what are the 5 annotation strategies

Annotating Texts

What is annotation.

Annotation can be:

• A systematic summary of the text that you create within the document
• A key tool for close reading that helps you uncover patterns, notice important words, and identify main points
• An active learning strategy that improves comprehension and retention of information

Why annotate?

• Isolate and organize important material
• Identify key concepts
• Monitor your learning as you read
• Make exam prep effective and streamlined
• Can be more efficient than creating a separate set of reading notes

How do you annotate?

Summarize key points in your own words .

• Use headers and words in bold to guide you
• Look for main ideas, arguments, and points of evidence
• Notice how the text organizes itself. Chronological order? Idea trees? Etc.

Circle key concepts and phrases

• What words would it be helpful to look-up at the end?
• What terms show up in lecture? When are different words used for similar concepts? Why?

Write brief comments and questions in the margins

• Be as specific or broad as you would like—use these questions to activate your thinking about the content
• See our handout on reading comprehension tips for some examples

Use abbreviations and symbols

• Try ? when you have a question or something you need to explore further
• Try ! When something is interesting, a connection, or otherwise worthy of note
• Try * For anything that you might use as an example or evidence when you use this information.
• Ask yourself what other system of symbols would make sense to you.

Highlight/underline

• Highlight or underline, but mindfully. Check out our resource on strategic highlighting for tips on when and how to highlight.

Use comment and highlight features built into pdfs, online/digital textbooks, or other apps and browser add-ons

• Are you using a pdf? Explore its highlight, edit, and comment functions to support your annotations
• Some browsers have add-ons or extensions that allow you to annotate web pages or web-based documents
• Does your digital or online textbook come with an annotation feature?
• Can your digital text be imported into a note-taking tool like OneNote, EverNote, or Google Keep? If so, you might be able to annotate texts in those apps

What are the most important takeaways?

• Annotation is about increasing your engagement with a text
• Increased engagement, where you think about and process the material then expand on your learning, is how you achieve mastery in a subject
• As you annotate a text, ask yourself: how would I explain this to a friend?
• Put things in your own words and draw connections to what you know and wonder

The table below demonstrates this process using a geography textbook excerpt (Press 2004):

A common concern about annotating texts: It takes time!

Yes, it can, but that time isn’t lost—it’s invested.

Spending the time to annotate on the front end does two important things:

• It saves you time later when you’re studying. Your annotated notes will help speed up exam prep, because you can review critical concepts quickly and efficiently.
• It increases the likelihood that you will retain the information after the course is completed. This is especially important when you are supplying the building blocks of your mind and future career.

One last tip: Try separating the reading and annotating processes! Quickly read through a section of the text first, then go back and annotate.

Works consulted:

Nist, S., & Holschuh, J. (2000). Active learning: strategies for college success. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 202-218.

Simpson, M., & Nist, S. (1990). Textbook annotation: An effective and efficient study strategy for college students. Journal of Reading, 34: 122-129.

Press, F. (2004). Understanding earth (4th ed). New York: W.H. Freeman. 208-210.

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How to Annotate Texts

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

Annotation Fundamentals

How to start annotating , how to annotate digital texts, how to annotate a textbook, how to annotate a scholarly article or book, how to annotate literature, how to annotate images, videos, and performances, additional resources for teachers.

Writing in your books can make you smarter. Or, at least (according to education experts), annotation–an umbrella term for underlining, highlighting, circling, and, most importantly, leaving comments in the margins–helps students to remember and comprehend what they read. Annotation is like a conversation between reader and text. Proper annotation allows students to record their own opinions and reactions, which can serve as the inspiration for research questions and theses. So, whether you're reading a novel, poem, news article, or science textbook, taking notes along the way can give you an advantage in preparing for tests or writing essays. This guide contains resources that explain the benefits of annotating texts, provide annotation tools, and suggest approaches for diverse kinds of texts; the last section includes lesson plans and exercises for teachers.

Why annotate? As the resources below explain, annotation allows students to emphasize connections to material covered elsewhere in the text (or in other texts), material covered previously in the course, or material covered in lectures and discussion. In other words, proper annotation is an organizing tool and a time saver. The links in this section will introduce you to the theory, practice, and purpose of annotation. 

How to Mark a Book, by Mortimer Adler

This famous, charming essay lays out the case for marking up books, and provides practical suggestions at the end including underlining, highlighting, circling key words, using vertical lines to mark shifts in tone/subject, numbering points in an argument, and keeping track of questions that occur to you as you read. 

How Annotation Reshapes Student Thinking (TeacherHUB)

In this article, a high school teacher discusses the importance of annotation and how annotation encourages more effective critical thinking.

The Future of Annotation (Journal of Business and Technical Communication)

This scholarly article summarizes research on the benefits of annotation in the classroom and in business. It also discusses how technology and digital texts might affect the future of annotation. 

Annotating to Deepen Understanding (Texas Education Agency)

This website provides another introduction to annotation (designed for 11th graders). It includes a helpful section that teaches students how to annotate reading comprehension passages on tests.

Once you understand what annotation is, you're ready to begin. But what tools do you need? How do you prepare? The resources linked in this section list strategies and techniques you can use to start annotating. 

What is Annotating? (Charleston County School District)

This resource gives an overview of annotation styles, including useful shorthands and symbols. This is a good place for a student who has never annotated before to begin.

How to Annotate Text While Reading (YouTube)

This video tutorial (appropriate for grades 6–10) explains the basic ins and outs of annotation and gives examples of the type of information students should be looking for.

Annotation Practices: Reading a Play-text vs. Watching Film (U Calgary)

This blog post, written by a student, talks about how the goals and approaches of annotation might change depending on the type of text or performance being observed. 

Annotating Texts with Sticky Notes (Lyndhurst Schools)

Sometimes students are asked to annotate books they don't own or can't write in for other reasons. This resource provides some strategies for using sticky notes instead.

Teaching Students to Close Read...When You Can't Mark the Text (Performing in Education)

Here, a sixth grade teacher demonstrates the strategies she uses for getting her students to annotate with sticky notes. This resource includes a link to the teacher's free Annotation Bookmark (via Teachers Pay Teachers).

Digital texts can present a special challenge when it comes to annotation; emerging research suggests that many students struggle to critically read and retain information from digital texts. However, proper annotation can solve the problem. This section contains links to the most highly-utilized platforms for electronic annotation.

Evernote is one of the two big players in the "digital annotation apps" game. In addition to allowing users to annotate digital documents, the service (for a fee) allows users to group multiple formats (PDF, webpages, scanned hand-written notes) into separate notebooks, create voice recordings, and sync across all sorts of devices. 

OneNote is Evernote's main competitor. Reviews suggest that OneNote allows for more freedom for digital note-taking than Evernote, but that it is slightly more awkward to import and annotate a PDF, especially on certain platforms. However, OneNote's free version is slightly more feature-filled, and OneNote allows you to link your notes to time stamps on an audio recording.

Diigo is a basic browser extension that allows a user to annotate webpages. Diigo also offers a Screenshot app that allows for direct saving to Google Drive.

While the creators of Hypothesis like to focus on their app's social dimension, students are more likely to be interested in the private highlighting and annotating functions of this program.

Foxit PDF Reader

Foxit is one of the leading PDF readers. Though the full suite must be purchased, Foxit offers a number of annotation and highlighting tools for free.

Nitro PDF Reader

This is another well-reviewed, free PDF reader that includes annotation and highlighting. Annotation, text editing, and other tools are included in the free version.

Goodreader is a very popular Mac-only app that includes annotation and editing tools for PDFs, Word documents, Powerpoint, and other formats.

Although textbooks have vocabulary lists, summaries, and other features to emphasize important material, annotation can allow students to process information and discover their own connections. This section links to guides and video tutorials that introduce you to textbook annotation. 

Annotating Textbooks (Niagara University)

This PDF provides a basic introduction as well as strategies including focusing on main ideas, working by section or chapter, annotating in your own words, and turning section headings into questions.

A Simple Guide to Text Annotation (Catawba College)

The simple, practical strategies laid out in this step-by-step guide will help students learn how to break down chapters in their textbooks using main ideas, definitions, lists, summaries, and potential test questions.

Annotating (Mercer Community College)

This packet, an excerpt from a literature textbook, provides a short exercise and some examples of how to do textbook annotation, including using shorthand and symbols.

Reading Your Healthcare Textbook: Annotation (Saddleback College)

This powerpoint contains a number of helpful suggestions, especially for students who are new to annotation. It emphasizes limited highlighting, lots of student writing, and using key words to find the most important information in a textbook. Despite the title, it is useful to a student in any discipline.

Annotating a Textbook (Excelsior College OWL)

This video (with included transcript) discusses how to use textbook features like boxes and sidebars to help guide annotation. It's an extremely helpful, detailed discussion of how textbooks are organized.

Because scholarly articles and books have complex arguments and often depend on technical vocabulary, they present particular challenges for an annotating student. The resources in this section help students get to the heart of scholarly texts in order to annotate and, by extension, understand the reading.

Annotating a Text (Hunter College)

This resource is designed for college students and shows how to annotate a scholarly article using highlighting, paraphrase, a descriptive outline, and a two-margin approach. It ends with a sample passage marked up using the strategies provided. 

Guide to Annotating the Scholarly Article (ReadWriteThink.org)

This is an effective introduction to annotating scholarly articles across all disciplines. This resource encourages students to break down how the article uses primary and secondary sources and to annotate the types of arguments and persuasive strategies (synthesis, analysis, compare/contrast).

How to Highlight and Annotate Your Research Articles (CHHS Media Center)

This video, developed by a high school media specialist, provides an effective beginner-level introduction to annotating research articles. 

How to Read a Scholarly Book (AndrewJacobs.org)

In this essay, a college professor lets readers in on the secrets of scholarly monographs. Though he does not discuss annotation, he explains how to find a scholarly book's thesis, methodology, and often even a brief literature review in the introduction. This is a key place for students to focus when creating annotations. 

A 5-step Approach to Reading Scholarly Literature and Taking Notes (Heather Young Leslie)

This resource, written by a professor of anthropology, is an even more comprehensive and detailed guide to reading scholarly literature. Combining the annotation techniques above with the reading strategy here allows students to process scholarly book efficiently. 

Annotation is also an important part of close reading works of literature. Annotating helps students recognize symbolism, double meanings, and other literary devices. These resources provide additional guidelines on annotating literature.

AP English Language Annotation Guide (YouTube)

In this ~10 minute video, an AP Language teacher provides tips and suggestions for using annotations to point out rhetorical strategies and other important information.

Annotating Text Lesson (YouTube)

In this video tutorial, an English teacher shows how she uses the white board to guide students through annotation and close reading. This resource uses an in-depth example to model annotation step-by-step.

Close Reading a Text and Avoiding Pitfalls (Purdue OWL)

This resources demonstrates how annotation is a central part of a solid close reading strategy; it also lists common mistakes to avoid in the annotation process.

AP Literature Assignment: Annotating Literature (Mount Notre Dame H.S.)

This brief assignment sheet contains suggestions for what to annotate in a novel, including building connections between parts of the book, among multiple books you are reading/have read, and between the book and your own experience. It also includes samples of quality annotations.

AP Handout: Annotation Guide (Covington Catholic H.S.)

This annotation guide shows how to keep track of symbolism, figurative language, and other devices in a novel using a highlighter, a pencil, and every part of a book (including the front and back covers).

In addition to written resources, it's possible to annotate visual "texts" like theatrical performances, movies, sculptures, and paintings. Taking notes on visual texts allows students to recall details after viewing a resource which, unlike a book, can't be re-read or re-visited ( for example, a play that has finished its run, or an art exhibition that is far away). These resources draw attention to the special questions and techniques that students should use when dealing with visual texts.

How to Take Notes on Videos (U of Southern California)

This resource is a good place to start for a student who has never had to take notes on film before. It briefly outlines three general approaches to note-taking on a film. 

How to Analyze a Movie, Step-by-Step (San Diego Film Festival)

This detailed guide provides lots of tips for film criticism and analysis. It contains a list of specific questions to ask with respect to plot, character development, direction, musical score, cinematography, special effects, and more. 

How to "Read" a Film (UPenn)

This resource provides an academic perspective on the art of annotating and analyzing a film. Like other resources, it provides students a checklist of things to watch out for as they watch the film.

Art Annotation Guide (Gosford Hill School)

This resource focuses on how to annotate a piece of art with respect to its formal elements like line, tone, mood, and composition. It contains a number of helpful questions and relevant examples. 

Photography Annotation (Arts at Trinity)

This resource is designed specifically for photography students. Like some of the other resources on this list, it primarily focuses on formal elements, but also shows students how to integrate the specific technical vocabulary of modern photography. This resource also contains a number of helpful sample annotations.

How to Review a Play (U of Wisconsin)

This resource from the University of Wisconsin Writing Center is designed to help students write a review of a play. It contains suggested questions for students to keep in mind as they watch a given production. This resource helps students think about staging, props, script alterations, and many other key elements of a performance.

This section contains links to lessons plans and exercises suitable for high school and college instructors.

Beyond the Yellow Highlighter: Teaching Annotation Skills to Improve Reading Comprehension (English Journal)

In this journal article, a high school teacher talks about her approach to teaching annotation. This article makes a clear distinction between annotation and mere highlighting.

