annotation assignment high school

Teaching Student Annotation: Constructing Meaning Through Connections

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

Students learn about the purposes and techniques of annotation by examining text closely and critically. They study sample annotations and identify the purposes annotation can serve. Students then practice annotation through a careful reading of a story excerpt, using specific guidelines and writing as many annotations as possible. Students then work in pairs to peer review their annotations, practice using footnotes and PowerPoint to present annotations, and reflect on how creating annotations can change a reader's perspective through personal connection with text.

Featured Resources

• Making Annotations: A User's Guide : Use this resource guide to help students make connections with text through definition, analysis of author purpose, paraphrasing, personal identification, explaining historical context, and more.

From Theory to Practice

In his English Journal article " I'll Have Mine Annotated, Please: Helping Students Make Connections with Text" Matthew D. Brown expresses a basic truth in English Language Arts instruction: "Reading is one thing, but getting something of value from what we read is another" (73). Brown uses the avenue of personal connection to facilitate the valuable outcomes that can result from reading and interacting with text. He begins with student-centered questions such as, "What were they thinking about as they read? What connections were they making? What questions did they have, and could they find answers to those questions?" (73). Brown's questions lead to providing students with instruction and opportunities that align with the NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform: A Policy Research Brief by "link[ing] their personal experiences and their texts, making connections between the students' existing literacy resources and the ones necessary for various disciplines" (5). Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
• 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
• 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
• 7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.

Materials and Technology

• Copies of "Eleven" by Sandra Cisceros or other text appropriate for the activities in this lesson
• Colored Pencils
• Sample Annotation PowerPoint on The Pearl
• Making Annotations: A User's Guide or one students create after discussion
• Annotation Sheet
• Student Sample Annotations from "Eleven"
• Annotation Peer Review Guide
• Example Student Brainstorming for Annotation
• Sample Revised and Published Annotations Using Footnotes

Preparation

• Find sample annotated texts to share with your students. Shakespeare's plays work well since many of his texts are annotated.  Red Reader editions published by Discovery Teacher have great user-friendly annotations geared toward young adult readers.  Look for selections that are engaging—ones that offer more than vocabulary definitions and give a variety of annotations beyond explanation and analysis.
• Alternatively, search Google Books for any text with annotations.  A search for Romeo and Juliet , for example, will bring up numerous versions that can be viewed directly online.
• While much of the work will be done by students, it is useful to take some time to think about the role of annotations in a text.  You will have students identify the functions of annotations, but it is always helpful if you have your own list of uses of annotations so that you can help guide students in this area of instruction if necessary.
• Make copies of all necessary handouts.
• Arrange for students to have access to Internet-connected computers if they will be doing their annotations in an online interactive.
• Test the Literary Graffiti and Webbing Tool interactives on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tools and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in from the technical support page.

Student Objectives

Students will:

• examine and analyze text closely, critically, and carefully.
• make personal, meaningful connections with text.
• clearly communicate their ideas about a piece of text through writing, revision, and publication.

Session One

• Begin the session by asking students if they are familar with the word annotation . Point out the words note and notation as clues to the word's meaning. If students know the word, proceed with the next step. If students are unfamiliar, ask them to determine what the word means by seeing what the texts you pass out in the next step have in common.
• Pass out a variety of sample texts that use annotations. If you are using Google Books , direct students to texts online to have them examine the annotations that are used.
• Have the students skim the texts and carefully examine the annotations.  Encourage students to begin to see the variety of ways that an editor of a text uses annotations.
• Working with a small group of their peers, students should create a list that shows what effective annotations might do.
• give definitions to difficult and unfamiliar words.
• give background information, especially explaining customs, traditions, and ways of living that may be unfamiliar to the reader.
• help explain what is going on in the text.
• make connections to other texts.
• point out the use of literary techniques and how they add meaning to the text.
• can use humor (or other styles that might be quite different from the main text).
• reveal that the writer of these annotations knows his or her reader well.
• The process of generating this list should move into a discussion about where these annotations came from—who wrote them and why.  Guide students to think about the person who wrote these ideas, who looked at the text and did more than just read it, and who made a connection with the text.  It is important here that students begin to realize that their understanding of what they have read comes from their interaction with what is on the page.  You may wish to jumpstart the conversation by telling students about connections you make with watching films, as students may be more aware of doing so themselves.
• touch them emotionally, making them feel happiness as well as sadness.
• remind them of childhood experiences.
• teach them something new.
• change their perspective on an issue.
• help them see how they can better relate to others around them.
• help them see the world through someone else's experiences.
• Before beginning the next lesson, create your Annotation Guide reflecting the different functions of annotation the class discussed today (or use the Sample Annotation Guide ).

Session Two

• Pass out "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros or any other text appropriate for your students and this activity.
• Read and discuss the story as needed, but resist spending too much time with the story since the goal of annotation is to get the students to connect with the text in their own ways.
• Pass out the Sample Annotation Guide or the one the class created and review the various ideas that were generated during the previous session, helping students to begin to think of the various ways that they can begin to connect to the story "Eleven."
• Pass out the Annotation Sheet and ask the students to choose a particularly memorable section of the story, a section large enough to fill up the lines given to them on the Annotation Sheet .  (NOTE: While you could have the students create annotations in the margins of the entire text, isolating a small portion of the text will make the students' first attempt at annotations less daunting and more manageable. You can also use ReadWriteThink interactives Literary Graffiti or Webbing Tool at this point in the instructional process, replacing or supplementing the Annotation Sheet handout.)
• Share with students the Student Sample Annotations from "Eleven" and use the opportunity to review the various purposes of annotating and preview directions for the activity.
• Pass out the colored pencils.  Make sure that students can each use a variety of colors in their annotating.  Sharing pencils among members of a small group works best.
• Have the students find a word, phrase, or sentence on their Annotation Sheet that is meaningful or significant to them.  Have them lightly color over that word, phrase, or sentence with one of their colored pencils.
• Students should then draw a line out toward the margin from what they just highlighted on their Annotation Sheet .
• Now students annotate their selected text.  Using the Sample Annotation Guide , students should write an annotation for the highlighted text.  They can talk about how they feel or discuss what images come to mind or share experiences that they have had.  Any connection with that part of the text should be encouraged at this entry-level stage.
• Repeat this process several times.  Encourage students to use a variety of annotations from the Sample Annotation Guide .  But, most importantly, encourage them to make as many annotations as possible.
• What did they get out of writing annotations?
• What did they learn about the text that they didn't see before?
• How might this make them better readers?
• Students should take the time to share these reflections with each other and with the whole class. Collect responses to evaluate levels of engagement and to find any questions or concerns you may need to address.

