Marking and highlighting a text is like having a conversation with a book. It allows you to ask questions, comment on meaning, and mark events and passages you want to revisit. Annotating is a permanent record of your intellectual conversation with the text.
Annotating will enable you to discuss the novel with more support, evidence, and proof.
Ideas of key importance should be underlined/highlighted, which will stand out from the page and allow you to scan quickly for information. Don't mark everything – if you do, nothing will stand out!
Types of Passages to Mark/Underline
Important Plot Elements: Make a note at the top of the page or in the margin of important plot events.
Key Ideas: Mark key ideas and note briefly your reflections about them.
Questions: If you have a question about something in the book, write it on the page when the question occurs to you.
Unfamiliar Words: Circle unfamiliar or unusual words. Try to figure out what the words mean through the way they are used; supplement your guesses by discussing the words or by consulting a dictionary. Be sure to note the definition in the margin once you have found it.
How to Mark a Text
Brackets: If several lines seem important, draw a line down the margin and underline/highlight key phrases in the passage. This will draw attention to the passage without cluttering it with too much underlining/highlighting.
Asterisks: Place an asterisk next to a relatively important passage. Two asterisks indicate a greater degree of importance, three asterisks even more.
Marginal Notes: Use space in the margin to respond to ideas in the novel. For example, when you come across a character description, write the name of the character in the margin so that you can easily locate the passage when needed. Use margins to ask questions, label literary elements, or summarize critical events in the novel. Circle the page number of important passages.
Types of Passages to Highlight
Themes: When a passage seems to be important to the theme of the novel, make a note of it in the margin or write a few words at the top of the page so you can find the passage.
Character Development: Highlight passages that describe new characters. When you come across a passage that gives the reader insight to a particular character, highlight the passage.
Literary Devices: Highlight or label passages that include literary devices (foreshadowing, imagery, mood, tone, irony, point of view, allusion, etc.)
Highlight words, images, and details that seem to form a pattern throughout the text. For example, a large clock appears in the first chapter, and then you notice the author using the words "timely" or "ticking" in the text, and then an incident occurs in which a character breaks a watch or is late for an appointment. You may have uncovered a pattern of imagery that will lead the close reader to discover a thematic idea (this is also known as a motif). Highlight these related strands and observe the rest of the text closely to see if the author uses other linked words, images, or details.
Symbols: Highlight passages you think might be symbolic. Note what you think is being symbolized and how it relates to a motif/theme.
Figurative Language: Highlight or label passages in which figurative language appears (similes, metaphors, personification, alliteration, assonance, consonance, allegory, etc.)
How to Highlight a Text:
It is important to assign different colors to each of the five areas that should be highlighted. For example, themes might be highlighted in green, character development in pink, literary devices in blue, symbols in yellow, and figurative language in orange. Make a key inside the front cover so you and the teacher will know the colors’ meanings.
Evaluation:
Books will be collected and then evaluated based on your annotations. All of the following features will be present in a well-annotated book:
· Highlighting.
· Short reflective responses throughout.
· Thoughtful questions posed in the margins.
· General, but useful, notes next to highlighted or bracketed sections of text about the importance of those passages.
· Markings, highlighting, and notes spread evenly throughout the entire book instead of being heavily concentrated sporadically through the novel.
· All annotations appear to be original and the work of the student.