Lesson Plan for Teaching Annotation, Grades 9–12 (readwritethink.org)

This lesson plan, published by the National Council of Teachers of English, contains four complete lessons that help introduce high school students to annotation.

Teaching Theme Using Close Reading (Performing in Education)

This lesson plan was developed by a middle school teacher, and is aligned to Common Core. The teacher presents her strategies and resources in comprehensive fashion.

Analyzing a Speech Using Annotation (UNC-TV/PBS Learning Media)

This complete lesson plan, which includes a guide for the teacher and relevant handouts for students, will prepare students to analyze both the written and presentation components of a speech. This lesson plan is best for students in 6th–10th grade.

Writing to Learn History: Annotation and Mini-Writes (teachinghistory.org)

This teaching guide, developed for high school History classes, provides handouts and suggested exercises that can help students become more comfortable with annotating historical sources.

Writing About Art (The College Board)

This Prezi presentation is useful to any teacher introducing students to the basics of annotating art. The presentation covers annotating for both formal elements and historical/cultural significance.

Film Study Worksheets (TeachWithMovies.org)

This resource contains links to a general film study worksheet, as well as specific worksheets for novel adaptations, historical films, documentaries, and more. These resources are appropriate for advanced middle school students and some high school students. 

Annotation Practice Worksheet (La Guardia Community College)

This worksheet has a sample text and instructions for students to annotate it. It is a useful resource for teachers who want to give their students a chance to practice, but don't have the time to select an appropriate piece of text. 

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What is annotating and why do it, annotation explained, steps to annotating a source, annotating strategies.

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What is Annotating?

Annotating is any action that deliberately interacts with a text to enhance the reader's understanding of, recall of, and reaction to the text. Sometimes called "close reading," annotating usually involves highlighting or underlining key pieces of text and making notes in the margins of the text. This page will introduce you to several effective strategies for annotating a text that will help you get the most out of your reading.

Why Annotate?

By annotating a text, you will ensure that you understand what is happening in a text after you've read it. As you annotate, you should note the author's main points, shifts in the message or perspective of the text, key areas of focus, and your own thoughts as you read. However, annotating isn't just for people who feel challenged when reading academic texts. Even if you regularly understand and remember what you read, annotating will help you summarize a text, highlight important pieces of information, and ultimately prepare yourself for discussion and writing prompts that your instructor may give you. Annotating means you are doing the hard work while you read, allowing you to reference your previous work and have a clear jumping-off point for future work.

1. Survey : This is your first time through the reading

You can annotate by hand or by using document software. You can also annotate on post-its if you have a text you do not want to mark up. As you annotate, use these strategies to make the most of your efforts:

• Include a key or legend on your paper that indicates what each marking is for, and use a different marking for each type of information. Example: Underline for key points, highlight for vocabulary, and circle for transition points.
• If you use highlighters, consider using different colors for different types of reactions to the text. Example: Yellow for definitions, orange for questions, and blue for disagreement/confusion.
• Dedicate different tasks to each margin: Use one margin to make an outline of the text (thesis statement, description, definition #1, counter argument, etc.) and summarize main ideas, and use the other margin to note your thoughts, questions, and reactions to the text.

Lastly, as you annotate, make sure you are including descriptions of the text as well as your own reactions to the text. This will allow you to skim your notations at a later date to locate key information and quotations, and to recall your thought processes more easily and quickly.

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• Last Updated: Apr 25, 2024 2:50 PM
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Annotating text: The complete guide to close reading

As students, researchers, and self-learners, we understand the power of reading and taking smart notes . But what happens when we combine those together? This is where annotating text comes in.

Annotated text is a written piece that includes additional notes and commentary from the reader. These notes can be about anything from the author's style and tone to the main themes of the work. By providing context and personal reactions, annotations can turn a dry text into a lively conversation.

Creating text annotations during close readings can help you follow the author's argument or thesis and make it easier to find critical points and supporting evidence. Plus, annotating your own texts in your own words helps you to better understand and remember what you read.

This guide will take a closer look at annotating text, discuss why it's useful, and how you can apply a few helpful strategies to develop your annotating system.

What does annotating text mean?

Text annotation refers to adding notes, highlights, or comments to a text. This can be done using a physical copy in textbooks or printable texts. Or you can annotate digitally through an online document or e-reader.

Generally speaking, annotating text allows readers to interact with the content on a deeper level, engaging with the material in a way that goes beyond simply reading it. There are different levels of annotation, but all annotations should aim to do one or more of the following:

• Summarize the key points of the text
• Identify evidence or important examples
• Make connections to other texts or ideas
• Think critically about the author's argument
• Make predictions about what might happen next

When done effectively, annotation can significantly improve your understanding of a text and your ability to remember what you have read.

What are the benefits of annotation?

There are many reasons why someone might wish to annotate a document. It's commonly used as a study strategy and is often taught in English Language Arts (ELA) classes. Students are taught how to annotate texts during close readings to identify key points, evidence, and main ideas.

In addition, this reading strategy is also used by those who are researching for self-learning or professional growth. Annotating texts can help you keep track of what you’ve read and identify the parts most relevant to your needs. Even reading for pleasure can benefit from annotation, as it allows you to keep track of things you might want to remember or add to your personal knowledge management system .

Annotating has many benefits, regardless of your level of expertise. When you annotate, you're actively engaging with the text, which can help you better understand and learn new things . Additionally, annotating can save you time by allowing you to identify the most essential points of a text before starting a close reading or in-depth analysis.

There are few studies directly on annotation, but the body of research is growing. In one 2022 study, specific annotation strategies increased student comprehension , engagement, and academic achievement. Students who annotated read slower, which helped them break down texts and visualize key points. This helped students focus, think critically , and discuss complex content.

Annotation can also be helpful because it:

• Allows you to quickly refer back to important points in the text without rereading the entire thing
• Helps you to make connections between different texts and ideas
• Serves as a study aid when preparing for exams or writing essays
• Identifies gaps in your understanding so that you can go back and fill them in

The process of annotating text can make your reading experience more fruitful. Adding comments, questions, and associations directly to the text makes the reading process more active and enjoyable.

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How do you annotate text?

There are many different ways to annotate while reading. The traditional method of annotating uses highlighters, markers, and pens to underline, highlight, and write notes in paper books. Modern methods have now gone digital with apps and software. You can annotate on many note-taking apps, as well as online documents like Google Docs.

While there are documented benefits of handwritten notes, recent research shows that digital methods are effective as well. Among college students in an introductory college writing course, those with more highlighting on digital texts correlated with better reading comprehension than those with more highlighted sections on paper.

No matter what method you choose, the goal is always to make your reading experience more active, engaging, and productive. To do so, the process can be broken down into three simple steps:

• Do the first read-through without annotating to get a general understanding of the material.
• Reread the text and annotate key points, evidence, and main ideas.
• Review your annotations to deepen your understanding of the text.

Of course, there are different levels of annotation, and you may only need to do some of the three steps. For example, if you're reading for pleasure, you might only annotate key points and passages that strike you as interesting or important. Alternatively, if you're trying to simplify complex information in a detailed text, you might annotate more extensively.

The type of annotation you choose depends on your goals and preferences. The key is to create a plan that works for you and stick with it.

Annotation strategies to try

When annotating text, you can use a variety of strategies. The best method for you will depend on the text itself, your reason for reading, and your personal preferences. Start with one of these common strategies if you don't know where to begin.

• Questioning: As you read, note any questions that come to mind as you engage in critical thinking . These could be questions about the author's argument, the evidence they use, or the implications of their ideas.
• Summarizing: Write a brief summary of the main points after each section or chapter. This is a great way to check your understanding, help you process information , and identify essential information to reference later.
• Paraphrasing: In addition to (or instead of) summaries, try paraphrasing key points in your own words. This will help you better understand the material and make it easier to reference later.
• Connecting: Look for connections between different parts of the text or other ideas as you read. These could be things like similarities, contrasts, or implications. Make a note of these connections so that you can easily reference them later.
• Visualizing: Sometimes, it can be helpful to annotate text visually by drawing pictures or taking visual notes . This can be especially helpful when trying to make connections between different ideas.
• Responding: Another way to annotate is to jot down your thoughts and reactions as you read. This can be a great way to personally engage with the material and identify any areas you need clarification on.

Combining the three-step annotation process with one or more strategies can create a customized, powerful reading experience tailored to your specific needs.

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7 tips for effective annotations

Once you've gotten the hang of the annotating process and know which strategies you'd like to use, there are a few general tips you can follow to make the annotation process even more effective.

1. Read with a purpose. Before you start annotating, take a moment to consider what you're hoping to get out of the text. Do you want to gain a general overview? Are you looking for specific information? Once you know what you're looking for, you can tailor your annotations accordingly.

2. Be concise. When annotating text, keep it brief and focus on the most important points. Otherwise, you risk annotating too much, which can feel a bit overwhelming, like having too many tabs open . Limit yourself to just a few annotations per page until you get a feel for what works for you.

3. Use abbreviations and symbols. You can use abbreviations and symbols to save time and space when annotating digitally. If annotating on paper, you can use similar abbreviations or symbols or write in the margins. For example, you might use ampersands, plus signs, or question marks.

4. Highlight or underline key points. Use highlighting or underlining to draw attention to significant passages in the text. This can be especially helpful when reviewing a text for an exam or essay. Try using different colors for each read-through or to signify different meanings.

5. Be specific. Vague annotations aren't very helpful. Make sure your note-taking is clear and straightforward so you can easily refer to them later. This may mean including specific inferences, key points, or questions in your annotations.

6. Connect ideas. When reading, you'll likely encounter ideas that connect to things you already know. When these connections occur, make a note of them. Use symbols or even sticky notes to connect ideas across pages. Annotating this way can help you see the text in a new light and make connections that you might not have otherwise considered.

7. Write in your own words. When annotating, copying what the author says verbatim can be tempting. However, it's more helpful to write, summarize or paraphrase in your own words. This will force you to engage your information processing system and gain a deeper understanding.

These tips can help you annotate more effectively and get the most out of your reading. However, it’s important to remember that, just like self-learning , there is no one "right" way to annotate. The process is meant to enrich your reading comprehension and deepen your understanding, which is highly individual. Most importantly, your annotating system should be helpful and meaningful for you.

Engage your learning like never before by learning how to annotate text

Learning to effectively annotate text is a powerful tool that can improve your reading, self-learning , and study strategies. Using an annotating system that includes text annotations and note-taking during close reading helps you actively engage with the text, leading to a deeper understanding of the material.

Try out different annotation strategies and find what works best for you. With practice, annotating will become second nature and you'll reap all the benefits this powerful tool offers.

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7 Strategies for Teaching Students How to Annotate

• November 7, 2018

For many educators, annotation goes hand in hand with developing close reading skills. Annotation more fully engages students and increases reading comprehension strategies, helping students develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for literature.

However, it’s also one of the more difficult skills to teach. In order to think critically about a text, students need to learn how to actively engage with the text they’re reading. Annotation provides that immersive experience, and new digital reading technologies not only make annotation easier than ever, but also make it possible for any book, article, or text to be annotated.

1. Teach the Basics of Good Annotation

Help your students understand that annotation is simply the process of thoughtful reading and making notes as they study a text. Start with some basic forms of annotation:

• highlighting a phrase or sentence and including a comment
• circling a word that needs defining
• posing a question when something isn’t fully understood
• writing a short summary of a key section

Assure them that good annotating will help them concentrate and better understand what they read and better remember their thoughts and ideas when they revisit the text.

2. Model Effective Annotation

One of the most effective ways to teach annotation is to show students your own thought process when annotating a text. Display a sample text and think out loud as you make notes. Show students how you might underline key words or sentences and write comments or questions, and explain what you’re thinking as you go through the reading and annotation process.

Annotation Activity: Project a short, simple text and let students come up and write their own comments and discuss what they’ve written and why. This type of modeling and interaction helps students understand the thought process that critical reading requires.

3. Give Your Students a Reading Checklist

When first teaching students about annotation, you can help shape their critical analysis and active reading strategies by giving them specific things to look for while reading, like a checklist or annotation worksheet for a text. You might have them explain how headings and subheads connect with the text, or have them identify facts that add to their understanding.

4. Provide an Annotation Rubric

When you know what your annotation goals are for your students, it can be useful to develop a simple rubric that defines what high-quality and thoughtful annotation looks like. This provides guidance for your students and makes grading easier for you. You can modify your rubric as goals and students’ needs change over time.

5. Keep It Simple

Especially for younger or struggling readers, help your students develop self-confidence by keeping things simple. Ask them to circle a word they don’t know, look up that word in the dictionary, and write the definition in a comment. They can also write an opinion on a particular section, so there’s no right or wrong answer.

6. Teach Your Students How to Annotate a PDF

Or other digital texts. Most digital reading platforms include a number of tools that make annotation easy. These include highlighters, text comments, sticky notes, mark up tools for underlining, circling, or drawing boxes, and many more. If you don’t have a digital reading platform, you can also teach how to annotate a basic PDF text using simple annotation tools like highlights or comments.

7. Make It Fun!

The more creative you get with annotation, the more engaged your students will be. So have some fun with it!

