connections to other texts you have read or seen, including:
Movies
Comic books/graphic novels
News events
Other books, stories, plays, songs, or poems

6. Making Annotations
4) Draw a picture when a visual connection is appropriate.
5) Rewrite, paraphrase, or summarize a particularly difficult passage or moment.

7. Making Annotations
6) Make meaningful connections to your own life experiences.
7) Describe a new perspective you may now have.
8) React! Does something make you happy? Furious? Sad?

8. Making Annotations
9) Offer an analysis or interpretation of what is happening in the text.
10) Point out and discuss literary techniques (i.e. metaphors, similes, personification, theme, symbolism, etc.) that the author is using.

9. Making Annotations
11) Mark words you don’t know, then look up their definitions.
12) If there is a place in the reading that confuses you, mark it with a question mark.