The New York Times - Briefly Noted: Practicing Useful Annotation Strategies lyrics

Overview | How does annotating books help to develop stronger reading sk**s? What can we learn from the marginalia of others? In this lesson, students review strategies of annotation and consider the benefits. They brainstorm ways to annotate, explore various methods in depth and test the value of annotating while reading Materials | Student journals, computers with Internet connection, projector, relevant cla**room reading material to annotate, chart paper Warm-up | Students respond to the following prompt in their journals: Do you write in books? Why or why not? Do you write in some kinds of books but not others? What kinds of things do you write? Have you found annotating books to be useful to you at all? When students have finished their responses, whip around the room to have share their thoughts. Ask: Are there any differences in how you write notes on, say, a novel or poem as opposed to a history textbook chapter? What are the uses of book annotations? If a computer and projector are available, project the comments from our Student Opinion question “Do You Write in Your Books?” or have students go to the page on the Internet. Read and discuss various student responses. Ask students if there are any comments they can relate to as readers. Alternatively, they can do this at home Related | In his New York Times Magazine article “What I Really Want Is Someone Rolling Around in the Text,” Sam Anderson explores the art of “marginalia”, or writing thoughts in the margins, and questions its preservation in the world of digital media: One day in college I was trawling the library for a good book to read when I found a book called “How to Read a Book.” I tried to read it, but must have been doing something wrong, because it struck me as old-fashioned and dull, and I could get through only a tiny chunk of it. That chunk, however, contained a statement that changed my reading life forever. The author argued that you didn't truly own a book (spiritually, intellectually) until you had marked it up This hit home for me — it spoke to the little scribal monk who lives deep in the scriptorium of my soul — and I quickly adopted the habit of marginalia: underlining memorable lines, writing keywords in blank spaces, jotting important page numbers inside of back covers. It was addictive, and useful; I liked being able to glance back through, say, “Great Expectations,” and discovering all of its great sentences already cued up for me. (Chapter 4, underlined: “I remember Mr. Hubble as a tough, high-shouldered, stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane.”) This wasn't exactly radical behavior — marking up books, I'm pretty sure, is one of the Seven Undying Cornerstones of Highly Effective College Studying. But it quickly began to feel, for me, like something more intense: a way to not just pa**ively read but also to fully enter a text, to collaborate with it, to mingle with an author on some kind of primary textual plane Read the entire article with your cla**, using the questions below Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension: What kinds of markings does Mr. Anderson put in his books? Why do e-books present a challenge to those who like to annotate their reading materials? What is the history of marginalia? What role do marginalia play in what Mr. Anderson calls “social reading”? According to Mr. Anderson, what is the relationship between marginalia and the experience of discovery while reading? Do you agree or disagree with him? Activity | Lead a cla** brainstorm of methods that students have learned to annotate texts. Have they used Post-It notes? Written notes directly on the lines and in the margins? Underlined or highlighted? Kept a reading journal? Record their annotation methods on a piece of chart paper. If they are not mentioned, add highlighting and underlining to the list You might also invite students to show the cla** examples of how they have marked up books Next, ask students why and how annotation is important and useful. What kinds of notes do they write? Questions? Comments and observations? Shorthand of the content for exam review? Bits from cla** lecture and discussion? Connections to other material? Doodles? Record their ideas on the paper as well Explain that they will now work in groups to further investigate annotation techniques Divide the cla** into six small groups (further subdividing as necessary given cla** size), and give each group one of the following to investigate and practice, along with the related link. After they have mastered the technique, this group will be responsible for teaching the sk** to the cla**. You might give the whole group the same text to work with for practice, like a chapter from current cla** reading or a short story Group 1: Highlighting and Annotating The Open University: Highlighting and Annotating and Open Loops: Twelve Ways to Mark Up a Book Group 2: Writing Notes in the Margin (Marginalia) Bucks County Community College: Notes in the Margin and Example of Annotated Text Group 3: Taking Reading Notes Associated Content: Book Note Taking Sk**s: How to Take Reading Notes From Textbooks and Other Written Resources Group 4: Keeping a Reading Journal George Mason University Writing Center: Keeping a Reading Journal and TeacherVision: Double-Entry Journals Group 5: Comparing Methods Pennington Publishing Blog: How Margin Notes are Better than the Yellow Highlighter Group 6: Using Digital Tools for Annotating Digital Inspiration: The Best Tools for Annotating Web Pages, Big Think: Tools for School: Digital Document Annotation on an iPad, Touch or Laptop and New York Times Open blog: Emphasis Update and Source Tell each group to read about and discuss each technique to make sure that all group members understand it, and then practice it briefly, in preparation to explain it to the whole cla**. They should also speculate on the best uses and purposes for their specific technique When groups are ready, go around the room and ask the first four groups to demonstrate their techniques to the cla**. Then have the fourth and fifth groups share their findings as well Process this activity by discussing the following questions: What did you notice while practicing these methods that might help you in some way as a student and reader? How does interacting with a text help make meaning and increase retention? Which style(s) of annotation are you now most likely to use based on your personal preference and learning style? Going further | Hold a cla** experiment to test whether and to what extent annotation helps readers retain information found in text Divide the cla** in half and give them a piece of writing to read that is relevant to coursework, like a chapter from current course reading Ask half the cla** to annotate the piece in the style of their choosing, and ask the other half to read the text without annotating. After students have completed the reading, give an a**essment designed to gauge retention and understanding. The a**essment might include a combination of multiple-choice, fill-in-the blank and short-answer questions and might include a portion where students share any verbatim pa**ages they can recall Process the experiment by reviewing who did best and why. Did the annotators fare better over all than the non-annotators? Did one or more specific methods tend to support retention and recall? Ask: Why do you think annotation helps the brain process information? What can we learn about ourselves as learners from exploring this sk** more deeply? How can you apply what we learned about annotating to other subjects? How about to reading that you do for pleasure? To take this lesson in a different direction, students could explore what they can learn from marginalia of famous people to answer the question of whether or why the preservation of marginalia is important. To do this, they might research the marginalia writings of famous people like Mark Twain to explore. What can readers of a person's marginalia learn about the person or the time period? They might also create the imagined digital marginalia for a contemporary writer, as part of our lesson “Our Computers, Ourselves: Imagining the Digital Lives of Authors and Characters.” Finally, they might do a cla**-wide interactive project in which they form book clubs and share their own marginalia — on paper or digitally — and respond to one another's notes as they read. What did they learn about themselves as readers — and about their peers — from sharing marginalia? Standards | This lesson is correlated to McREL's national standards (it can also be aligned to the new Common Core State Standards) Language Arts 5. Uses the general sk**s and strategies of the reading process 6. Uses sk**s and strategies to read a variety of literary texts 7. Uses sk**s and strategies to read a variety of informational texts 8. Uses listening and speaking strategies for different purposes Behavioral Studies 1. Understands that group and cultural influences contribute to human development, identity and behavior 2. Understands various meanings of social group, general implications of group membership, and different ways that groups function 3. Understands that interactions among learning, inheritance and physical development affect human behavior Technology 2. Knows the characteristics and uses of computer software programs 3. Understands the relationships among science, technology, society and the individual 6. Understands the nature and uses of different forms of technology Life Sk**s: Working With Others 1. Contributes to the overall effort of a group 4. Displays effective interpersonal communication sk**s