• Make a scavenger hunt by listing specific components to identify
• Color code concepts and have students use multicolored highlighters
• Use stickers to represent and distinguish the five story elements: character, setting, plot, conflict, and theme
• Choose simple symbols to represent concepts, and let students draw those as illustrated annotations: a magnifying glass could represent clues in the text, a key an important idea, and a heart could indicate a favorite part

Annotation Activity: Create a dice game where students have to find concepts and annotate them based on the number they roll. For example, 1 = Circle and define a word you don’t know, 2 = Underline a main character, 3 = Highlight the setting, etc.

Teaching students how to annotate gives them an invaluable tool for actively engaging with a text. It helps them think more critically, it increases retention, and it instills confidence in their ability to analyze more complex texts.

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5 Steps to Great Annotations

But in an academic setting, we might be asked to do something else with them: writing a paper, participating in an online discussion, or many other tasks that require us to think differently about the book than if we simply read for pleasure.

Here’s an example. This summer I’m reading Girls Burn Brighter  by Shobha Rao for an AP summer reading club. While it’s basically a pleasure read for me, I’ll also be discussing it with other teachers in a few weeks. In order to contribute to the conversation I need to be making some notes along the way so that I have something important to say.

Annotation is thinking made visible. However, students may not know what they should be thinking about when they read, or need some help making those things explicit. Here are 5 things that we can ask students to do while they annotate and why those strategies are important.

1. Ask Questions.

Students can ask questions like the following: Where are you confused? Where might you have to reread? What guesses can you make about what will happen next?

Why this is important : at a really basic level, this strategy allows students to come to class with something to contribute: pose your question and get an answer.  This can be a powerful strategy to bring to class the following day. What questions do you have about the text? Are these questions we should know the answer to? What questions do you have that prevent you from going further?

Asking questions also teaches kids to pay attention to when they get stuck and what strategies they can then use to move forward. Sometimes answering questions is essential for understanding what’s going on. Sometimes the author doesn’t want you to know. It’s important for students to know the difference and be able to hold uncertainty as they read.

2. Add personal responses.

What does this text remind you of in your own life? In other texts? In popular culture and current events? What are your opinions about what the characters are doing and what happens to them?

One of my favorite annotations of all time was one from a student who wrote “What a bitch.” about Caroline Bingley in the margins of  Pride and Prejudice.  Here’s someone who connected so deeply with the story that she thought of her as an actual character. And her use of what would commonly be called profanity and she never would have used in a paper, indicated that she saw this as a place where she could speak freely in her own voice. That’s what we want.

Why this is important : If students ONLY did this for annotation, we would be in good shape. We would know they were actively reading and making the book their own by fostering deep connections to their experiences. When students read  Frankenstein  we want them to be thinking about all the different ways that science can cross moral and ethical boundaries. When they read  To Kill A Mockingbird  we want them to be outraged at the injustice while also recognizing that it still exists today. This is a record of the ability of reading to enlarge our world and get us thinking.

3. Draw pictures and/or symbols

Annotations don’t always have to be words. Quick sketches can be a great way to annotate, and a system of symbols can be a quick way to have kids annotate certain things that they will see repeatedly. Plus, it’s fun to create a secret code that no one else will understand.

Why this is important. It can be a fun way to engage in an activity that many students find to be a burden. It can be appealing to people like me that are naturally hard-wired to draw things. But it can also be a way to get kids to think differently about a text. What would happen if you told your class that for the next chapter they can only use pictures to annotate? They might find some great new insights that way, and it can be a good way to add some variety when they are halfway through a book and need something new to make annotation fresh again.

4. Mark things that are important.

Being able to instinctively know what is important is a hard skill to develop and one that requires a decent amount of reading experience in order to be able to do on the fly (This is why I never tell students to annotate examples of foreshadowing because most of them don’t have the ability to see it.) However, here are a few things that authors do in order to tell the reader that something in important. Students can look for these as they read:

• Repetition : If you keep seeing it, whether it be a word, a phrase, an idea, or a character, it’s important.
• Similes and metaphors : If an author wants to emphasize something, they may use an especially striking simile or metaphor (or a series of them) to explain it.
• Lots of detail : If something is explained in great detail it’s important. If you see a large paragraph describing a turtle crossing the road in minute detail (especially if it seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the passage), there’s something going on there.
• Opposites : One way to show that something is important is to juxtapose it with something that is completely opposite or out of place with the rest of the passage.

5. Summarize what you’ve read.

Summarizing is an underrated skill, and not as easy as people think. Can you summarize the events or a chapter or the main points of an article in a sentence?

Why this is important : Summarizing is the best way to really process something you’ve read to really prove that you’ve understood it. Furthermore, if you’re reading a long novel it’s a great way to review what happened in each chapter before you take a test or write a paper. It’s a great bread crumb trail of what happened. If you’re reading an article, summarizing the main points is a great active reading strategy that prepares you for class discussions. However, you have to be careful with this one, because I find this is the one that students find most tedious. If students are getting bogged down in annotation, this is the first one I would drop.

Final Thoughts

We don’t necessarily want students to be doing all of these things at once because we want to be careful that we don’t turn students off from reading. Getting kids to love to read is one of the most important things we do as ELA teachers. But we also want them to develop a set of skills that they can use for different occasions. I don’t annotate books I read for pleasure, even though there are some people out there that do. But if I’m reading an article that I am going to use in a paper for a college class, you can bet I’ll have a pen and highlighter close by. In a previous blog post I wrote about how we can rethink our annotation practices so students will find it meaningful.  I’ve also written about why students hate annotating and what we can do about it .

It’s also important to model annotation. I don’t give students something to read that I haven’t annotated myself. And if I teach the class a couple of times a day, I can show them how reading something multiple times leads to new insights.

Another helpful strategy is to give them a poem and a non-fiction piece, have them annotate both, and share how they annotated each one differently while still using the above five strategies. You can also have students share what they annotated. Anytime that we can get kids thinking about what they are doing – and more importantly how they were better off for doing it – we will start to build value in a skill.

David Rickert is a high school English teacher in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. He has been teaching for over 20 years and has taught virtually every grade and every subject. David is passionate about developing lessons that make difficult language arts subjects fun and engaging. He is also an author on Teachers Pay Teachers . 

• Read more about: annotating , education , english , language arts

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How to annotate text while reading: 11 strategies

Katie Azevedo May 10, 2017 note-taking , reading comprehension , study skills

By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed.

Annotating a book or an article is a fundamental school habit that you’ll want to develop as early as possible. As you move through school and your texts get harder and harder, you’ll need to know how to annotate text while reading.

First things first: Annotating means taking notes on a text – – either on a book or an article or something similar. So to annotate means to take notes .

You might be wondering why the heck you would annotate anyway(?). For so many reasons ! The most important reason you would annotate is for a deep understanding of the material. Taking notes on your text helps you comprehend what you’re reading on a much deeper level than if you were to just read it straight through.

In this tutorial I’m teaching you how to annotate, but to get the most complete instruction, be sure to avoid these 6 common annotation mistakes .

 4 major benefits of annotating:

• It keeps you awake and engaged as you read, and reduces your chances of “fake reading syndrome.”
• It helps you process what you’re reading as you’re reading it.
• It slows down your reading, which is actually a good thing. Decreasing your pace can often increase your comprehension and retention.
• It double-whammies as a way to quickly find information later on . In other words, when you go back into the book to find something later, you can just read your annotations, which is faster than reading the actual text a second time through.

So how do you annotate? There are so many ways. Just as there are so many types of learners, there are so many techniques that suit different students. You might have to experiment for a while to see what does and does not work for you, but there are some basic annotation principals, or rules, to keep in mind as you figure out your own system.

How to annotate text while reading: 11 annotation strategies you might find helpful:

• Circle unfamiliar words. Then look them up, and write down the definition.
• Use question marks to indicate areas of uncertainty.
• Use stars to indicate anything that seems important, such as themes, symbols, foreshadowing, etc.
• Use exclamation points to indicate something dramatic, or a key turning point.
• Circle character names any time they are introduced for the first time.
• Keep a list somewhere, maybe on the inside cover, of all the characters and their traits. Add to this list as new characters are introduced, or as you learn more about existing characters.
• Write your notes in the margins (best method), on sticky-notes (decent method), or in a separate notebook (least favorable method).
• Paraphrase (summarize) each chapter after you finish reading it. You only need a few sentences to do this. Write it down at the beginning or end of the chapter.
• Write down any questions you have about the text – either questions you’re willing to wait to find out the answer to as you read further, or questions you want to bring up to your teacher in class the next day.
• Use a color-coded system if that type of thing appeals to you. (Colors! Yes!)
• Give each chapter a title. After you finish reading each chapter, go back to its title page and give it a title. The title should simply be the main idea of the chapter, or a statement about the main event in the chapter. If the chapter already has a title, it’s likely just catchy and not helpful, so still go ahead and title it yourself.
• BONUS TIP: Become a master of the Highlight and Rewrite Strategy .

Note: If you’re reading a text on your tablet or ipad, you can still annotate! There are so many cool apps that allow you to circle, underline, highlight, doodle, whatever. Just do a basic search for “annotation apps” and you’ll find a bunch. iannotatepdf is a good one, as is LuminPDF and Notability.

One of the most important annotation strategies

When you’re reading and annotating, keep in mind that your notes should represent your thoughts . Your notes should represent your interaction with the story, the author, the characters, etc. Don’t worry about writing down “smart-sounding” notes just because you think that’s what your teacher wants. Let your annotations really reflect your true thoughts and feelings as you read. If you really listen to your inner voice as you read – the voice that says “Huh? Why did that happen?” or “That’s awesome!” or “That’s not a good sign,” then the whole process of annotating is so much easier.

Annotating text is a skill that gets easier the more you do it. As you first start off, you might not annotate much at all because you’re not sure where to start. (If that’s the case, keep checking back to my list of 11 annotation techniques to remind yourself of how to do it.) And it’s okay to be reserved as you start – you’ll figure it out soon enough.

But I’ve also seen the opposite, where a student underlines every single word on a page, or highlights the entire article or chapter. When you do this, nothing stands out, which defeats the purpose of taking notes in the first place.

Also, while annotating is an excellent skill that allows you to get that deep, close understanding of a text, you don’t need to do it all the time . If you’re reading a book for pleasure, just relax and read the book. If you’re reading an article in one of your favorite magazines, just relax and read the article. No need to make a job out of something that’s supposed to bring you joy.

Learning how to annotate text while reading can bring your reading comprehension to the next level. Try it. Why not?

If you’re struggling with taking notes during class , then check out my tutorials on that type of annotation:

• How to take notes in a lecture class
• How to know what to write down
• Note-taking tips for students with ADHD

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7 Strategy: Reading Actively by Annotating

Strategy: Reading Actively by Annotating

• Read to find the main ideas and support. Use your purpose to read actively.
• Find the answers to your questions.
• Find definitions for vocabulary.
• Make connections between the text and your experience, between parts of the text, and between the text and other lectures or text by annotating.
• Use headings and transition words to identify relationships in the text

An active reading strategy for articles or textbooks is  annotation . Think for a moment about what that word means. It means to add notes (an-NOTE-tate) to text that you are reading, to offer explanation, comments or opinions to the author’s words. Annotation takes practice, and the better you are at it, the better you will be at reading complicated articles.

Where to Make Notes

First, determine how you will annotate the text you are about to read. 

–If it is a printed article, you may be able to just write in the margins. A colored pen might make it easier to see than black or even blue. 

–If it is an article posted on the web, you could also use Hypothesis, which is a highlighting and annotating tool that you can use on the website and even share your notes with your instructor. Other note-taking plug-ins for web browsers might serve a similar function. Hypothesis is enabled on this book in digital form.

–If it is a textbook that you do not own (or wish to sell back), use Post-it notes to annotate in the margins.

–You can also use a notebook to keep written commentary as you read in any platform, digital or print. If you do this, be sure to leave enough information about the specific text you’re responding to that you can find it later if you need to. (Make notes about page number, which paragraph it is, or even short quotes to help you locate the passage again.)

What Notes to Make

Scan the document you are annotating. Some obvious clues will be apparent before you read it, such as titles or headers for sections. Read the first paragraph. Somewhere in the first (or possibly the second) paragraph should be a BIG IDEA about what the article is going to be about. In the margins, near the top, write down the big idea of the article in your own words. This shouldn’t be more than a phrase or a sentence. This big idea is likely the article’s thesis.

Underline or highlight topic sentences or phrases that express the main idea for that paragraph or section. Write in the margin next to what you’ve underlined a summary of the paragraph or the idea being expressed.

Connect related ideas by drawing arrows from one idea to another. Annotate those arrows with a phrase about how they are connected.

If you encounter an idea, word, or phrase you don’t understand, circle it and put a question mark in the margin that indicates an area of confusion . Write your question in the margin.

“Depending on the outcome of the assessment, the commission recommends to WHO which formerly endemic countries should be declared free of transmission, i.e., certified as free of the disease.” –> ?? What does this mean? Who is WHO?

Anytime the author makes a statement that you can connect with on a personal level, annotate in the margins a summary of how this connects to you. Write any comments or observations you feel appropriate to the text. You can also add your personal opinion.

