Annotation, a skill as old as print, involves marking up texts with metacognitive cues to aid in the understanding of the texts. Readers write directly on the text as they read by looking for central ideas, circling key ideas, and writing questions in the margins.
Explicit instruction in annotation may raise performance and test scores (Gomez & Gomez, 2007), get used in print and informational texts online and offline (Castek and Beach, 2013).
Studies in expert readers, which makes the basis for comprehension research have noted the common use of annotation among skilled readers (Pressley, 2000). Adler and Van Doren identified seven common techniques:
Recent work in multimodal texts suggest that collaborative annotation tools may have benefits over and beyond tradition print annotation and electronic annotation (Chen & Chen, 2014).
Explain to students the importance of annotation.
Create a code book and hang an anchor chart of common markers.
Reread a passage multiple times but change how you annotate the passage.
Have students record and track the codes they use