Session Three

• Return annotations from the previous session and address any questions or concerns.
• Explain that, working in pairs, the students will examine each other's annotations and look for ideas that have the potential for further development and revision. 
• Distribute copies the Annotation Peer Review Guide and explain how it will help them work together to select the best ideas that they have presented in their annotations. Peer review partners should label each annotation, comment on it, and look for several annotations that would benefit from revision and continued thinking.
• Have each pair narrow down their ideas to the four or five most significant annotations per student.
• Once this is done, give the students time to start revising and developing their ideas.  Encourage them to elaborate on their ideas by explaining connections more fully, doing basic research to answer questions or find necessary information, or providing whatever other development would be appropriate.
• Circulate the room to look at what the students have chosen so that you can guide them with their development and writing.  If you see the need to offer more guiding feedback, collecting the annotation revisions during this process may be helpful.

Session Four

• Once students have revised and developed a few of their annotations on their own, students should begin work toward a final draft.
• The students exchange their revised annotations.
• What is one thing that I really liked in this set of annotations?
• What is one thing that I found confusing, needed more explanation, etc.?
• If this were my set of annotations, what is one thing that I would change?
• Encourage students to rely heavily on the Sample Annotation Guide and the Annotation Peer Review Guide to make these comments during the peer review process. They should be looking to see that there are a variety of annotations and that the annotations dig deeper than just surface comments (e.g., definitions) and move toward meaningful personal connections and even literary analysis.
• Take the original format of the annotation sheet and have the students type up their work using colored text.
• Teach the students how to footnote, and then have them use this footnoting technique for the final draft of their annotations. See the Sample Student Brainstorming for Annotation and Sample Revised and Published Annotations Using Footnotes on The Great Gatsby . If using Microsoft Word, visit the resource Insert a Footnote or Endnote for information on how to use this feature in Word.
• Create a PowerPoint in which the first slide is the original text. The phrases are then highlighted in different colors and hyperlinked to other slides in the presentation which contain the annotations. See the Sample Annotation PowerPoint on The Pearl, and visit PowerPoint in the Classroom for tutorials on how to make the best use of PowerPoint functions.
• What did they learn by doing this activity?
• How did these annotations change their perspective on the text?
• In what ways did their thinking change as they worked through the drafting, rewriting, and revising of their annotations?
• Make sure that students are given time to share these reflections with each other and with the whole class.
• annotate a whole text, using the margins for annotating
• use sticky notes in textbooks or novels as a way to annotate larger works
• use annotations as part of a formal essay to provide personal comments to supplement the analysis they have written.
• Assessing Cultural Relevance: Exploring Personal Connections to a Text
• Graffiti Wall: Discussing and Responding to Literature Using Graphics
• In Literature, Interpretation Is the Thing
• Literary Scrapbooks Online: An Electronic Reader-Response Project
• Reader Response in Hypertext: Making Personal Connections to Literature
• Creative Outlining—From Freewriting to Formalizing

Student Assessment / Reflections

• Review and comment on student reflections after each step of the annotation drafting and revision process.
• If you use this lesson as an introduction to the idea of annotation, the focus of the assessment should be on the variety of annotations a student makes.  Even so, teachers should be able to observe if students were able to move beyond surface connections (defining words, summarizing the story, and so forth) to deeper connections with the text (personal feelings, relating evens to past experiences, and so forth).  Use an adaptation of the Annotation Peer Review Guide in this process.
• For those who take this lesson to its completion by having students generate a final published draft, the focus should move from just looking for a variety of annotations to focusing on the quality of the annotations.  By working through the writing process with these annotations, students should have been able to comment meaningfully beyond what they began with in their “rough draft.”  This should be most evident in the reflections students write in response to the process of creating annotations. Again, a modified version of the Annotation Peer Review Guide would be suitable for this evaluative purpose.
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The Webbing Tool provides a free-form graphic organizer for activities that ask students to pursue hypertextual thinking and writing.

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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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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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Back to School With Annotation: 10 Ways to Annotate With Students

By jeremydean | 25 August, 2015

It’s back-to-school season and I find myself once again encouraging teachers to discuss course readings with their students using collaborative web annotation technologies like Hypothesis. Though relatively new to Hypothesis, I’ve been making this pitch for a few years now,  but in conversations with educators of late I’ve come to realize that we often mean different things by the word “annotate.” Annotation connotes something distinct in specific subject areas, at different  grade and skill levels, and within certain teaching philosophies. This will be the first semester during which Hypothesis has an active education department and so in the spirit these first days of the school year, I thought it might be worth exploring what we really mean when we say, “annotate.”

Annotation is typically perceived as a means to an end. As marginal note-taking it often is the basis for questions asked in class discussion or points made in a final paper. But annotation can also be a kind of end in itself, or at least more than a rest-stop on the way to intellectual discovery. This becomes especially true when annotation is brought into the relatively public and collaborative space of social reading online. Digital marginalia as such requires a redefinition or at least expanded understanding of what is traditionally meant by the act of “annotation.”