“Guinea worm disease incapacitates victims for extended periods of time making them unable to work or grow enough food to feed their families or attend school.” –> My dad was sick for a while and couldn’t work. This was hard on our family.

Place a box around any term or phrase that emphasizes scientific language. These could be words you are not familiar with or will need to review later. Define those words in the margins.

“Guinea worm disease is set to become the second human disease in history, after smallpox, to be eradicated.” –> Eradicated = to put an end to, destroy

Like many skills, annotating takes practice! In the next chapter, you’ll be able to practice reading actively using the Aladdin article.

CC LICENSED CONTENT, ORIGINAL Revision and Adaptation.  Provided by : Lumen Learning.  License :  CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial

CC LICENSED CONTENT, SHARED PREVIOUSLY How to Annotate Text.  Provided by : Biology Corner.  Located at :  https://biologycorner.com/worksheets/annotate.html .  License :  CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial

Critical Literacy III Copyright © 2021 by Lori-Beth Larsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Art of Annotation: Teaching Readers To Process Texts

April 28, 2024

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“Make your paper dirty.”  

I get some funny looks when I say it at first, but it gets the point across. What I mean is I’m looking for annotations. I teach third grade, when young readers typically transition from developing readers to fluent ones, and it’s at this stage that they’re ready to begin to analyze texts on a deeper level. For that reason, this is the perfect time to introduce them to annotation.

Annotation — marking up and making notes on a text — can be an extremely effective tool for improving comprehension and increasing levels of criticality and engagement . By making these metacognitive markings, students are able to process a variety of texts in unique and meaningful ways. The thing is, it can vary in effectiveness, depending on which classroom you look into, if it’s being taught at all. You may have personally found that you aren’t getting the results you want from your approach. 

After some trial and error, I have developed my own method for teaching annotation, which I’ll share here, along with the process my colleague Irene Yannascoli uses at the high school level. Whether you teach ELA or another content area, chances are your students read in your class. And if they read, there’s a chance they might need to annotate. Hopefully this post can offer some strategies to help your students establish annotation as part of their regular reading practice. 

[ skip to high school process ]

Elementary Process

Prescriptive vs. responsive annotation.

One major hurdle students face is deciding what to annotate. Some students are hesitant to mark anything at all while others underline or highlight nearly every sentence in the text. Some teachers have attempted to remedy this by taking a prescriptive approach to annotation. They direct students to locate specific details and what to do when they’ve found them, saying things like, “find and underline the sentence that proves the character is sad,” or “box two words you don’t know in paragraph 2.” It’s like a scavenger hunt: Find three things, answer three questions. 

I’ve used this approach in the past, and it certainly is a great way to get students to notice and name things, but what I kept noticing is that whenever I stopped prompting students to make their annotations, they stopped making them. They were so dependent on my guidance that they never took ownership of the process. 

Eventually I realized I needed to teach my students to develop their own systems for annotating. The responsive approach I’m advocating here centers the reader on the basis that we all bring our own perspectives, experiences, and ideas to the text. As much as our interpretations are varied and nuanced, so are our annotations. Teaching students to navigate text as active readers helps them make sense of what they read. Artful annotation is what happens when they’re inspired to respond in their own unique way.

Getting Started

One thing teaching has taught me is that straightforward visuals reduce cognitive load and allow students to concentrate on what’s important. To simplify annotation for my students, I designed a template (below) with space on the left for me to paste the text and cells on the right and bottom for note-taking. 

At the point in the year that we start this process, I’ve already taught all the literacy concepts they’ll need for this activity, such as theme, figurative language, text structures, and more.  What this template does is sort each concept into one of two lenses: key words & ideas, and craft & structure. We then comb through the text with these two in mind, asking and answering over and over, What is the author saying? and How are they saying it? To remind them of what to look for, I provide the following graphic on the template. This is a list of look-fors that encompass most of what they’ll encounter as they read.

Modeling Responsive Annotation

To introduce responsive annotation, I use a direct approach to make my thinking as transparent as possible. In addition to modeling the use of metacognitive markers, I talk through each step of the process. Here’s a sample breakdown of what that would look like in the early stages.

Introducing Each Lens

• Choose the lens through which you will be approaching the text. In the introductory stage, it is recommended to read the same text twice — one session for key words and ideas, another for craft and structure. Provide the annotation look-fors as an anchor chart or include it on the template itself. 
• Give students a copy of the text and display your copy of the text for all to see. As students watch, read a section of text aloud, stopping to underline, box, and make notations.
• Think aloud as you annotate. Read, stop, jot, explain. You are responding to the text as you encounter each element rather than searching the text for specific items. Students should either be watching or copying the teacher’s moves at this stage.

Guided Annotation (Whole Class)

To help students learn to prioritize information, the teacher will pose questions that reinforce the points made in the explicit model. This will happen in lockstep as a whole class — independent practice comes later. This stage works best directly following the teacher model so students get to immediately put things into practice.

• Guide students through the next section of the text, first by reading it together and then by asking open-ended questions related to the chosen lens. For example: For Key Words and Ideas: What is the author saying here?  What words seem important?  What part made you stop and think? For Craft and Structure: How does the author show you what the character is feeling in paragraph 5? Who can find and annotate a connection between paragraph 3 and paragraph 4?   What does the author mean by _____?
• Students take a turn with another section of the text. Prompt students to share their thinking and show what they did. This is a great opportunity to validate or course-correct as needed. 

Guided Annotation (Individual)

• When they’re ready for the next stage, provide each student with a new text. Give several minutes to read and annotate, one section at a time. Circulate the room, monitoring and offering feedback. As students make their way through each section, give the green light to move on.

Giving feedback in real time adds encouragement and reinforces desired reading behaviors. This type of gradual release model works best when the teacher is responsive to the needs of the class, moving on only when they’re ready.

• Once they have the hang of it, students continue to read and annotate on their own. Those who need support can now be pulled into a small group. This is also a good time to implement partner annotation for students who may not be ready to read the text independently.

Continue to use the template to support students as they annotate for either key words and ideas or craft and structure. It can be modified to merge the lenses once they can do both with confidence . After several guided annotation lessons, students should be ready to annotate on their own without needing the scaffolding of this stage every time.

Discussion and Feedback

Now that students have a sense of what to look for when they read, what they need at this juncture is a chance to see what other readers are doing and compare it to their own work. This not only deepens their understanding of the text through discussion, it strengthens their grasp on what they should be noticing.

• Gather the class and project student work (in my class, students volunteer to share). Prompt students to compare annotations, note their peers’ insights, and offer feedback. 
• Allow students to “borrow” snippets of each others’ annotations if they wish . This is intentionally a collaborative process that promotes the sharing of insights and ideas. 
• Students can use the template as long as it’s needed. The cycle of discussion and feedback can continue indefinitely. At any point, the annotation look-fors can be edited for specific genres, content areas, or other purposes for reading.

Click here to make a copy of the elementary process for your Google Drive .

High School Process: Collaborative Annotation

Whether at the secondary or elementary level ( click here to jump up to elementary), the art of annotation is in making it meaningful. Responsive annotation does just this. Because students often believe there’s a “right answer” when annotating, asking them what they notice trains them to use their own funds of knowledge as they read. Like my approach to teaching annotation in elementary, Irene Yannascoli gives her 10th graders the freedom to interact with texts on their own terms, deciding for themselves what is meaningful enough to annotate. She also wants them to use peer insight to practice concepts already reviewed in class, so she makes this annotation process collaborative.

Similar to the elementary approach in the previous section, this process has students consider the text through a given lens; in this case, four core concepts that have already been taught in class: identify (notice and name), analyze (explain and connect), evaluate (judge and discuss impact), and synthesize (put it all together). The purpose of the group annotation is to practice these skills collaboratively. 

In order to set this up:

• Choose 4 teaching points from your recent curriculum that you would like students to discuss and practice
• Choose a passage that reflects the 4 teaching points. 
• For each of the teaching points, create guiding questions for students to reference while they annotate. It’s not necessary for students to answer all of these guiding questions, and as they get used to the protocol they may use them less and less. 

Irene’s guiding questions are pictured below.

Note that these concepts and questions are specific to language arts study; they can be modified according to any subject or genre.

Independent Annotation

• Start by reviewing the “Group Annotation Practice Protocol” slide (below) with the class.

• Conduct a read-aloud of the passage . Ask students if they have any questions before they begin. To assess understanding, you may ask them to identify key terms in the passage or answer questions related to the who, what, when, where and why of the passage
• Students re-read the passage independently and jot down their first thoughts. 

This is a preliminary step before they annotate to capture a first impression of the passage, and makes space for any clarifying questions that might arise .

Group Annotation

After students have reread the text on their own, it is time to begin their annotations.

• Students get in groups and each person claims a focus skill: Identify, Analyze, Evaluate or Synthesize. Now, each group member is following one of the 4 sets of guiding questions using the same passage.
• After taping a copy of the text to chart paper, each student grabs a marker and for 15 minutes, uses the guiding questions to “make their posters dirty.” Each student should be huddled around their chart paper, underlining, drawing arrows, and making notes next to the passage. 
• Circulate and observe each group , helping students deepen their thinking by asking questions and making connections between the annotations .

• Students wrap up and review their annotations. Each person shares their thoughts and epiphanies from the annotation process. 
• While the group shares out, the “Synthesizers” answer their last two questions about the commonalities between peers and overall meaning of the passage. They write this on their posters. 
• Students then post their chart paper on the wall and conduct a gallery walk , during which they examine peer charts and make notes on post-its expanding, deepening or challenging the original annotations based on their own reading of the text.  Some sentence starters to move students beyond agree/disagree: This makes me think about… I can connect this to… Additionally, this could mean… I wonder why…
• Students return to their original posters and read what other group members commented . They now have an opportunity to add any final notes, ideas or understandings. If time allows, conduct a whole group share-out: What was something that surprised you, inspired you, or made you rethink?

At this point, it’s up to you how to assess students for this activity. You might just treat it as a practice for building independent annotation skills and assess students individually on their own annotations on a future passage. You might choose to develop a rubric for this activity and give all group members a score on their poster. Or you might have students write a reflection about their strengths and weaknesses in the process and set goals for the future.

Click here to make a copy of the high school process for your Google Drive.

[ back to elementary process ]

A Few Caveats

Although I explicitly model responsive annotation, I don’t expect my students to copy my exact style. Yes, I do tell them to mark up the text as well as make notes in the margins, but I want my students to use metacognitive markers in ways that make sense to them. Some like to underline sentences, others highlight. I circle vocabulary words, others box them. Some enjoy creating their own symbols and methods of organizing their notes in the margins. Recently I’ve noticed a few students creating systems for highlighting in different colors complete with a key. 

It must also be said that not every student needs to or should annotate when they read. Some process text better internally and find the annotation system slows them down or distracts them; others can’t handle the multitasking element and just need to focus on reading. The supports provided for accessing the text are just a temporary scaffold anyway. As long as they can demonstrate that they understand what they’re reading in other ways, (e.g., through discussion or answering questions) I really don’t insist that they do it. But for the majority of students who find themselves glossing over key moments or struggling with comprehension, this process is extremely useful. Ultimately, the decision depends on you knowing your students and what works for them as learners. 

So, Is This Really Worth It? 

Since we’ve been teaching annotation this way, Irene and I have both observed a correlation between the quality of annotations on the page and the ability to comprehend text. Incorporating the look-fors into the annotation practice reinforces the concepts skills taught across the year. And the confidence our students have in themselves as readers has also grown.  My students say things like, “Annotation has helped me become a better reader“ and “Annotation helps me understand the text or the things I’m reading a bit more.” 

This process is about more than preparing students for standardized tests or giving them a strategy to boost their grades. Our students will be reading and comprehending texts for a very long time — hopefully, for the rest of their lives. While they won’t always grab a pen when they sit down with a book, there will be many times they can put these skills to work. If the goal is to process what they’re reading, annotation provides them with one way to do so.  

Annotating, or “making your paper dirty” as we like to call it, is definitely an acquired skill. It takes time to learn, but more than likely, it’s worth the effort.

Duke, Nell & Pearson, P.. (2002). Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension. What research has to say about reading instruction. 3. 10.1598/0872071774.10. 

Landmark College. (n.d.-a). Active reading (see also critical reading) . Active Reading | Landmark College. https://www.landmark.edu/academics/writing-matters/wac-glossary/wac-active-reading  

Lloyd, Z.T., Kim, D., Cox, J.T., Doepker, G.M. and Downey, S.E. (2022), “Using the annotating strategy to improve students’ academic achievement in social studies,” Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning , Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 218-231.

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What to Read Next

Categories: Instruction , Podcast

Tags: content area literacy , English language arts , literacy , teaching strategies

This was a great read/listen. I have always taught annotation by talking with students about what they think is important to remember using titles, subtitles and headlines as a clue. However, this approach seems a better way to get kids to think more deeply about what they’re reading. Thank you for sharing these resources.

Glad you found it helpful, Elisa!

We’ve spent years building http://nb.mit.edu/ , a free-for-anyone *social annotation* site that lets students have discussions in the margins of any online course materials. It’s been used in thousands of classes and study groups at over 100 universities. Feel free to try it out.

