In my quest for good teaching on text annotation, I found information on what I believe is a section of a teacher's blog on a web site belonging to Mid-Pacific Institute.   It begins by asking a survey question of parents:  Do you read with a pen/pencil in hand?  Yes or No  Parents were asked to respond by email so that the class could analyze the results.  I can't be sure by the section I was able to locate and read, but I think it is a second grade class.  The teacher tells the readers that her class is full of interactive readers.  She states, "The children are learning to leave tracks of their thinking on the pages as they read..."

 

This teacher went on the explain how her students go right past the yellow highlighters and reach for pencils when they read.  If they are reading textbooks or reference books or anything they are not permitted to write on, they grab their reading logs also.  They write down information, questions, and connections they have with the text.  She taught her class a specific set of marks to use in their annotations, as follows:

 

                               L = new learning
                                   Q = question
                                    * = important information
                                   R = Reminds me....(connection)

 

The children in this class collaborated as they read a book consisting of a paragraph and intricate illustrations on each page.  Together they talked as a group as they learned new things and made connections with the text and illustrations.  For each page, the students wrote down one thing they learned and one connection or question.

 

This teacher really has the right things going on in her class.  At least from what she stated in her blog, it sounds like a dream class.  She says that when she shows an educational video, her students automatically reach for their reading logs and pencils.  They frequently ask her to pause the video so they can write down important information in their logs.

 

My hope is to instill the love of learning in my students so that they willingly, and even anxiously (dare I hope?), record their thoughts as they read.  I have plenty of journals and sticky notes for those pages they aren't not allowed to mark on.  I would love nothing more than for them to be so excited about their reading and notetaking that I run out of sticky notes and get to buy some more! 

 

I love the quote from the first paragraph above: The children are learning to leave tracks of their thinking on the pages as they read.  That is such a neat way to think of annotating text.  I plan to use that analogy as I begin working with a new group of third graders this coming week.