Billy Collins’ poem “Marginalia” outlines various ways that people have annotated throughout history, including in formal education contexts. But even within pre-digital student marginalia there can be a wide range of types of annotation from defining terms and explaining allusions to analytic commentary to more creative responses to the text at hand. As annotation becomes social and media-rich as it does using Hypothesis and other web annotation technologies, these species of marginalia only further proliferate.

For those curious about integrating annotation exercises into an assignment or a course, below I outline ten practical ways that one might annotate with a class. This list is by no means exhaustive–the larger point is that there are a lot of different ways for students and teachers to annotate. I’d love to hear about your experiences with annotation in the classroom in notes and comments here or even in your own blog posts on Hypothesis. My hope is that over the course of the coming semesters, Hypothesis will develop as a community of educators sharing their ideas, assignments, successes, and failures. As always, feel free to contact me at [email protected] to chat further about collaborative annotation! (For a more technical guide to using Hypothesis, see our tutorials on getting started here.)

1. Teacher Annotations

Pre-populate a text with questions for students to reply to in annotations or notes elucidating important points as they read.

One of the amazing aspects of social reading is that you can be inside the text with your students while they are reading, facilitating their comprehension, inspiring their analysis, and observing their confusion and insight. It’s about as close as you can get to the intimacy of in-class interaction online. You can guide students through the reading with your annotations, offering context and possible interpretations. This allows you to be the Norton editor of your course readings, but attentive to the particular themes of your course or local contexts of your classroom community. Or you can provoke student responses to the text through annotating with questions to be answered in replies to your annotations. Looking at responses to a question posed in the margin of a text is a great starting point for class discussion in a blended course. In the classroom, students can be prompted to expand on points begun as annotations to jumpstart the conversation. And when there is no physical classroom space, as in online courses, annotation can be a means for the instructor to have a similar guiding presence and to create an engaging and engaged community of readers.

The real pedagogical innovation of collaborative annotation, however, is that students are empowered as knowledge producers in their own right, so most of my suggested classroom annotation practices revolve around a variety of student-centered annotation activities in which they are the ones posing the questions and teachers are co-learners in the reading process. There are also other use cases, however, for teacher annotation, such as using web annotation to comment on student writing published online.

2. Annotation as Gloss

Have students look up difficult words or unknown allusions in a text and share their research as annotations.

Practical across a wide range of skill levels, this exercise can span from simply creating a list of vocabulary words from a text for study to presenting, as a class or individually, a text annotated like a scholarly volume. We’ve seen this kind of exercise completed on great works of literature as well as scientific research papers. Think of the activity as creating a kind of inline Wikipedia on top of your course reading. For difficult texts, sharing the burden of the research necessary for comprehension can help students better understand their reading. And there is something incredibly powerful about students beginning to imagine themselves as scholars, responsible for guiding a real audience through a text, whether their own peers or a broader intellectual community. Students can be encouraged to practice skills like rephrasing research material appropriately and citing sources using different formatting styles. And, of course, glossing can be combined with more insightful annotation as well.

Protip: If you plan to annotate across multiple texts with a class, have students use a course tag (like “Eng101DrDeanFall15”) in all of their annotations. Tagging in this way allows both teacher and students to follow the group’s work on a class stream of activity. Here’s an example of what such a class tag stream looks like from one of our most active educators, Greg McVerry.  More on the pedagogy of tags in this tutorial. Note: very soon (in a matter of weeks) we will be launching a private group feature that will streamline this workflow–annotations will be publishable to a specific group and that group will have a stream that can be followed.

3. Annotation as Question

Have students highlight, tag, and annotate words or passages that are confusing to them in their readings.

An annotation need not be, and often is not, an answer. A simple question mark in the margin of a book can flag a word or passage for discussion. And such discussions can be generative of important explication and analysis. Directing students to annotate in this way creates a sort of heat map for the instructor that can be used to zero in on troubling sections and subjects or spark class discussion. Tags categorizing the particular problem could be used as a simple way to prompt clarification (vocab, plts, research methods, etc.).

While the teacher can respond to such student annotations, a possible follow up exercise could have students respond to each other’s questions instead.

4. Annotation as Close Reading

Have students identify formal textual elements and broader social and historical contexts at work in specific passages.

Online annotation powerfully enacts the careful selection of text for in-depth analysis that is the hallmark of much high school and college English and language arts curriculum. Using web annotation, students are required to literally select small pieces of meaningful evidence from a document for specific analysis. Teachers can direct students to identify textual features (word choice, repetition, imagery, metaphor, etc.) or relevant broader contexts (historical, biographical, cultural, etc.) for passages of a text, and then prompt them to develop a short argument based on such evidence. Collaborative close reading can be especially effective in that multiple students can build off each other’s interpretations to demonstrate how deep textual analysis can go. Teachers implementing the Common Core State Standards for reading might pay special attention to this use case for annotation in the classroom.

Some teachers will use web annotation as a tool throughout the semester for this purpose. Students thus gain regular practice in close reading and build ideas towards more substantive, summative assignments. Such assignments can also begin as collaborative exercises done by the entire class and culminate with individual or small group annotation projects.

5. Annotation as Rhetorical Analysis

Have students mark and explain the use of rhetorical strategies in online articles or essays.

Whether analyzed as a class or individually, a clearly argumentative piece should be chosen for this assignment, perhaps from an op-ed page in a newspaper or magazine. Students might be asked first to simply identify rhetorical strategies (like ethos , pathos , and logos ) using the tag feature in annotations created with Hypothesis. On a second pass, they can be asked to elaborate on how and why a certain strategy is being used by the author. Identification of rhetorical fallacies could be built into this or a related assignment as well. Note: in order to make such an exercise more streamlined, we plan in the near to future allow users to pre-populate a set of controlled terms with which a group can tag their annotations.

