Reading Informational Texts - Annotating

Susie was lucky.  She went to a school that let its students own their own textbooks, and her teachers expected her to write in them when she read her assignments.  She liked fluorescent highlighters, and green was her favorite color.  She used a green highlighter pen when she read history.  She used blue when she read science because she did not really like science, and she thought blue was an unhappy color.  Although she neither owned a black light nor looked at her notes in the dark, she thought the idea of having notes that might glow in the dark was cool.  When she read her assignment, she highlighted anything that she knew might be important.  She highlighted the dates and the names of the important people.  When she read about a law that was voted on by Congress, she highlighted the name of the bill and what it was about.  Often, she would end up highlighting entire paragraphs.  Sometimes she pressed down so hard that that dye bled through the page.  That could be confusing when she turned the page and saw unimportant sentences that seemed to be highlighted.  When she was finished reading, she closed the book, satisfied that she had read the material and noted what was important with pretty colors. 

Susie had never been taught how to read informational texts like history and science.  Years ago, some teacher had talked about underlining important information in the text.  She saw that some of her friends had highlighted their textbooks instead of underlining, and she liked the way that made the information pop out.  So Susie decided to use highlighters, too.  The night before she studied for a test, she liked how all she needed to do was re-read the highlighted passages. 

Unfortunately, Susie’s tests grades were dropping.  Earning high grades used to be quite easy.  Last year, all she had to do was read over the highlighted passages a few times and then repeat what she had learned on the test.  But that strategy was no longer working.  Now, her teacher asked questions that required her to do more than recall information.  Susie did not know what she was doing wrong, and she was frustrated.  She was also scared.  She no longer felt she was in control.

Susie’s story is not uncommon.  Her highlighting technique was adequate for the expectations and demands of the elementary grades, but now that she was in the eighth grade, she needed a more effective system.  Unfortunately, no one in her school taught study skills.  All of her teachers were under great pressure to cover the curriculum, and they did not have the time to teach something they assumed students already knew.  Susie’s parents asked Soar For Success to help.

We told Susie we could help her.  We would build on what she was doing and show her a technique that is effective and more efficient.  What’s more, this technique would not only help her right now, but she could use it in her high school and college classes.  We would teach her what we at Soar For Success call Interactive Annotation.

First, we put all her highlighters in a desk drawer.  There are many great uses for highlighters, but noting what is important in texts is not one of them.  Everything that has been colored with one of these pens looks the same, and what we want our students to do is to differentiate between main topics, primary facts, and examples and illustrations, and we tell students to write notes in the margins.  Instead of a highlighter, we use a pencil.

We call this study technique Interactive Annotating because the student must interact with the different elements of the reading assignment.  After pre-reading, the student is asked to put the main idea (or thesis or argument) in brackets.  Key facts – names, dates, etc. – are underlined.  Only the name should be underlined, not what the person did.  After the student has finished reading the assignment or when s/he refers to the text when studying for a test, we want just the name to stand out.  We do not want to lose that name with line after line of underlined material.  In the margin, a one or two-word summary is written beside anything that is important.   A check mark can be placed beside interesting information, important examples, helpful points, or other content, which is important but secondary to the main point.

[Hernan Cortes was a Spanish Conquistador who conquered

Mexico and caused the fall of the Aztec nation].  In 1519,

Cortes landed in the Yucatan Peninsula and began his

conquest of Mexico.  There, he encountered Geronino                Mexico conquest

de Aguilar, a priest who had been shipwrecked many

years before.  Aguilar knew the Mayan language and

served as Cortes’ translator.  Cortes used his soldiers                    translator

and cannons to massacre thousands of natives, and

he burned their cities.  Many of these soldiers had been                massacre

hired in the island of Trinidad.                                                      ✓       

                                   

The student placed the main idea in brackets and underlined only the date and the two names.  By looking at the right hand margin, the student will be able to see the key points at a glance.  The student thought that knowing that soldiers have been hired in Trinidad might be helpful to know and placed a check mark to indicate that this might be important, but not as important as the other items that had been annotated.

Captions of illustrations should also be annotated.  One of the margin notes beside a sentence that is supported by a picture might be, “See Figure 7.1” 

Finally, when the student pre-read the assignment, s/he read two of the questions that were placed at the end of the unit.  While reading, s/he found the answers.  Beside the questions, s/he wrote the page numbers on which the answers were found.