Thanks for sharing this resource, Dr. Karger!

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September 21, 2023 ELA PD - Literacy , ELA K-5 , ELA 6-8 , ELA Focus - Close Reading , ELA Resources - Tip Sheets , Core Literacy

Annotating text strategies that enhance close reading [free printable], by: erin lynch.

One of the most important skills I teach my students as we begin to work on close reading is how to annotate texts. Teaching annotation strategies will help students keep track of key ideas while reading. In this article, you'll discover annotating strategies that will enhance close reading and free printable resources you can use in the classroom!

 Download the Annotating Practice Kit now!

Annotating Text Strategies

Annotating a text is when the reader “marks up” a text to indicate places of importance or something they don’t understand. Sometimes students annotate by circling a word, underlining a phrase or highlighting a sentence. Annotating also includes writing notes in the margin; these notes might be thoughts or questions about the text. This process of annotating helps the reader keep track of ideas and questions and supports deeper understanding of the text.

Teaching annotation strategies will help students keep track of key ideas, and will help them formulate thoughts and questions they have while reading.

Benefits of Annotating a Text

The benefits of annotation include:

• Keeping track of key ideas and questions
• Helping formulate thoughts and questions for deeper understanding
• Fostering analyzing and interpreting texts
• Encouraging the reader to make inferences and draw conclusions about the text
• Allowing the reader to easily refer back to the text without rereading the text in its entirety

Annotating With a Purpose

Students are taught to read with a purpose, and they should also be taught to annotate with a purpose. Teaching students to annotate with a purpose will help them focus on what is most important about the text.

When teaching annotation I instruct students to use the following symbols:

Underline key ideas and major points.

Write a ? next to anything that is confusing, such as unfamiliar words or unclear information.

Circle key words or phrases.

Put an ! next to surprising or important information or information that helps you make a connection.

Printable Annotation Examples and Activities

Model for annotating a text , grades 2–5.

Download my Model for Annotating a Text which uses the poem The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt. My students have enjoyed using this poem as an introduction to the close reading of poetry and the skill of annotating.

The Model for Annotating a Text download includes an instructional tip sheet and annotation examples for students. You can make individual copies for your students to keep handy, or enlarge the annotation example to a poster size and hang it in the classroom!

Here's how to use the Model for Annotating a Text :

Explain to students that the annotations of skillful readers identify what they don’t understand and point out major facts or ideas they want to remember and use in their discussions and writing. Annotation also encourages readers to make inferences and to draw conclusions about the text, as well as to make interpretations on a deeper level.

Next, review the symbols students should use when annotating a text. Caution students that over-annotating will be confusing rather than helpful.

Then read the poem The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt and pause to model how to annotate with your students.

"I Have a Dream" Close Reading Kit, Grades 3–8

My "I Have a Dream" Close Reading Kit also includes resources for teaching close reading annotation! In the kit you'll find an instructional guide for teachers and annotations for the first 10 paragraphs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Use this kit to model close reading in your classroom!

Annotating Practice Worksheets Kit, Grades 1–8

Once your students have learned the correct way to annotate a text, have them practice annotating with a purpose! With the Annotating Practice Kit , students will practice their annotation skills while reading the following articles:

• The First Playground
• The Dove and the Ant
• Sea Otters!

In Conclusion

Teaching your students how to annotate with a purpose will help them keep track of key ideas, and will help them formulate thoughts and questions they have while reading. It also encourages the reader to make inferences and draw conclusions about the text, as well as, make interpretations on a deeper level. Annotating allows the reader to easily refer back to the text without rereading the text in its entirety.

Grab the free downloads today and use them with students as they begin to annotate texts.

12 Annotated Reading Skills

Annotated reading, also known as close reading, is a deliberate interaction with a text with the aim of helping the reader to understand it more fully. It often involves highlighting sections, making notes in the margins of a printed text or comments in a PDF, or underlining important points for later review.

This chapter will help you understand why, when, and how to annotate a reading.

Annotating a text you are reading gives you a quick reference guide for future use. Rather than having to re-read the article or PDF each time you return to it for information, you can rely on the quick reference points you have highlighted or the notes and comments you have made in the margins. This is a very useful skill when preparing assessments, synthesizing sources, and comparing and contrasting key concepts and ideas across different academic texts. When you are annotating a reading you are actively engaging with the text and will therefore read it more closely. Annotation also gives you the opportunity to add your own thoughts and comments, raise questions for further investigation, and challenge ideas within the text.

After you have skimmed and scanned the text (see previous Chapter 11), for an overall understanding of its key ideas, you should complete a more in-depth reading if you intend to use the text for an assessment, to gain deeper understanding of the topic, or to engage with the text for class preparation. Even while completing the initial skimming and scanning you may want to mark key headings, sub-headings, concepts, or words. It is beneficial to go back over the text and add additional notes and comments as your understanding increases, specifically if you are comparing and contrasting different texts (journal articles, book chapters) about the same topic.

While the method generally comes down to personal preference, here are some basic guidelines:

• Keep your annotations brief – use single words or brief phrases, rather than whole sentences.
• Use different coloured highlighters to signify different concepts. However, use highlighting very sparingly. Excessive highlighting generates a colourful page where nothing stands out, which is the point of highlighting in the first place.
• Circle or mark words you are unfamiliar with and use a dictionary to understand their meaning and use. This will have the added benefit of increasing your academic vocabulary.
• You may find it simpler to create a ‘key’ with symbols that represent different concepts or elements and insert the symbols within the text. You can use a range of keystrokes, for example, * # > < “” {} + ** ! @ ? A word of warning, include the ‘key’ on the document/text so that you have a quick reference guide for later and do not forget what the symbols stand for.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader DC offers Comments and Edit facilities to subscribers. This software is pre-loaded on all UQ Computers [1] , however if you would like to use it at home you will need to purchase a subscription online. Alternatively, you can Track changes in a Microsoft Word document (insert comments), highlight and change fonts. Perhaps you would prefer to simply print the class handouts and write on them; please ensure these a printed ahead of class time.

Below is an example of an annotated text with a key:

There are a range of annotating tutorials available via YouTube. Below is one example [2]

• https://my.uq.edu.au/information-and-services/information-technology/software/software-catalogue ↵
• CC license: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRGUNo2pck&ab_channel=GVSULibrariesInstruction ↵

Academic Writing Skills Copyright © 2021 by Patricia Williamson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Understanding Annotation: A Comprehensive Guide

What is annotation, the purpose of annotation, types of annotation, how to annotate effectively, annotation tools, annotation examples, annotation in different disciplines, annotation vs. abstract, annotation in digital learning, the future of annotation.

Let's take a journey into the world of annotation, a concept that often makes students cringe and researchers sigh. But, don't worry — this guide will help you understand annotation in a simple, friendly, and clear way. Whether you're a newbie or someone who just needs a refresher, this comprehensive guide will provide a clear definition of annotation and its many uses.

So, what exactly is the definition of annotation? In its simplest form, annotation refers to adding notes or comments to a text or a diagram. It's like having a personal conversation with the author, or making sense of a complex graph. It doesn't stop there, though. The process of annotation is much more than just dropping notes — it's about understanding, interpreting, and engaging with the material. Let's break it down:

• Understanding: Annotations help you to grasp the ideas and concepts presented in the text or diagram. You might underline key phrases or highlight important data points, all in the service of better understanding what you're reading or viewing.
• Interpreting: By providing your own insights or explanations, you're not merely reading or looking at the material, but actively interpreting it. This could be as simple as jotting down "This means..." or "The author is saying..." next to a paragraph.
• Engaging: When you annotate, you're not just a passive reader anymore. You're actively engaging with the material, questioning it, agreeing or disagreeing, even arguing with the author! This active engagement helps to deepen your understanding and retention of the material.

To sum it up, the definition of annotation isn't just about making notes — it's a method to read, understand, interpret, and engage with any piece of content more effectively. And guess what? There's more to annotation than you might think! Stick around as we delve deeper into the purpose, types, and tools of annotation in the following sections.

Now that we've nailed down the definition of annotation, let's talk about why it's so important. Why do teachers, professors, and researchers keep insisting on it? Well, there are several reasons:

• Improves comprehension: Annotating helps you understand the text or diagram better. It's like having a personal guide walking you through a dense forest of words or a complex maze of data. By highlighting and commenting, you can make sense of the material more easily.
• Enhances retention: We've all been there. You read a page, flip it, and — poof! — everything's gone. But with annotation, you can remember more. When you actively engage with the material, you're more likely to remember it. It's like the difference between watching a movie and participating in it.
• Facilitates analysis: Annotation is not just about understanding, but also about analyzing. By adding your own thoughts, insights, and interpretations, you can dig deeper into the material, uncovering layers of meaning that might not be immediately apparent.
• Promotes critical thinking: When you annotate, you're not just accepting information passively — you're actively questioning, evaluating, and critiquing it. This cultivates critical thinking skills, which are crucial in today's information-saturated world.

Remember, the purpose of annotation is not to make your book look like a rainbow or to fill the margins with a clutter of notes. It's about making the material work for you, helping you to understand, remember, analyze, and think critically. So next time someone mentions annotation, don't cringe. Embrace it. It's your secret weapon in the world of learning!

Now that we've got a grip on the definition of annotation and its purpose, it's time to dive into the different types of annotation. You might be thinking, "Wait a minute, there's more than one type?" Yes, indeed! And picking the right one can make a world of difference. So, let's explore:

• Descriptive Annotation: This kind of annotation is like a sneak peek of a movie. It gives an overview of the main points, themes, or arguments without revealing too much. It's like a book cover — enticing enough to draw you in, but not revealing all the secrets.
• Critical Annotation: This type goes a step further. It not only describes the content but also evaluates it. It's like a movie review, discussing the strengths and weaknesses, the relevance of the content, and the author's credibility. It helps you decide whether the material is worth your time.
• Informative Annotation: This annotation is like an all-you-can-eat buffet. It provides a summary of the material, including all the significant findings and conclusions. It's ideal when you need a detailed understanding of the content without having to read the whole thing.
• Reflective Annotation: This type of annotation is a bit more personal. It includes your thoughts, reactions, and reflections on the material. It's like a diary entry, capturing your intellectual journey as you engage with the material.

So, next time you're tasked with annotating, consider the type of annotation that best suits your needs. Remember, the goal is not to make your work harder, but to make it easier and more effective. Happy annotating!

Here you are, equipped with the definition of annotation and an overview of its types. But, how do you do it effectively? Let's break it down:

• Get clear on your purpose: Why are you annotating? Is it to understand better, remember, or critique? Your purpose will guide your annotation process.
• Take a quick preview: Before you start annotating, skim through the material. Get a feel for its structure and main ideas. This way, you'll know what to pay special attention to.
• Be selective: Resist the urge to highlight or underline everything. Limit your annotations to crucial points, unfamiliar concepts, and interesting ideas. The goal is to create signposts that can guide you back to key information when needed.
• Make it meaningful: Don’t just underline or highlight. Write brief notes that summarize, question, or react to the content. This makes your annotations a tool for active learning.
• Use symbols or codes: Develop your own system of symbols or codes to denote different types of information. For example, a question mark could indicate parts you don’t understand, while an exclamation mark could point to surprising or important insights.

Remember, effective annotation is not about how much you mark, but about how well you understand and engage with the material. Keep practicing and refining your approach, and soon you'll become an annotation pro!

So, now that we know how to annotate effectively, let's talk about some tools that can make this process even smoother. These are especially handy if you're dealing with digital content, or if you want to share your annotations with others. Here are some noteworthy ones:

• Pencil and Paper: Sometimes, the old ways are the best ways. Nothing beats the flexibility and simplicity of annotating with a good old-fashioned pencil. You can underline, highlight, make notes in the margin — the possibilities are endless!
• Highlighters: These are great for emphasizing key points in your text. Just remember not to go overboard and turn your page into a rainbow!
• Post-it Notes: If you don't want to write directly on your material, or if you need more space for your thoughts, these little sticky notes can be a lifesaver.
• PDF Annotation Tools: If you're working with digital documents, tools like Adobe Reader, Preview, and others offer built-in annotation features. These can include highlighting, underlining, and adding comments.
• Online Annotation Tools: Websites like Hypothesis and Genius let you annotate web pages and share your annotations with others. They're like social media for readers!

These tools are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other annotation tools out there, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. So, don't be afraid to experiment and find the ones that work best for you!

Let's put the definition of annotation into real-world scenarios. Here are some examples to help you get a better sense of how annotation works.

• Novels: You're reading a gripping mystery novel and you come across a clue. You underline it and jot down your theories in the margin. That's annotation!
• Textbooks: Remember the last time you studied for an exam? You probably highlighted important information and made notes to help you remember key points. That's annotation too!
• Articles: When reading a long article online, you might use a tool to underline key sections and add your own thoughts. This not only helps you understand the content better but also lets you share your insights with others. Yep, that's annotation.
• Research Papers: If you're conducting research, annotation is your best friend. Underlining important data, writing summaries of complex sections, and noting down your ideas can make the whole process much easier.
• Social Media: Ever added a funny caption to a photo before sharing it with your friends? Guess what? That's annotation too!