Combined with exercises six and nine, annotation as rhetorical analysis could be part of a composition course that also has students map arguments in a controversy using annotation and then begin their own advocacy through annotation of primary sources mapped and analyzed. (This is how the rhetoric department at UT-Austin, where I taught while getting my PhD., structures their freshman composition courses.) A twist on this assignment could ask students to analyze their own persuasive prose in this way–discussion of such self-reflexive annotation on one’s own writing is a whole other category of annotation, probably deserving of a blog post in itself.

6. Annotation as Opinion

Have students share their personal opinions on a controversial topic as discussed by an article.

A lot of how people are interacting with content online today—commenting on web articles, Tweeting about them with brief notes–is a kind of annotation. At Hypothesis we might think of web annotation as a more rigorous form of such engagement with language and ideas on the Internet. Framing one’s opinions as annotations of specific statements or facts is a reminder that our arguments should be grounded in actual evidence. In any case, allowing students to express their opinions in the margins of the Web, and helping them become responsible and thoughtful in those expressions, is a huge part of what it means to be literate both on the Web and in democratic society more generally. Students could be asked simply to respond to the reading with their thoughts, as in a dialectical reading journal, or employ specific cultural or persuasive strategies in their rhetorical intervention.

Again, this advocacy exercise could be a summative assignment within a unit that uses Hypothesis to complete annotation activities like those described in ways five and nine here.

7. Annotation as Multimedia Writing

Have students annotate with images and video or integrate images and video into other types of annotations.

One of the unique aspects of online annotation (and online writing in general) is the ability to include multimedia elements in the composition process. We’ve found many teachers and students excited to make use of animated GIFs in annotation. The use of images can simply be representative (this is a reference to Lincoln with a photo of the 16th president), but more advanced students can be taught to think about how images themselves make arguments and serve other rhetorical purposes.

It is advisable to spend a lesson introducing the idea of digital writing to students with particular attention to the use of images, covering everything from search to use policies and attribution. More traditional teachers may be less accustomed to assessing such multimedia compositions and should spend some time thinking about and explaining to their students a grading rubric.

8. Annotation as Independent Study

Have students explore the Internet on their own with some limited direction (find an article from a respectable source on a topic important to you personally), exercising traditional literacy skills (define difficult words, identify persuasive strategies, etc.).

Many of the above exercises presume that students are annotating for the most part together on a shared course text. But the nature of web annotation is that we can see the notes of others even if we are not reading the same text. In this way, we can attend to annotations as texts themselves. Like a friend’s Facebook page or Twitter feed, seeing someone else navigate the world can be interesting. And through web annotation students can be taught to navigate the digital world responsibly and thoughtfully. Protip: because each Hypothesis user’s annotations are streamed on their public “My Annotations” page, teachers can monitor and assess student work there rather than on individual texts if so desired. (You can click on a username attached to an annotation or search the Hypothesis stream for a username to locate this page. Here’s mine. )

Whether or not one goes so far as to let students roam free on the open Web applying their classroom learning, we have found it to be valuable to have a unit develop from collaborative work to independent or small group work. Students might start off annotating together on a few select texts, getting a sense of what annotation means and how a particular platform like Hypothesis works, but by the end of a term become responsible for glossing or analyzing a single text or set of texts themselves.

9. Annotation as Annotated Bibliography

Have students research a topic or theme and tag and annotate relevant texts across the Internet.

This is a different kind of annotation than largely discussed above. Here we are annotating on the level of the document rather than on a particular selection of text. (Users can create unanchored annotations for this purpose using the annotation icon on the sidebar without selecting any particular text within a document.) But this annotation exercise practices solid research skills and can be used as preparation for research assignments. In fact, using annotation as a annotated bibliography assignment is an excellent way for teachers to follow and guide student research during the process itself. The result of this assignment will be something useful for a paper such as a summary of the major stakeholders of a particular issue and how they articulate their positions.

Of course this kind of annotation as page-level commentary can be combined with more fine-grained attention through annotation to the texts of these tagged documents. In addition to outlining sources needed for a paper, the student can begin to break down those sources for close reading within an essay.

10. Annotation as Creative Act

Have students respond creatively to their reading with their own poetry or prose or visual art as annotations.

Annotation need not be overtly analytical. Whether in writing or using other media, students can respond creatively to texts under study through annotation as well, inserting themselves within the intertextual web that is the history of literature and culture. One creative writing exercise might be to have students annotate in the voices of a characters from a novel being read. Or to have them re-imagine passages written as newspaper stories. Nathan Blom’s Annotated Lear Project at LaGuardia Arts High School is a great example of students creatively responding to a text through annotation.

Students can also use their imaginations to annotate texts with their own drawings, photographs, or videos inline with the relevant sources of textual inspiration. Whether completed individually or collaboratively this exercise can result in some wonderful, illustrated editions of course texts.

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Narrative Essay

How to write an annotation.

One of the greatest challenges students face is adjusting to college reading expectations.  Unlike high school, students in college are expected to read more “academic” type of materials in less time and usually recall the information as soon as the next class.

The problem is many students spend hours reading and have no idea what they just read.  Their eyes are moving across the page, but their mind is somewhere else. The end result is wasted time, energy, and frustration…and having to read the text again.

Although students are taught  how to read  at an early age, many are not taught  how to actively engage  with written text or other media. Annotation is a tool to help you learn how to actively engage with a text or other media.

View the following video about how to annotate a text.

