1. Active Reading Series: How to Critically Annotate

2. 1-minute Quickwrite:
If you saw someone sitting like this in the LRC, what would you think they were feeling and why? Jot down your answers to yourself.

3. The Act of Reading…
Some you might have said that the person looks happy, surprised, pleasantly surprised or excited because you:
Paid close attention to facial expression or gestures
Connected the person’s facial expression to a time when you saw someone else pulling similar face
Connected the person’s expression to a time when you pulled that face and felt a certain way
Asked yourself questions about why a person would be smiling like that with their hands cupping their face

4. Can You Relate to any of the following?
Sometimes I have these great ideas about what I’m reading, but when I finish the text,
I forget all about them
My eyes read it but my brain doesn’t
When I read, sometimes I find it hard to separate the most relevant information from the rest
What do you do in situations like this? Alternatively, what advice would you give someone else who feels like this? Take notes.

5. Video Time!
Click on the link to watch a video and take notes which might help you give advice to someone who experiences the problems featured in the previous slide: hPzs

6. What Good Readers Do…
An effective way to remember some of the good reading habits from your conversations and the video is to remember this phrase: A good reader PAUSES.
P: Establish a reading purpose
A: Create an annotation guide
U: Underline important points and write in the margins
S: Stop to make connections
E: Explore questions and unknown words or points
S: Summarise what they understand from the reading

7. Establishing a reading purpose
To establish a reading purpose, ask yourself, why am I reading this? What will I need to be doing with this reading afterward?
Are you reading to…
Comprehend (i.e: to understand the text)?
Look at how an author/illustrator creates meaning?
Break down a question or reading and make connections to what you know?
Analyse how persuasive language is used in a text?
Identify and locate important information that will help you understand a topic and answer some questions?
Find evidence (eg: quotes, statistics, expert opinions, etc) to help you support an argument?
Find clues to solve a problem?

8. Create their own annotation guide
Good readers mark the text as they read by using a system that makes tracks of their thinking as they read
This system is called an annotation guide, and could involve the use of different colours, different symbols or numbers

12. A Basic Annotation Guide
You can decide to colour-code the different points you annotate in a reading, or you can create your own symbols. Here is one way of doing it:
Underline any important ideas or events related to the reading purpose (eg: key ideas, themes, symbols, ‘clues’) :__________
Circle key words or phrases:
Asterisk any important bits of evidence (eg: quotations, statistics, key specific facts): *
Question-mark the parts which you want to know more about or are confused about, then ask a question in the margins: ?
Place an exclamation point next to anything that surprises you: !

13. Underlining key points or phrases and writing in the margins
This is when you start making tracks of your thinking as you read, using your annotation guide
Make sure you underline the key points and follow your guide, making notes in margins.
These notes can be questions, word definitions, observations— anything that helps you make track of your thinking about the reading
Your notes should relate to your reading purpose and what the reading makes you think about

14. Stop to make connections
Stop every time you make a connection to something you already know
There are different types of connections you can make:
Text to self
Text to text
Text to world
-What does this remind me of in my life? 
-How is it different from my life?
-What does this remind me of in another book I’ve read or film I’ve seen? 
-How is it different from other texts?
-What does this remind me of in the real world?
-How is it different to what I know about the real world?

15. Questioning
Good readers ask questions before, during and after reading to gain a deeper understanding of what they are reading
Next, they explore their questions by drawing on the text, their own knowledge and through using outside sources
This means that they can look things up in a dictionary, a thesaurus, on the internet, in another text, check for information at another point in the text, connect to their own experiences or talk to someone about it

16. Summarising
Summarising involves identifying and condensing the key points or main ideas of a reading into a few sentences
It’s the same skill you would use when explaining a film you just saw to a friend
It helps you fulfil your reading purpose and gain a deeper understanding of a text

17. Exit slip: 3-2-1 reflection
Before you leave, jot down:
3 things you remember from today’s session
2 things you found interesting
1 question or idea you might have about today’s session