As you can see, annotations can be as simple or as complex as you need them to be. They're all about adding extra information to make the original content more useful or meaningful for you. So, next time you're reading something, why not give annotation a try? Who knows, you might discover some fascinating insights!

Now that we've nailed down the definition of annotation, let's see how it's applied across different disciplines. You might be surprised to know that annotation isn't just for the world of literature or academia. Here's how different fields use annotation:

• Sciences: Scientists use annotations to note down observations during experiments. They can also annotate diagrams to explain complex processes.
• Arts: Artists often annotate their sketches with notes about colors, textures, or ideas for future works. Art historians may also use annotations to provide deeper insight into famous paintings or sculptures.
• Computer Science: In the world of coding, annotations can provide extra details about how a piece of code functions. They're like a roadmap for other programmers who might need to understand or modify the code later.
• Geography: Geographers use annotations on maps to highlight specific features or explain certain phenomena. For example, they might annotate a map to show the path of a storm or the spread of a forest fire.
• Business: Business professionals annotate reports and presentations to highlight key points. This helps everyone stay on the same page and understand the main takeaways.

As you can see, no matter the discipline, the power of annotation is universal. It's all about enhancing understanding and fostering communication! So, the next time you're working on a project, why not consider how annotation could help you?

Dealing with academic or professional texts, you've probably come across both annotations and abstracts. But do you know the difference? Many people get confused between the two, but they serve unique roles. Let's clear the air by exploring the definition of annotation versus an abstract:

Annotation: An annotation adds extra information to a text. It could be a comment, explanation, or even a question. Imagine you're reading a complex scientific paper. You might annotate it by jotting down a simpler explanation of a concept in the margins. That's annotation—helping to make the text more accessible and understandable for you.

Abstract: On the other hand, an abstract is a short summary of a document's main points. Think of it as a mini version of the text. If you've ever written a research paper, you've probably had to include an abstract at the beginning. It gives readers a snapshot of what the document covers so they can decide if they want to read the whole thing.

So, in a nutshell, an annotation is more about adding value to the text, while an abstract is about summarizing it. Both have their places and can be super helpful when dealing with complex or lengthy texts. Understanding the difference between the two is another step in mastering the art of reading and writing effectively.

Now, let's shift gears and explore how annotation plays a role in the digital learning space. With the advent of technology, education isn't limited to chalkboards and textbooks anymore. We've moved onto laptops, tablets, and even mobile phones. So, where does the definition of annotation fit in this digital world?

In digital learning, annotation takes on a slightly different form. Instead of scribbling in the margins of a book, you're adding notes to a PDF, highlighting text in an eBook, or leaving comments on a shared document.

Let's say you're studying for a history exam with a friend, and you're both using the same digital textbook. You come across a paragraph that you think is particularly important, so you highlight it and leave a note saying, "Must remember for the exam!" When your friend opens the book on their device, they can see your annotation and benefit from it. This is the power of annotation in digital learning—it promotes collaboration and makes studying a more interactive experience.

And it's not just for students, either. Teachers can use digital annotation to provide feedback on assignments, clarify points in a lecture, or share additional resources. In a world where online learning is becoming the norm, understanding and using digital annotation is a skill worth mastering.

Having explored the definition of annotation in various contexts, it's exciting to imagine where it might head in the future. As we continue to integrate technology into our lives, the role and methods of annotation are likely to evolve with it.

Imagine a world where every bit of text you interact with—be it a digital book, an online article, or even a social media post—can be annotated with your thoughts, questions, or insights. And not just that, imagine those annotations being instantly shareable with anyone around the globe. We're already seeing glimpses of this in digital learning platforms, as we previously discussed.

Moreover, the rise of artificial intelligence might add another layer to annotation. Imagine AI systems that can automatically highlight important parts of a text, suggest resources for further reading, or even generate annotations based on your personal learning style. Now that's a future worth looking forward to!

While we are not there yet, the journey towards that future is already underway. And as we make strides in this direction, the definition of annotation will continue to expand and adapt. It's a fascinating field that underscores the importance of understanding, interpreting, and communicating information in our increasingly interconnected world.

If you're looking to improve your annotation skills and learn more about organizing your creative projects, check out Ansh Mehra's workshop, ' Documentation for Creative People on Notion .' This workshop will provide you with practical tips and techniques for effective annotation, as well as help you develop a comprehensive documentation system for your creative work.

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Top 5 data annotation strategies.

Data annotation is a critical process that demands accuracy, precision, and adherence. When starting a new annotation project, defining the scope and parameters is necessary for goal achievement.

To start with, you must identify the data to be annotated and the types of annotations required for successful project completion. Next, you must build scalable annotation strategies to overcome the challenges, obstacles, and other possible limitations. For instance, if you want a machine learning application for driving, you might need to begin with image annotation and gradually move to video and text annotation.

To help you make the most of your annotation efforts, create valuable training datasets for machine learning models, and secure long-term success for your projects, we have listed the top 5 scalable data annotation strategies.

Training an AI/ML model involves several facets. Analyzing each of those factors is essential to creating scalable annotation strategies, which, in turn, leads to well-structured datasets and supports better learning. 

1) Decide Your End Goals

Regardless of the complexity of your data annotation project, there must be an end goal. The project’s purpose and trajectory can only be understood once you have determined that objective. Every action taken before, after, and during the course of the project should be based on those goals. Further, goal-based strategizing is crucial for recognizing and segregating appropriate solutions that align with your requirements.

For instance, if you want to train an algorithm to recognize every known species of crows from their appearance, you must determine how to go about collecting the related datasets, creating proper labeling instructions, etc. However, if you plan to train an algorithm to recognize every bird species, the crow-problem will be only a subset, a part of the problem, and you will need to plan the annotation process accordingly.

Learn more about how machines can be trained to analyze data.

 2) Focus on Project Complexity and Timeline

The initial phase of annotation is conventionally simple as it requires basic labeling and tagging. However, as requirements augment, so will the project complexity. Therefore, to achieve your goal, you might have to face several unexpected challenges, including multiple quality checks, data compliance issues, or a shortage of resources.

Also, fluctuating complexities can affect the timeline. When establishing deadlines, account for long-term changes in requirements and demands. The higher the complexity, the more time would be required for annotation. Therefore, in such cases, be prepared for your timeline to be postponed. Strategize accordingly to avoid any shortcomings during or after project completion.

3) Evaluate the Use of Annotation Tools

Data annotation tools are used to annotate training datasets for machine learning models. Available for different types of annotation, including text, video, image, audio, or key-point, these tools offer extensive features and functionalities for effective annotation.

Once you have strategized the goals, identified the challenges, and created a timeline, look for a tool that can deliver on your expectations.

Here are the top 7 annotation tools in the industry at present.

• Visual Object Tagging Tool (VoTT)
• Supervise.ly

These tools provide advanced algorithms and customizations for diverse annotation requirements. Though all the tools and software facilitate successful annotation, you must opt for one that fulfills your specific criteria. Additionally, you must assess if the tool will be able to serve your needs in the long term without invading your budget constraints.

Here are a few considerations that can help you in choosing the right data annotation tool.

1)  Budget and pricing : If you choose a paid tool, make sure it falls within your budget. Also, check for in-app purchases and software updates for paid and free tools.

2)  Data privacy : Make sure the tool adheres to security protocols and offers complete data confidentiality.

3)  UI/UX : Check for a user-friendly interface and easy-to-access features.

4)  Project management : Look whether the tool allows you to track project progress, detect issues and errors, easily communicate with the stakeholders, and conduct quality checks.

Additionally, the tool must be capable of handling changing business demands- as and when they scale up/down. For instance, if your project requires you to annotate a hundred images initially, but the requirements can increase to 500 images, the tool must be capable of handling that increment without affecting the performance. 

4) Create a Clear Budget Plan  

Budget strategizing is dependent on several factors. For instance, the resources required for data scraping and annotation, premium annotation tool subscriptions, or data storage and management are aspects whose costs can vary across a wide range.

To create a scalable budget strategy, you must anticipate the current as well as upcoming requirements. Remember, your budget will increase/decrease as and when the requirements scale up/down. Create a strategy that considers both scenarios and doesn’t affect your business functioning or performance. Once you have defined these requirements, controlling the annotation budget will be easier.

5) Choose a Plan of Operation

Based on your budget, goals, requirements, complexity, and timeline, you can choose to carry out data annotation with a tool, hire an in-house team, recruit freelancers, or outsource to a professional data annotation company. Each of these will levy a certain toll and come with unique advantages & disadvantages.

●        Hire an in-house team of experts:  You can hire professional data annotators to join your team. However, you will have to invest considerable time, effort, and money in recruiting, training, and maintaining state-of-the-art infrastructure for successful annotation. Also, you might need to scale the team up or down as per the changing demands, but that is difficult with full-time in-house employees.

Learn more about contract hiring according to process flow here!

●        Hire a freelancer:  This is suitable for businesses with small budgets and requirements. Freelancers are self-employed individuals who work for you as needed and charge for the work done. You can visit different freelancing platforms, choose freelancers according to your project needs, and directly get in touch with them.

While this might be an easy way to source labor, it involves certain challenges. When you hire a freelancer, you must brief them on your requirements from time to time, and maintain constant communication for project progress or feedback. Further, quality assurance and data security might be an issue since they work independently.

●        Outsource to a professional company:  This is one of the most preferred and viable options for data annotation. Not only does outsourcing take the load off your shoulders, but it delivers exceptional solutions at affordable rates.

When you partner with a third-party vendor, they give you access to a team of expert annotators who use the latest tools and techniques to create high-quality, custom solutions. In addition, they maintain utmost data security and facilitate seamless communication for successful project completion. Further, your demands are met within the stipulated time frame and budget.

Although cost-efficiency is crucial to choosing the right workforce type, several other aspects must be considered before delegating your annotation project.

• Ratings and reviews
• Communication

In Conclusion

AI-enabled apps and machine learning models need training datasets to understand and comprehend data. The annotation process helps label data in multiple formats, such as videos, audio, text, and images to successfully create datasets.

However, every annotation project is different, and so are its goals. Therefore, as a business owner, you must meticulously strategize, plan and build a scalable plan of action to achieve desired results and maintain that performance for a long time. Remember, requirements keep changing; therefore, your strategies and approaches must be regulated in the right direction.

Author bio: I am a content strategist at SunTec.AI with over 6 years of experience in the sphere of digital marketing content development.  SunTec.AI  is a copywriting services providing company. Our exceptionally talented team of copywriters have the required skillset to develop content that will spring your target audience into action and ultimately give a boost to your revenues. Whether you plan on marketing copywriting services for your digital traffic and platforms or you need a professional copy for your offline marketing, SunTec.AI is a name you can bank upon.

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Annotation Strategies That Work!

What is an Annotation?

Annotating while reading text is a powerful way for students to become more active and engaged readers, but many don’t know where to begin. They don’t understand how and what to annotate, or realize how important it is . For example, highlighting is one of the most popular ways to annotate, yet so many students fall prey to “yellow page syndrome.” Kids end up highlighting everything because they aren’t sure what is most important. Alternatively, other children are afraid to annotate at all because they fear they won’t do it “right.” And others still just see it is an annoying extra step, rather than a valuable reading tool. Instead, students should understand that effective annotations can turn a passive reader into an active reader. They should also remember that there isn’t one way to annotate correctly. Teach kids the following annotation strategies to deepen their understanding of a text:

1. Summarize key concepts

In order to better understand important points from a text, students should practice noting those points in their own words. Paraphrasing information forces students to engage more deeply with the text, thereby making more meaning of it. Annotations don’t always need to be on the page of text. They can use a separate piece of paper, or better yet, post-it notes.

2. Highlight/underline strategically

While highlighting is the quickest and most convenient form of annotation, it is also the least engaging. When students don’t know what it is they are looking for, they become susceptible to “yellow page syndrome.” It can help for readers to first think of one or a few different questions or ideas they want to focus on as they read. Then, they can read and highlight in different colors according to each guiding question or area of focus.

3. Create an outline while reading

Diagraming the key characters, events, or ideas in a text can help a reader get a better sense of the big picture. When making an outline, students should first look at how the text is organized, and create an outline with similar structure; if the text uses headings and subheadings, their outline should too. In order to know what notes to include in the outline, kids should read each section to identify important details. Then, they should note these using keywords and phrases.

4. Ask questions and make connections

Active reading means engaging more deeply with a text. A great strategy for doing this is asking questions and making connections while reading. Questions can be about the content of the text itself, the author’s point of view, or points of interest for additional research. Similarly, students can make connections to other texts they’ve read, experiences they’ve had, or related topics they’ve learned about. This more involved engagement is generally not a good fit for margins. Instead, students should take notes on post-its or a separate piece of paper.

Mastering Annotations

The most effective way to annotate is in stages. For some this means reading through a text a first time to get an overall sense of the content, then reviewing the reading again to focus on annotation. Others prefer to simply read and annotate section-by-section. No matter what, it is important to remember that annotating isn’t an extra step but an essential one. This sort of active reading is what helps our brains make meaning of text. While annotating while reading may take a bit longer in the short-term, it’s a worthwhile investment in the long-term!