Annotating a text or other media (e.g. a video, image, etc.) is as much about you as it is the text you are annotating. What are YOUR responses to the author’s writing, claims and ideas? What are YOU thinking as you consider the work? Ask questions, challenge, think!

When we annotate an author’s work, our minds should encounter the mind of the author, openly and freely. If you met the author at a party, what would you like to tell to them; what would you like to ask them? What do you think they would say in response to your comments? You can be critical of the text, but you do not have to be. If you are annotating properly, you often begin to get ideas that have little or even nothing to do with the topic you are annotating. That’s fine: it’s all about generating insights and ideas of your own. Any good insight is worth keeping because it may make for a good essay or research paper later on.

The Secret is in the Pen

One of the ways proficient readers read is with a pen in hand. They know their purpose is to keep their attention on the material by:

• Predicting  what the material will be about
• Questioning  the material to further understanding
• Determining  what’s important
• Identifying  key vocabulary
• Summarizing  the material in their own words, and
• Monitoring  their comprehension (understanding) during and after engaging with the material

The same applies for mindfully viewing a film, video, image or other media.

Annotating a Text

Review the video, “How to Annotate a Text.”  Pay attention to both how to make annotations and what types of thoughts and ideas may be part of your annotations as you actively read a written text.

Example Assignment Format: Annotating a Written Text

For the annotation of reading assignments in this class, you will cite and comment on a minimum of FIVE (5) phrases, sentences or passages from notes you take on the selected readings.

Here is an example format for an assignment to annotate a written text:

Example Assignment Format: Annotating Media

In addition to annotating written text, at times you will have assignments to annotate media (e.g., videos, images or other media). For the annotation of media assignments in this class, you will cite and comment on a minimum of THREE (3) statements, facts, examples, research or any combination of those from the notes you take about selected media.

Here is an example format for an assignment to annotate media:

• Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : http://www.lumenlearning.com/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Paul Powell . Provided by : Central Community College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Elisabeth Ellington and Ronda Dorsey Neugebauer . Provided by : Chadron State College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Annotating a Text. Authored by : HaynesEnglish. Located at : http://youtu.be/pf9CTJj9dCM . License : All Rights Reserved . License Terms : Standard YouTube license
• How to Annotate a Text. Authored by : Kthiebau90. Located at : http://youtu.be/IzrWOj0gWHU . License : All Rights Reserved . License Terms : Standard YouTube License

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How to Annotate and Analyze a Poem

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• Teacher Guide Central

Poetry Lesson Plan for High School: How to Annotate a Poem

Mastering the Technique

This is Emily Dickinson. My 10th grade English teacher loved Emily Dickinson. I did not. I do now. Here are some analyses of Emily Dickinson poems that I wrote. May my 10th grade English teacher rest in peace.

(Hey, here’s a chart for teaching sound devices in poetry so your students will have an easy way to organize their discoveries. It’s ready to use now!)

I thought I knew how to analyze a poem, but it wasn’t until I learned how to annotate a poem that I truly mastered it. And it wasn’t until I taught students how to annotate a poem that I really learned how to do both. I owe it all to this poetry lesson plan.

• Choose a short poem (15-20 lines). Copy it onto a half-slice of paper and use the other half for writing an analysis.
• Write the poem on the board.
• Read the poem aloud.
• Instruct students to identify the following elements and make notations: rhyme scheme, figurative language, images, symbols, sound devices (alliteration, consonance, assonance, rhythm, onomatopeia, off rhyme).
• Instruct students to circle any part of the poem that stands out, confuses them, or is important.
• Write questions in the margin; highlight unusual words; mark phrases that indicate the poem’s meaning.
• Determine the poem’s theme and draw arrows to the lines that support the theme.

Assume the Best

This is Langston Hughes. Check out an annotation and analysis of “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?” and “Dreams.”

Don’t assume students will find this activity boring. Most often, they are pleased they get to think through a poem without the pressure of being “right or wrong.” Encourage them to write whatever comes to mind. Use these poetry lesson plan procedures to get the most out of the assignment.

• Go over the instructions for annotating a poem
• Instruct students to annotate the poem they copied down.  Give them five minutes to come up with as much as they can.
• Hand a white board marker to a student and instruct him or her to identify the rhyme scheme.
• Hand a marker to another student and have him or her identify figurative language.
• Choose a different student for each of the following: images, symbols, metaphors, similes, sound devices, and meaningful lines.
• Ask for volunteers to come up and add anything they wish to the board annotations. They may be shy at first. If so, throw the marker and choose the student it lands closest to.
• You may have anywhere from 1-5 students at the board at once while the remainder of the class continues writing on their own paper.
• Feel free to make a few annotations yourself to keep things rolling. It’s important to encourage students. Acknowledge all efforts with appreciation.
• Revel in the words of master poets.

Say hello to Robert Frost.

You’ll discover amazing things as you participate in the process. For example, I discovered that

• Robert Frost’s “ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening ” makes sense forwards and backwards.
• William Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” is about the subconscious connection poets in nature make with the Universe/God.
• Langston Hughes uses peaceful images of rot to set the reader up for an explosion in “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?”.
• John Keats emphasizes that our best is good enough even if it isn’t good in “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

Write the Poetry Analysis

Once the annotations are complete, it’s time to write the analysis. Remind students that an analysis consists of facts and commentaries. It is not a summary, a listing of facts, or random, unsubstantiated conjecture. Use the following outline to help students:

I.  Topic sentence stating the title of the poem, the author, and the poem’s theme. A. Evidence #1: Identify an important line, poetic device, rhyme scheme, etc. Analysis/Interpretation #1: Explain how the evidence supports the designated theme. Analysis/Interpretation #2: Explain how the evidence supports the designated theme. B. Evidence #2: Identify an important line, poetic devices, rhyme scheme. Analysis/Interpretation #1: Explain how the evidence supports the designated theme. Analysis/Interpretation #2: Explain how the evidence supports the designated theme. C. Concluding Sentence

Common Core Standards

This poetry lesson plan satisfies the following common core standards.

