Reading & Annotation

Click here for information on our readings.

To be a good student and/or future educator, active engagement, curiosity, and note-taking are vital. You cannot just run your eyes over the material. You must take notes, ask questions, and pay careful attention to what you read. In the margins of readings and/or in a notebook, write down meaningful questions and observations, and share them in class. Finally, you must note various literary elements of the text. Therefore, you must obtain our reading assignments in a format that allows annotation—i.e., making your own notes in the margins of the texts. 

For PDFs and online reading, either print out the texts so you can write on them or read them with a program that allows electronic notetaking. Devise a good note-taking system. Examples: Put a star next to passages you like, a “?” next to parts you need to look up later, a “!” next to parts that surprise you. Bracket out the most important parts. Write short definitions of unclear words. Read things more than once if necessary. Every text (and for that matter, every person) has something to teach you if you try hard enough. Open yourself up to these experiences!