A seasoned tutor or learning specialist can help their students to master the process of annotating and teach them key strategies to annotating a text in a way that will benefit their skills and comprehension as a reader. Braintrust matches students with top educators and tutors across the nation. If you’re looking for a tutor that specializes in your child’s individual needs or learning differences, find out how it works and get matched with someone today!

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Interrogating Texts

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Rogier van der Weyden, 1399 -1464. Altarpiece fragment, Mary Magdalene reading. National Gallery (Great Britain). Available through   ArtSTOR

Workshop of Rogier van der Weyden. St. Ivo reading, ca.1450. National Gallery (Great Britain). Available through   ArtSTOR

Max Beckmann (1884-1950). Reclining Woman Reading, with Irises (192 3). Oil on canvas. Private collection. Image available in  HOLLIS

H onore  Daumier (1808-1879). Reader (1863). Oil on wood.  University of California, San Diego.  Image available in  ARTStor

Young Man Reading a Book (c.1570-1574). Attributed to Mirza 'Ali (c.1510-1576). Ink, opaque watercolor and gold on paper. Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Image available in HOLLIS

Ms. Richardson 5, fol. 66v Book of Hours, England, ca. 1420. Houghton Library. Image linked from HOLLIS

Thinking-Intensive Reading

Critical reading--active engagement and interaction with texts--is essential to your academic success at Harvard, and to your intellectual growth.  Research has shown that students who read deliberately retain more information and retain it longer.

Your college reading assignments will probably be more substantial and more sophisticated than those you are used to from high school. The amount of reading will almost certainly be greater.  College students rarely have the luxury of successive re-readings of material, however, given the pace of life in and out of the classroom. 

So how should you approach reading in this new environment?

While the strategies described below are (for the sake of clarity) listed sequentially, you typically do most of them simultaneously. If you're used to doing little more than moving your eyes across the page, they may feel awkward at first, and you may have to deploy them consciously.  But

But as they become habits, you'll notice the differences -- both in what you “see” in a course reading, and in the confidence with which you approach your texts.

Look “around” the text before you start reading. 

Previewing enables you to develop a set of expectations about the scope and aim of the text.  These very preliminary impressions offer you a way to focus your reading. 

You’ve probably engaged in one version of previewing in the past, when you’ve tried to determine how long an assigned reading is (and how much time and energy, as a result, it will demand from you).  But you can learn a great deal more about the organization and purpose of a text by taking note of features other than its length. For instance:

• What does the presence of headnotes , an  abstrac t, or other  prefatory materia l  tell you?
• Is the author known to you already?  If so, how does their  reputation   or  credentials (like an institutional affiliation)   influence your perception of what you are about to read?

If an author is unfamiliar or unknown in an essay collection, does an editor introduce them (by supplying brief biographical information, an assessment of the author’s work, concerns, and importance)?

Texts demand different things of you as you read, so whenever you can, register the type of information you’re presented with. 

• How does the disposition or  layout of a text  prepare you for reading? Is the material broken into parts--subtopics, sections, or the like?  Are there long and unbroken blocks of text or smaller paragraphs or “chunks” and what does this suggest?  How might the identified parts of a text guide you toward understanding the line of inquiry or the arc of the argument that's being made?
• Does the text seem to be arranged according to certain conventions of discourse ? Newspaper articles, for instance, have characteristics that you will recognize, including "easy" language. Textbooks and scholarly essays are organized quite differently. 

2. Annotate

Annotating puts you actively and immediately in a "dialogue” with an author and the issues and ideas you encounter in a written text. .

It's also a way to have an ongoing conversation with yourself as you move through the text and to record what that encounter was like for you. Here's how to make your reading thinking-intensive from start to finish:

• Throw away your highlighter : Highlighting can seem like an active reading strategy, but it can actually distract from the business of learning and dilute your comprehension.  Those bright yellow lines you put on a printed page one day can seem strangely cryptic the next, unless you have a method for remembering why they were important to you at another moment in time.  Pen or pencil will allow you to do more to a text you have to wrestle with.  
• Mark up the margins of your text with words and phrases : the   ideas that occur to you, notes about things that seem important to you, reminders of how issues in a text may connect with class discussion or course themes. This kind of interaction keeps you conscious of the reasons you are reading as well as the purposes your instructor has in mind. Later in the term, when you are reviewing for a test or project, your marginalia will be useful memory triggers.
• Develop your own symbol system : asterisk (*) a key idea, for example, or use an exclamation point (!) for the surprising, absurd, bizarre.  Your personalized set of hieroglyphs allow you to capture the important -- and often fleeting -- insights that occur to you as you're reading.  Like notes in your margins, they'll prove indispensable when you return to a text in search of that perfect passage to use in a paper, or when you are preparing for a big exam.  
• Get in the habit of hearing yourself ask questions: “What does this mean?” “Why is the writer drawing that conclusion?” “Why am I being asked to read this text?” etc. 

Write the questions down (in your margins, at the beginning or end of the reading, in a notebook, or elsewhere. They are reminders of the unfinished business you still have with a text: something to ask during class discussion, or to come to terms with on your own, once you’ve had a chance to digest the material further or have done other course reading.

3. Outline, Summarize, and Analyze

The best way to determine that you’ve really gotten the point is to be able to state it in your own words. take the information apart, look at its parts, and then, put it back together again in language that is meaningful to you. three ways to proceed: .

Outlining  the argument of a text is a version of annotating, and can be done quite informally in the margins of the text, unless you prefer the more formal Roman numeral model you may have learned in high school.  Outlining enables you to see the skeleton of an argument: the thesis, the first point and evidence (and so on), through the conclusion. With weighty or difficult readings, that skeleton may not be obvious until you go looking for it.

Summarizing  accomplishes something similar, but in sentence and paragraph form, and with the connections between ideas made explicit.

Analyzing  adds an evaluative component to the summarizing process—it requires you not just to restate main ideas, but also to test the logic, credibility, and emotional impact of an argument.  In analyzing a text, you reflect upon and decide how effectively (or poorly) its argument has been made.  Questions to ask:

• What is the writer asserting?
• What am I being asked to believe or accept? Facts? Opinions? Some mixture?
• What reasons or evidence does the author supply to convince me? Where is the strongest or most effective evidence the author offers  -- and why is it compelling?
• Is there any place in the text where the reasoning breaks down?  Are there things that do not make sense,  conclusions that are drawn prematurely, moments where the writer undermines their purposes?

4. Look for repetitions and patterns

The way language is chosen, used, and positioned in a text can be an important indication of what an author considers crucial and what they expect you to glean from their argument.  .

Language choices can also alert you to ideological positions, hidden agendas or biases.   Be watching for:

• Recurring images
• Repeated words, phrases, types of examples, or illustrations
• Consistent ways of characterizing people, events, or issues

5. Contextualize

Once you’ve finished reading actively and annotating it,   consider the text from the multiple perspectives..

When you contextualize, you essentially "re-view" a text you've encountered, acknowledging how it is framed by its historical, cultural, material, or intellectual circumstances. Do these factors change, complicate, explain, deepen or otherwise influence how you view a piece? 

Also view the reading through the lens of your own experience. Your understanding of the words on the page and their significance is always shaped by what you have come to know and value from living in a particular time and place.

6. Compare and Contrast

Set course readings against each other to determine their relationships (hidden or explicit)..

• At what point in the term does this reading come?  Why that point, do you imagine?
• How does it contribute to the main concepts and themes of the course? 
• How does it compare (or contrast) to the ideas presented by texts that come before it?  Does it continue a trend, shift direction, or expand the focus of previous readings?
• How has your thinking been altered by this reading, or how has it affected your response to the issues and themes of the course?

Susan Gilroy , Librarian for Undergraduate Writing Programs, Lamont Library 

PDF version

Interrogating texts [2 page printable]

• Last Updated: Aug 22, 2023 2:51 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/sixreadinghabits

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Annotating Texts

What is annotation.

Annotation can be:

• A systematic summary of the text that you create within the document
• A key tool for close reading that helps you uncover patterns, notice important words, and identify main points
• An active learning strategy that improves comprehension and retention of information

Why annotate?

• Isolate and organize important material
• Identify key concepts
• Monitor your learning as you read
• Make exam prep effective and streamlined
• Can be more efficient than creating a separate set of reading notes

How do you annotate?

Summarize key points in your own words.

• Use headers and words in bold to guide you
• Look for main ideas, arguments, and points of evidence
• Notice how the text organizes itself. Chronological order? Idea trees? etc.

Circle Key Concepts and Phrases

• What words would it be helpful to look-up at the end?
• What terms show up in lecture? When are different words used for similar concepts? Why?

Write Brief Comments and Questions in the Margins

• Be as specific or broad as you would like—use these questions to activate your thinking about the content
• See the guide on reading comprehension tips for some examples

Use Abbreviations and Symbols

• Try ? when you have a question or something you need to explore further
• Try ! When something is interesting, a connection, or otherwise worthy of note
• Try * For anything that you might use as an example or evidence when you use this information.
• Ask yourself what other system of symbols would make sense to you.

Highlight/Underline

• Highlight or underline, but mindfully. Check out the resource on strategic highlighting for tips on when and how to highlight.

Use Comment and Highlight Features Built into PDFs, Online/Digital Textbooks, or Other Apps and Browser Add-ons

• Are you using a pdf? Explore its highlight, edit, and comment functions to support your annotations
• Some browsers have add-ons or extensions that allow you to annotate web pages or web-based documents
• Does your digital or online textbook come with an annotation feature?
• Can your digital text be imported into a note-taking tool like OneNote, EverNote, or Google Keep? If so, you might be able to annotate texts in those apps

What are the most important takeaways?

• Annotation is about increasing your engagement with a text
• Increased engagement, where you think about and process the material then expand on your learning, is how you achieve mastery in a subject
• As you annotate a text, ask yourself: "How would I explain this to a friend?"
• Put things in your own words and draw connections to what you know and wonder

The table below demonstrates this process using a geography textbook excerpt (Press 2004):

A common concern about annotating texts: It takes time!

Yes, it can, but that time isn’t lost—it’s invested.

Spending the time to annotate on the front end does two important things:

• It saves you time later when you’re studying. Your annotated notes will help speed up exam prep, because you can review critical concepts quickly and efficiently.
• It increases the likelihood that you will retain the information after the course is completed. This is especially important when you are supplying the building blocks of your mind and future career.

One last tip: Try separating the reading and annotating processes! Quickly read through a section of the text first, then go back and annotate.

Works Consulted

Nist, S., & Holschuh, J. (2000). Active learning: strategies for college success. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 202-218.

Simpson, M., & Nist, S. (1990). Textbook annotation: An effective and efficient study strategy for college students. Journal of Reading, 34 : 122-129.

Press, F. (2004). Understanding earth (4th ed). New York: W.H. Freeman. 208-210.

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1.5: Annotating a Text

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• Gabriel Winer & Elizabeth Wadell
• Berkeley City College & Laney College via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)

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"Annotation" means writing notes while you read, usually directly on the text you are reading. While it is common for students to highlight important information in a text, highlighting is considered a passive activity. We want to take notes as we read. Annotating is an important active reading strategy because we engage with a text as the reader. It is as though we are having a conversation with the writer. We might ask them questions, make predictions and connections, or show our agreement or disagreement. We also read a text more closely and retain it better since taking notes slows down our reading process. When it is time to write about a text or take a test, for instance, we will not need to re-read everything, and we can use our annotations instead. Each reader brings their own ideas and background “baggage” to the text, so your annotations will be different from your classmates. Reading is thinking, and like a mirror or a window as in Figure 1.5.1, annotating makes our thinking visible!

Studying an example annotation

Look at the example annotation below. What observations can you make? Discuss with a partner:

Notice this!

First, read the editorial. Think about what parts are important, how the parts connect to each other, and what questions you have.

Editorial from an online magazine: "A Win for Undocumented Immigrants is a Win for All"

Guest Column by Tram Nguyen, Virginia Mercury , March 27, 2020

Every person in Virginia deserves to live in their community free from fear.

The exclusion of undocumented Virginians from being able to drive has been a crippling barrier to that principle. But the state legislature has now passed a bill that will allow driving for many immigrant residents through driver privilege cards this session. At New Virginia Majority we have organized and advocated for this basic right, and now previously undocumented families and communities will legally be able to drive in the state of Virginia.

Having the right to drive can be a matter of life and death under everyday circumstances: a sick child that needs immediate medical attention, or a woman getting ready to bring a new life into the world. Most of us take this access for granted. This is a crucial advancement – for those that have waited patiently just to be able to drive themselves to work, take their children to doctor’s appointments, or attend local events, this a chance to become fully active members of their community.

Ovidia Castillo Rosa, a member of New Virginia Majority’s Loudoun County chapter described it best: ”Not having a driver’s license is like not having feet. Being able to drive would be like having wings. When I have a driver’s license, there are so many things that I’ll have the freedom to do, including starting my own business.”

Cecilia Cruz, a member of the New Virginia Majority, has been involved in the fight for the right to drive, and has called her representatives, and encouraged her friends and neighbors to march in support. “The streets will be more safe and more money will stay in the state,” she said. “Families will be able to leave their children and go to work in safety, without fear.”