• RL.9-10.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. W.9-10.1 Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
• RL.9-10.2  Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
• RL.9-10.4   Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).
• RL.9-10.10   By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 9-10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of the grades 9-10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
• W.9-10.1a Introduce precise claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and create an organization that establishes clear relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.
• W.9-10.2b   Develop the topic with well-chosen, relevant, and sufficient facts, extended definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to the audience’s knowledge of the topic. W.9-10.2a  Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections and distinctions; include formatting (e.g., headings); grap
• W.9-10.5 Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of L.9-10.1-3.) hics (e.g., figures, tables); and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
• W.9-10.4   Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
• L.9-10.1  Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

Last Updated on October 20, 2017 by Trenton Lorcher

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Expect Unexpected Engagement When you try Hexagonal Thinking in ELA

Listen to my latest podcast episode:.

145: Teaching Annotation just got Fun

• January 26, 2022

So here’s the thing about annotation. I don’t think there’s a right way to do it. It’s personal, and that makes it a different kind of challenge to teach. I’ve spent the last month thinking about this, and developing curriculum for it. I started with checklists and copy-and-paste templates for digital annotation, but I ended up somewhere much nicer. Because as tempting as it is to give students a bookmark showing 93 things they could look for in the text, with color codes for each one, do we really think they’re going to carry on with that once we’re not hovering?

Not so much.

Today, in episode 145, we’re going to talk about what it looks like to be good at annotation, a few creative ways to get there, and maybe more importantly, how to help students understand the point of being good at annotation.

You can listen in below, or on any podcast player .

So let’s start with what it looks like to build mastery in annotation. What do advanced annotaters (yep, I just made up a word) have that beginners do not?

Like with so many things in English, it’s all about intention.

Annotating just to annotate is easy. You grab a pen, maybe some sticky notes, and you underline, highlight, and sticky up a storm. But what have you really accomplished? Chances are, your beginning annotaters don’t feel any more confident discussing or writing about the text that they’ve just randomly marked up.

So as we teach our students about annotation, and teach them that there’s no specific one right way, we DO want to let them know that there is a desired result. When they’re done annotating, they should understand the text better. It should be easier to both ask a question about it, and answer a question about it. It should be easy to flip back through a section and find something they want to find. It should be more memorable to them than if they didn’t annotate.

Some master annotaters will be flair pen jedis – using color coordination to identify themes, key quotations, big questions. Others will be sticky note jugglers, pro at using those tiny little squares as a guide through the maze. Some will write long notes to themselves in the margins, while others draw sketches. Some will combine all of these strategies at will, like a pastry chef with her frosting tips.

So then, if we know what we want, master annotaters who have developed their own style, how do we get there? There are so many options! Today I’m going to share four. Try one, or try them all.

Building Annotation Skills with Illumination

You know how people used to create illuminated manuscripts ? These stunning versions of a text brought so much richness to the words. For this project, students will try illuminating a text themselves, in their own modern way (no need to get out the mortar and pestle and start powdering gold leaf for the paint).

To have your students illuminate a text, think about what annotation skills you’d like them to try out. Things might feel checklisty for a minute here, but every student will put their own unique spin on the project, and everyone will learn from what everyone else does too.

You might ask students to identify literary devices, highlight characterization, share themes, experiment with sketchnotes and visuals, use color coordination to bring clarity to their viewer, and ask questions.

You can let them work in Google slides, a digital program like Canva, or on a large sheet of paper with some artistic materials available.

As they work to create a visual illumination, they’ll have a chance to see just how much their own understanding of the piece improves as they go over and over it, trying to decide what’s most important to illuminate. They’ll experiment with different ways to showcase what they’re discovering, increasing their annotation toolkit for the future. And then, when they share their work with each other (I suggest a gallery walk and a chance to share positive feedback), they’ll have a chance to see what they like best about each other’s annotations, and borrow ideas for their own future work.

By the end of the project, hopefully they will better understand how annotation helps them understand a text better and remember it more, AND have some new strategies ready to use for more informal annotation.

Building Annotation Skills with Collaboration

Collaborative annotation is a fun way to help students dig deeper into a text and learn from the ways that others annotate. For this project, divide your students up into groups and share some roles with them.

For example…

Role #1: Identify key literary devices and define vocabulary words that readers might not know. Use color coordination to help.

Role #2: Find big themes and ideas in the text and make them visible with your amazing margin notes. Help explain sections that might be confusing.

Ro le #3: Add visual annotations in the form of icons, sketches, drawing, photos, or anything else you can think of to help highlight meaning.

You can introduce this type of collaborative annotation by letting the class collaborate to help you with one as a model, and then by going BIG with some models on the walls for your groups to annotate. It’s not easy to all be writing and drawing on one tiny piece of paper, so either giving students large butcher paper to print a text selection on, or printing big posters like the ones below can help bring this activity to life.

(A note about printing gigantic posters in pieces. It takes a bit of math, which is not my favorite, but I was able to design these in Canva by custom sizing a poster to 17 inches by 33 inches, saving it as a PNG file, and then splitting it across six slides to print. I had to monkey around a bit, but now I could do it over and over with different texts, so I think it was worth it!)

Once your students are in groups, they can access sticky notes and colors as they wish to work on their own individual roles for a while, then come together to share what they’ve done and give suggestions to each other. They’ll be learning from two other people about their annotation style along the way. Finally, as they all start to share the larger picture of the text, you can have them write down some questions for discussion into the margins.