Susie was lucky.  She was allowed to mark up her textbook.  Many students, however, are loaned their texts by the school, and they are not allowed to write in the books.  They can take notes on paper while they read.  At the top of the page, they record the assignment (p. 87-94).  On the left side paper, they write MI for main idea, and then summarize the topic.  This is followed by the page on which the main idea is found.  They skip a line and then record the first key fact.  They use the right side of the page like the margin of the text, and they record the one or two-word summary there.  Their notes might look like this:

April 4, p. 87-94

MI       Hernan Cortes – Spanish Conquistador – conquered Mexico

and caused fall of Aztecs (p.87)                                                     

            1519 – Cortes landed Yucatan Peninsula, began Mexico

                                    conquest (p. 87)                                                        Mexico conquest

                         encountered Geronino de Aguilar, shipwrecked

priest he spoke Aztec, translated for

Cortes (p. 88)                                                            translator

                        massacred Aztecs, burned cities (p. 88)                                massacre

                        had hired soldiers in Trinidad (p. 88)                              

When a student interacts with a textbook in this way, two things happen.  First, the student must pay closer attention to the text.  By asking, “What is the main idea, what is the primary information, what is of secondary importance?” the student is forced to focus and determine how one piece of the assignment is related to another.  Second, interactive annotation causes the brain to begin to learn some of the material.  This means that the student is more likely to remember the assignment the next day and will do better in the class discussion.  This also means that the student will not have to wait until the night before the test to memorize everything.  Some of the material will already be in long-term memory. 

This approach also makes studying for tests much easier.  The student does not have to waste time re-reading the assignment.  Instead, by looking at the annotations, the key points become immediately clear:

            Cortez – Conquistador – conquered Mexico – fall of Aztecs

               Aguilar – translator

   Mexico conquest

   massacre

      

These annotations are almost like study cards.  Interactive annotation is a really effective way to read a text.  It improves understanding, increases retention, and makes studying for a test much easier.

But the student is not quite done with the assignment.  There is one more step.  It is called post-reading, and it takes only about 30 seconds.

Reading Informational Texts - Pre-reading

Too often, students read science and history texts the same way they read a short story or a novel.  This approach never works very well, and what’s more, it means that most students have to waste lots of time re-reading material the night before a test. 

Why do students approach these texts this way?  Schools use fiction to teach how to read.  Developing reading skills are reinforced in language arts and English classes with more fiction.  Students become adept at reading novels, short stories, poetry, and plays, but very few schools teach students how to approach informational material.  The unstated assumption is that if students know how to read one type material, they can read anything with equal ease.  If only this were true.

I find most students, at best, have a partial understanding of how they should approach informational texts (history and science).  They begin at the beginning and read straight through.  They underline or, worse, highlight facts as they read.  They do this because they realize this content is important.  When they get to the end of the assignment, they close their books, and fifteen minutes later they would be hard pressed to say much about what they had just read.  These students are not totally wasting their time, but they certainly are not using it effectively. 

When I was eighteen, I attended a wonderful school in England.  One of my courses was zoology.  At the end of the year, I had to sit for an exam, as they say over there, and we students started to prepare for it months in advance.  I went back to a topic I had read earlier in the year and discovered I had underlined thirty-two consecutive pages of material.  I had thought every line was of equal importance.  Everything looked the same – thirty-two pages of blue underlining.  Nothing stood out.  I could not tell whether something was a main concept or an example.  I could not differentiate one fact from another.  A lot of good that did me!  I had to work my way through those pages all over again. 

Students need to read informational textbooks differently than the way they read a piece of fiction.  They need to go beyond merely recognizing the importance of the content and just underlining an important date or vocabulary word or concept.  They need to learn how to interact with the text in a cognitive way so that they begin the retention process as they read, and they need to use an annotation technique that makes the material stand out.  But there is an important step that students should perform before they start reading and annotating.

The first strategy students should use is to ask why this material was assigned.  The answer will give a sense of purpose, a reason for reading the assignment.  By knowing what the teacher wants them to know, they will be more likely to look for certain information as they read. 

Then they should take about a minute to skim through the assignment, noting titles and headings, words in bold type, and some of the captions.  They should look at the material written in the wrap (that is the name of the white space around the text in which editors place key points, questions, and other helpful material).  They should ask a question or two as they skim.  If they are looking at a chapter about Cortes, for example, they might ask, “Who was Cortez?”  “Why is he so important?”  These questions do not have to be very sophisticated.  Students should also read some of the questions at the end of the unit so that they know what the authors thought was important.   When they then proceed to read, they should be on the lookout for some of the answers.  This strategy is called pre-reading.  It gives students a kind of mental roadmap.  They will have a better sense of where they are going and how they are going to get there while they read.  More importantly, they have created a framework to which to attach the content. 

Most students make the mistake of looking at the assignment that they wrote down in class, reaching for the text, opening it to the proper page, and begin reading.  By failing to take a minute to skim through the assignment, they have actually made the learning process more difficult.  Pre-reading is an important step.  It gives relevancy to the material.  Our brain finds learning to be easier when it can hook new information to something it already knows.  When we understand why the material is important, we are more likely to learn it.      

By priming the brain with this simple pre-reading exercise, the student will have laid the groundwork that helps in the process of forming long-term memory.  By spending one additional minute on the assignment, the way has been paved to start memorizing content.  An additional minute is a small price to pay for improving the effectiveness with which a student reads.  Of course, there is more to reading than this simple exercise.  The student also has to annotate the text and then spend a final 30-60 seconds in a post-reading exercise.  But pre-reading is an important first step.