Providing this credential will give thousands of Virginians the ability to legally drive and is a huge victory. But we recognize driver privilege cards are not the same as driver’s licenses, and there is much more to be done. Our communities, in an era of open and growing institutional racism and xenophobia, understand that having a driver’s privilege card has the potential to make them vulnerable, as it will make them immediately identifiable as an undocumented person and creates a segment of immigrant drivers.

Our organizers, advocates, and chapter members will continue to fight for a society that treats people equally and with dignity no matter what their status, language, zip code, gender, race, or ethnicity is, and we will work to strengthen privacy protections for all Virginians, regardless of immigration status.

When the presidential election comes to a close in the fall, we pledge to stand by immigrant communities and keep them informed of both the opportunities and threats presented by this law, regardless of who holds the office.

We believe in a Virginia that is welcoming and provides an opportunity for all its residents to succeed and live happy and healthy lives. The outcome of this legislative session was a step in the right direction and toward a more inclusive Virginia. But until all of our communities are granted the full protections and access to driver’s licenses, the fight continues.

Tram Nguyen is co-executive director of New Virginia Majority, which works to builds power in working-class communities of color, in immigrant communities, among LGBTQ people, women, youth, and progressives across the commonwealth.

"A Win for Undocumented Immigrants is a Win for All" was originally published in the Virginia Mercury and is licensed under CC BY NC ND.

Now look at Figure 1.5.2, an annotation of the same text. What do you notice? What else would you add? Discuss with a partner.

Figure 1.5.1 shows the text of "A Win for Undocumented Immigrants is a Win for all" by Tram Nguyen with some passages highlighted, with notes that summarize key information, ask questions, and respond to wording choices the writer made.

See 1.5.1 for an accessible version of the above model annotation . 

Active readers use annotation as a way to

• Make predictions
• Ask questions and look for answers
• Visualize (make pictures in our mind or draw an image or diagram)
• Show agree/disagreements
• Identify problems and/or solutions
• Make connections to ourselves (our background, values, etc), other texts (articles, books, movies, etc), or the world (news events, politics, etc)
• Mark key points
• Summarize key points/ sections of the reading
• Make note of information that shocks, surprises, or challenges us and our beliefs
• Identify unfamiliar vocabulary or parts that are unclear

Some readers also like to

• underline or use symbols to point out key information
• write key words in the margin
• circle definitions and meanings
• write questions in the margins where answers can be found
• identify steps with numbers
• draw arrows to show relationships
• write short summaries in the margins

Practicing annotation

Now let's use active reading strategies and annotation with a short academic article.

• Use the active reading strategies to get an overview of this article.
• Annotate as you read the article, “Undocumented Immigrants May Actually Make American Communities Safer – Not More dangerous – New Study Finds.”

Reading from an online magazine: Undocumented immigrants may actually make American communities safer – not more dangerous – new study finds

Robert M. Adelman, University at Buffalo and Lesley Reid, University of Alabama

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

Undocumented immigration does not increase the violent crime rate in U.S. metropolitan areas. In fact, it may reduce property crime rates. These are the key findings from our recently published article in the Journal of Crime and Justice, co-authored by Yulin Yang, James Bachmeier and Mike Maciag.

Research shows that the American communities where immigrants make their homes are more often improved by their presence than harmed by it. Immigrants bring social, cultural and economic activity to the places they live. That makes these places more vital and safer, not more dangerous.

Why it matters

People from all social groups and backgrounds commit crimes. But undocumented immigrants, and immigrants more generally, are often baselessly blamed for increasing crime rates – including, repeatedly, by President Donald Trump. In the second and final presidential debate, Trump again claimed undocumented immigrants are rapists and murderers.

This notion has existed and been studied since the early 20th century, including in a 2005 analysis we conducted with a number of colleagues that concluded immigration did not increase crime rates in U.S. metropolitan areas.

But this research is often dismissed because most empirical studies cannot separate undocumented immigrants from the total immigrant population. That level of analysis is necessary to draw conclusions about the relationship between undocumented immigration and crime.

For example, we found in a 2017 study with colleagues that from 1970 to 2010 metropolitan areas with greater concentrations of immigrants, legal and undocumented combined, have less property crime than areas with fewer immigrants, on average. Critics suggested that our findings would not hold if we looked at only the subset of undocumented individuals.

So we decided to find out if they were right. Our new study is the result of that effort, and it confirms our original findings: Undocumented immigration, on average, has no effect on violent crime across U.S. metropolitan areas.

In statistical models that did identify a significant relationship between undocumented immigration and crime, we found undocumented immigration reduces property crimes, such as burglary.

How we do our work

Using two different estimates of the undocumented immigrant populations for 154 metropolitan areas in our most recent study – one from the Pew Research Center and one from the Migration Population Institute – we examined the effect of undocumented immigration on homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary and larceny crime rates.

Crime rate data came from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report program. Other data were from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Using a statistical method called regression analysis to examine the data, we found that as the size of the undocumented population increases, the property crime rate decreases, on average. And the size of the undocumented population in a metropolitan area tends to have no impact on the violent crime rate.

These findings build on the conclusions of a large 2018 study in which researchers Graham Ousey and Charis Kubrin examined 51 studies on immigration and crime published from 1994 to 2014.

What still isn’t known

Robert M. Adelman, Associate Professor and Department Chair of Sociology, University at Buffalo and Lesley Reid, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Interim Dean of the School of Social Work, University of Alabama

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

Reflect on your annotations

Discuss your annotations with a partner or in small groups. What observations can you make? What worked well? What was confusing? In what way did your annotations reinforce your learning? What kinds of annotations did you apply the most from the list below? Which types of annotations did you not try? Why do you think that is? What do you plan to do differently when you annotate again?

• Visualize (make pictures in your mind or draw an image or diagram)
• Show agreements or disagreements
• Make connections to yourself (your background, values, etc), other texts (articles, books, movies, etc), or the world (news events, politics, etc)
• Summarize key points or sections of the reading
• Make note of information that shocks, surprises, or challenges you and your beliefs
• Identify parts that are unclear

Works Cited

Adelman, Robert M. and Lesley Reid. "Undocumented Immigrants May Actually Make American Communities Safer – Not More Dangerous – New Study Finds." The Conversation, 27 Oct. 2020

Licenses and Attributions

Cc licensed content: original.

Authored by Marit ter Mate-Martinsen, Santa Barbara City College. License: CC BY NC.

CC Licensed Content: Previously Published

"Undocumented Immigrants May Actually Make American Communities Safer – Not More Dangerous – New Study Finds" by Robert M. Adelman and Lesley Reid. License: CC BY ND.

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We, the voters

Is biden's border plan working here's how the top immigration official says it is.

Obed Manuel

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas talks with NPR's Morning Edition Wednesday, May 8, 2024, at the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. Michael Zamora/NPR hide caption

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas talks with NPR's Morning Edition Wednesday, May 8, 2024, at the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Is the Biden administration's strategy at the U.S.-Mexico border working?

It's a question many U.S. voters are weighing as the country nears a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Trump has vowed to be more aggressive on immigration in a second term, saying he would crack down on migrants and asylum-seekers at the border as well as immigrants already living in the country. In his first term, Trump enacted policies that separated thousands of children from their parents and ordered migrant asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases were evaluated .

Biden meanwhile continued some Trump-era policies and has dealt with a record-number of apprehensions at the border during his presidency and a backlogged immigration system . He's also subject to competing criticisms that he is either too soft on immigration or that he has been too harsh on people trying to escape instability in their home countries.

As part of NPR's We, The Voters 2024 election series, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the person tasked with executing Biden's vision on immigration, sat for an interview with Morning Edition 's Steve Inskeep.

Mayorkas is the first Latino to hold the post since DHS' creation in 2003 . He oversees enforcement agencies U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that processes applications for immigration benefits like green cards and citizenship.

Earlier this year, Mayorkas was impeached by House Republicans who alleged that his use of parole to allow some migrants into the country was unlawful. Those charges were quickly dismissed by the Senate.

Here's what Mayorkas had to say about the work his department is doing at the border.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Steve Inskeep: When it comes to asylum-seekers who have reached this country, what is your fundamental goal?

Alejandro Mayorkas: What we want to do and what we do is enforce the law. And what that means is that if someone has a claim for humanitarian relief, if they claim asylum and their claim prevails, they have established a legal basis to remain in the United States. If their claim fails, then they are to be removed from the United States. We enforce the law.

Inskeep: Do you also have a policy goal to cause fewer people to arrive, fewer people to get in, fewer people to stay?

Mayorkas: Well, our goal is to eliminate to the fullest extent possible the phenomenon of what is commonly termed "irregular migration." People placing their lives and their life savings in the hands of smugglers to arrive in between the ports of entry, which is dangerous and also feeds a criminal network. And instead, we want them to use lawful pathways to make claims for relief under United States law. That is why we have built more lawful pathways in this administration than in any other time, and we are seeking to disincentivize arriving in between the ports of entry at our dangerous southern border.

We, The Voters

Is it easy for migrants to enter the u.s. we went to the border to find out.

Inskeep: Is it fair to say that this isn't working, given the sheer numbers of people who've continued to come to the southern border?

Mayorkas: No, it is not.

Inskeep: You think it's working?

Mayorkas: I think it is working.

Inskeep: What's the evidence?

Mayorkas: One, the numbers have decreased. Migration is a dynamic phenomenon, so the numbers increase and they decrease. But the numbers have decreased. We have also removed or returned an historic number of people more this year than I think in any year since 2011.

Inskeep: During our reporting, we talked with John Modlin, who's the chief patrol officer for the Tucson sector, a very busy sector of the border right now. He said the increase began in 2021, just as the Biden administration was taking office, and that migrants say they believed the laws would be different and that they would be allowed in. I know the administration tried to message differently and told people not to come, but why do you think that didn't work well?

Mayorkas: Let's take a step back. The number of encounters in 2019 exceeded the number of encounters in 2018 by almost 100%.

Inskeep: Meaning there was a big increase during the Trump administration?

Mayorkas: Absolutely. I won't have the precise numbers, but I'm going to ballpark it. There were maybe about 560,000 encounters in 2018 and maybe close to a million in 2019.

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Inskeep: Sure, there have been waves. But in this case we have people telling Border Patrol they came because they thought Biden would let them in.

Mayorkas: Well, remember what we are battling. We are battling sophisticated smuggling organizations that peddle in disinformation. And so that is a reality that we have to counter, and we seek to counter that with accurate information.

Inskeep: Listening to you, it seems to me that I could define your policy difference with Republicans in part in this way: You want people to come lawfully. Republicans don't want people to come or not so many people to come. Is that a fair description?

Mayorkas: Certainly there are some who don't want anyone to come lawfully or otherwise.

Inskeep: Or they just feel the asylum seekers specifically are taking advantage of the system. Let's talk about the asylum-seekers and not other kinds of immigrants who may come here legally.

Mayorkas: Our goal is to have legitimate asylum-seekers, individuals with successful claims to be able to avail themselves of humanitarian relief outside the hands of smugglers.

Inskeep: Do you think most people who ask for asylum have a legitimate case?

Mayorkas: I think that empirically, when one takes a look at the numbers who have claimed and the numbers who succeed, I would respectfully submit that the majority do not qualify.

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Inskeep: So most of them, if it got right down to it, probably should not have come, if you were able to give them advice?

Mayorkas: If I were able to give them advice, of course. But I don't mean to diminish the desperation that fuels their travel and their flight because, even though they may not qualify for asylum, that doesn't mean that they don't legitimately want a better life for themselves and their children, their loved ones, that they are not seeking to escape generalized violence. When a mother, when loving parents are fearful of sending their daughter to school because the walk is so precarious and they actually take. The leap to send that daughter alone to traverse another country, only to reach our southern border. I don't want to diminish what that means in the lives of people. But the fact of the matter is, if they don't qualify for relief, they won't stay.

Inskeep: We spoke to Republican Arizona congressman Juan Ciscomani, who was born in Mexico. He says it's taking too long for legal immigration applications to be processed, while the border is "wide open" for arriving migrants. Is there something unfair about the current state of the law that allows people to come and say, "I want asylum" and they usually get several years before a court hearing?

Mayorkas: I don't think the 720,000 people that we've removed to return would consider the border open, so I would respectfully disagree with him.

The bipartisan legislation would have eliminated the years-long process between encounter and final adjudication in our ability to remove that individual. And I would respectfully wish that the congressman had actually supported that bipartisan legislation rather than opposed it. If people really want to fix the system, then they should advance solutions rather than really dwell on the problem and frankly perpetuate it by declining to implement solutions.

The congresswoman makes a legitimate claim that individuals who are seeking other lawful processes, their cases are taking longer because we have had to allocate resources to the challenge at the border. That's not the only reason that the duration of time has been extended. You know, the prior administration gutted our legal immigration system, financially gutted. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. If they had actually promulgated a fee rule that properly resourced that agency, the backlogs would not have accumulated as they have.

Editor's note: Mayorkas referred to a failed bipartisan border that lost Republican support in the Senate after Trump opposed it . The deal that would have allotted $20 billion for border security and made it tougher for people to claim asylum.

The audio version of this story was produced by Lilly Quiroz. The digital version was edited by Treye Green.

• migrant asylum seekers
• Immigration
• Department of Homeland Security