I suggest you wrap up an activity like this by letting pairs of small groups present to each other (going around to have everyone present to everyone would just be too long) and then do a gallery walk to see all the annotation styles and wins that are up on the walls. Take some time at the end for takeaways – and not just about the texts students have annotated. Ask kids which annotations really impressed them, and how the activity is going to affect their own annotation style.

Building Annotation Skills with Quick Practice

Another way to help students develop their own personal annotation style is to help push them in a quick and easy way to try new things with their annotation. Do you notice that everyone is focusing too much on minutiae? Give them a five minute close reading challenge to focus on taking notes on the big picture. Do you notice there are too many boring discussion questions? Give them a five minute challenge to ask at least ten questions in the margins, and see what surprising things they come up with. Do you notice your students aren’t exploring the visual side of annotation? Do a challenge with icons, one with sketches, and one with color coordination.

Quick and fun “Try This” challenges can make good bellringers or discussion warm-ups. Be sure to remind kids that you’re trying to help them develop their own personal style of annotation, so they can remember and write about text effectively throughout their school career and their jobs. It’s not about showing you that they can mark characterization. It’s about learning to mark characterization and seeing if that’s helpful for them in understanding and remembering the text better.

Building Annotation Skills by Annotating Images

Images provide another fun angle from which to approach annotation. There are so many ways students can take their understanding of a text and use it to annotate an image – a photograph, a map, a character silhouette, a magazine cover, a book cover, an infographic, a web page printout.

An image annotation project requires a lot of critical thinking, as student combine what they read with what they see, mixing media and knowledge (in that way I love so much). It’s another way for them to continue developing the critical thinking components of their own annotation style, AND, if you include a gallery walk or small group presentations with the project, to see how others are developing their styles, and to learn from them.

So what do you think? Are you ready to have some fun teaching annotation? Goodbye checklists, hello creative personal styles! Every student will annotate differently, but every student’s style can be informed by activities like illuminating text to showcase to others, collaborative annotation, annotation challenges, and annotating images.

I’ll help you find the creative ELA strategies that will light up your classroom. Get ready for joyful teaching!

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Thank you for this. I want to try annotating images with my classes.

That’s wonderful, Anna! I’m so glad this was helpful for you.

Head of Library but about to take on two English classes, something I’ve not done for a few years so this was super timely. Thank you so much!!

I’m so glad, Sue! Thank you for telling me! Good luck with your new position, I hope it will be a joy for you.

This podcast was inspiring to me! Dear Betsy, I have been an English teacher for 10 years in Israel. When I first started I was penalized for my creativity and collaboration techniques…. I am proud to share that this did not deter me from my creative agenda! So, listening to your podcast and reading your creative tips inspire me to keep being creative! Not to mention my students’ positive responses. I am a great believer in teaching skills…these skills, specifically, annotation, can be encouraged for students to use in ALL subjects. So, thankyou! There is a quote that has followed me from the beginning of my teaching career, “Creativity is intelligence having fun!..” Albert Einstein. On a personal note, being creative raises the professional bar for myself and for my students. During these challenging times creativity helps motivation to learn…not simple however, doable. Knowing I am not alone in my efforts helps alot! Suzanne

Oh Suzanne, I’m so glad you found it inspiring! In return, I am inspired by your story of not giving up even when you came up against those who did not share your passion for creativity and collaboration. Good for you!!!

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2.5: How to Write an Annotation

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One of the greatest challenges students face is adjusting to college reading expectations. Unlike high school, students in college are expected to read more “academic” type of materials in less time and usually recall the information as soon as the next class.

The problem is many students spend hours reading and have no idea what they just read. Their eyes are moving across the page, but their mind is somewhere else. The end result is wasted time, energy, and frustration…and having to read the text again.

Although students are taught how to read at an early age, many are not taught how to actively engage with written text or other media. Annotation is a tool to help you learn how to actively engage with a text or other media.

View the following video about how to annotate a text.

Annotating a text or other media (e.g. a video, image, etc.) is as much about you as it is the text you are annotating. What are YOUR responses to the author’s writing, claims and ideas? What are YOU thinking as you consider the work? Ask questions, challenge, think!

When we annotate an author’s work, our minds should encounter the mind of the author, openly and freely. If you met the author at a party, what would you like to tell to them; what would you like to ask them? What do you think they would say in response to your comments? You can be critical of the text, but you do not have to be. If you are annotating properly, you often begin to get ideas that have little or even nothing to do with the topic you are annotating. That’s fine: it’s all about generating insights and ideas of your own. Any good insight is worth keeping because it may make for a good essay or research paper later on.

The Secret is in the Pen

One of the ways proficient readers read is with a pen in hand. They know their purpose is to keep their attention on the material by:

• Predicting what the material will be about
• Questioning the material to further understanding
• Determining what’s important
• Identifying key vocabulary
• Summarizing the material in their own words, and
• Monitoring their comprehension (understanding) during and after engaging with the material

The same applies for mindfully viewing a film, video, image or other media.

Annotating a Text

Review the video, “How to Annotate a Text.” Pay attention to both how to make annotations and what types of thoughts and ideas may be part of your annotations as you actively read a written text.

Example Assignment Format: Annotating a Written Text

For the annotation of reading assignments in this class, you will cite and comment on a minimum of FIVE (5) phrases, sentences or passages from notes you take on the selected readings.

Here is an example format for an assignment to annotate a written text:

Example Assignment Format: Annotating Media

In addition to annotating written text, at times you will have assignments to annotate media (e.g., videos, images or other media). For the annotation of media assignments in this class, you will cite and comment on a minimum of THREE (3) statements, facts, examples, research or any combination of those from the notes you take about selected media.

Here is an example format for an assignment to annotate media:

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A Different Approach to Teaching Annotation

Annotation ‘rules’ can zap students’ natural curiosity, but building a culture of observation encourages them to ask questions.

