Annotation Assignment

Assignment: Annotation
What is annotation?
To annotate is to make notes directly on a text as one reads and rereads it, identifying significant features, discovering patterns of features, and speculating on meanings. It is a crucial means of paying close attention to a text whether one is preparing for a class discussion, generating ideas for an essay, or just experiencing the richness of a text for pleasure. So fundamental to what readers do, annotation is comparable to hammers for carpenters and spoons for cooks, according to John E. Schwiebert (Reading and Writing from Literature. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

Why do we annotate?
We annotate because it encourages us to notice and think about the many features of texts and enables us to keep track of those features and our thoughts

about them. Thus, annotation helps us to be attentive, energetic readers who reach deep, rather than cursory, understandings of texts.

What is the purpose of this assignment?
Students who are unfamiliar with annotation will be introduced to it.

Students who are already experienced annotators can experiment with the varied forms of annotations, thereby expanding the uses they typically make of annotation. The assignment gives all students the opportunity to examine a text closely.

Instructions for this assignment:
1. In the center of a blank sheet of paper, tape a photocopy of a short text--a short poem, portion of a long poem (perhaps a stanza), or portion of a piece of prose (perhaps a paragraph). If you would rather type than photocopy the text, be sure to transcribe the text exactly.
2. Annotate the text.
a. Mark the text. Marks include underlining, highlighting, circles, brackets, arrows, and asterisks.
1.) Mark interesting features of the text. A feature might be a phrase, word, part of a word (for example, a vowel or consonant whose sound strikes you as interesting), even a punctuation mark or line or stanza break. Readers who are proficient in scansion (the analysis of metrical patterns) also use marks to identify stressed and unstressed syllables and metrical feet.
2.) Mark the relation of features to each

other.
a.) Mark ideas, words, or sounds that repeat or resemble each other. (Rhyme, which is one pattern of repetition, is often tracked with letters—for example, abba.)
b.) Mark ideas, words, or sounds that form contrasts.
c.) Mark ideas, words, or sounds that are anomalous (in other words, do not fit any of the patterns of similarity or contrast).
b. Write comments in the margin. Comments can accomplish a variety of purposes; for example, they can
1.) define an unfamiliar word,
2.) paraphrase a particularly challenging phrase or sentence,
3.) identify the implications of a word,
4.) describe the effect of a sound,
5.) identify a literary technique (for example, enjambment or personification),
6.) ask a question,
7.) record a confusion,
8.) evaluate,
9.) speculate about the meanings that are implied by a feature, pattern of similarity, contrast, or anomaly
3. Complete and staple the coversheet to the top of your annotated text.

Coversheet: Annotation

Student’s Name:________________________________________________________

The following checklist, reminding you of the varied forms of annotations, helps you to gauge the fullness of your annotation. Please check each item that is true for your assignment.

 I used marks (underlining, highlighting, circles, brackets, arrows, asterisks, etc.).
 I used marks to identify a variety of interesting features of the text, including those that I checked below:
 phrase
 word
 part of word
 punctuation mark
 line or stanza break
 metrical unit
 I used marks to note the relation of features to each other. I marked
 ideas, words, or sounds that repeat or resemble each other
 ideas, words, or sounds that form contrasts
 ideas, words, or sounds that are anomalous (in other words, do not fit any of the patterns of similarity or contrast)

 I wrote comments in the margin. My comments accomplish a variety of purposes, including those that I checked below:
 defining an unfamiliar word
 paraphrasing a particularly challenging phrase or sentence
 identifying the implications of a word
 describing the effect of a sound
 identifying a literary technique
 asking a question
 recording a confusion
 evaluating
 speculating about the meanings that are implied by a feature, pattern of similarity, contrast, or anomaly

In the space below, identify and comment on two specific annotations in your assignment that especially please you. Explain how they clarify your understanding of the text or stimulate you to keep thinking about the text.

1.

2.