The act of reading elicits a feeling of curiosity. We notice stuff, certain words or phrases that make us pause or experience a feeling of weight. I know this is true for adult readers, for high school readers, and for my own children. My 3-year-old son stops me while we read together so that he can touch illustrations or ask random questions. When my 6-year-old daughter reads, her eyes grow wide as she shouts, “Wait! I see something!”

My high school students notice stuff, too. Their eyes also grow wide with recognition. They see repetitions and discrepancies. They experience cognitive dissonance and ask questions. However, at the beginning of the school year, many consistently claim, “I don’t know” or “I don’t see anything,” when approaching an unfamiliar text. They annotate nothing or highlight everything. Only after months of observation routines do they admit the truth: They didn’t think their annotations would be correct.  

In the late 1990s before No Child Left Behind, the National Reading Panel performed a large-scale secondary analysis to determine the effectiveness of reading instruction. Not surprisingly, they learned that teaching reading comprehension does in fact improve reading, which ignited a series of conditional arguments. If I must teach comprehension, I should teach how to annotate correctly. If there are correct ways, there must be incorrect ways. If there are incorrect ways, there must be ways to assess.

The unsettling consequence of using annotations to assess comprehension is that annotations are no longer used to record curiosity or investigation while reading. Perhaps this is why students constantly ask if their annotations are correct or, more compellingly, why they express contempt toward annotating.

Building a Culture of Observation

Allow me to make myself clear: I am not asking students to stop annotating. I am asking teachers to guide students to observe as a habit of mind, rather than explicitly teach how to annotate. 

When we prescriptively teach annotating, students comply rather than comprehend. When we use annotation guides, students scan the text for answers rather than observe and question. When we grade annotations, students are afraid of being incorrect. The more explicitly we teach it, the more they hate it.

Often, teaching annotation leads students to notice what the teacher has decided is important, and they too quickly forfeit their own observations and ideas in order to finish an assignment. Instead, teachers must explicitly reframe the skill of annotation and build a culture of observation.

6 Ways to Encourage Observation

1. Prioritize “observing text” as a habit of mind. Insist that “good reading” is not fast or perfect reading. Good readers slow down to observe, to notice. Observe texts together, and annotate collectively. Do not reject any observation, even if it sounds wrong. 

2. Reframe annotation, and invite students to observe through mantras. 

• “No one knows what’s important on the first read; trust what you notice—it could matter!” 
• “I’m not asking you to find something specific or deep. Notice any little thing.”  
• “Can you take this big text and break it down into little parts? What do you see?”

3. Reframe annotation using different analogies or metaphors.

• “Read with a pencil. Let the pencil be an extension of your thoughts—from brain, to arm, to pencil, to paper.” 
• “Have you ever played I Spy? I Spy stuff, and don’t judge what you find.”
• “Don’t run—walk. Walk through the text, and smell the flowers. Notice everything.” 

4. Exemplify various styles of annotations. Laud and display different styles. Victoria loves colors, Angel uses arrows, John draws boxes around phrases, and Oscar only uses a pencil. Omit examples that have scant annotations.

5. Model annotation using different students. While collectively annotating, ask different students to annotate on a projected text as the class shouts out what they notice. Then explicitly state that the style doesn’t matter. What matters is the content—the stuff you notice!

6. Encourage marking words and phrases. Patricia Kain’s essay from the Harvard College Writing Center invites students to focus on words and phrases instead of whole sentences. This is the only suggestion for annotation that I give explicitly. I do not correct their annotations but explain that words and phrases create connections in a way that whole sentences do not. A repetition of phrases or discrepant word choices could lead to important discoveries.

The suggestions above seem simple, but they must be implemented consistently to build a culture. Teachers must genuinely forfeit their own sense of correctness and resist the lure of leading students to the teacher’s answers. Building a culture will require more time, patience, and practice, but not necessarily extra work. 

Teachers will no longer have to tediously grade annotations, trying to guess whether a student understands the text. Students will no longer have to guess what the teacher wants them to mark down and feel like they cannot master a reading assignment. Instead, both will engage in a more observational and analytical learning culture that will pay off in time and energy when students begin to meaningfully engage with texts. They will shout, “Wait! I see something!” and endearingly take photos of their messy annotations, proud of all the scribbles and arrows and stuff that only they can understand. 

6 Remarkable Ideas for Meaningful Collaborative Annotations

• October 20, 2021
• AP Literature , English 11

As high school teachers we are always looking for ways to engage our students in authentic and creative ways.  And we love engagement that has sneaky outcomes as well.  Collaborative annotations is one of those tools we have that can really get kids thinking, while increasing the level of inquiry and understanding.

What are Collaborative Annotations?

Simply put, collaborative annotations, sometimes called social annotations, are a form of collaborative notes in the margins of a text created by a group of people reading the same text.  This is a great way to bring groups into close reading exercises in high school English classes.

Collaborative annotations can be done the “old fashioned way” with pen and paper or on digital platforms and there are so many ways that we can utilize this in the high school English classroom.

Pen & Paper or Digital Platform?

Social annotations completed use paper and a pen, pencil and highlighter and those completed on digital platforms all have their benefits.  There is something to be said about that physical interaction with the text that happens when you underline something and then put a note in the margins.  It is something I have been doing since I was in high school myself (which means we’re talking about 30+ years of annotating text).  Once you add those notes, you are part of the text.  

However, in the age of 1:1 and hybrid classes, digital annotation for collaborative close readings have an equally important place.  Using Google platforms like Docs and Jamboard allow you, as the teacher, more oversight while allowing students to connect even if they are not in the same room at the same time. 

Either way, you cannot go wrong having your students complete some collaborative annotations.

So the next question I get is how big should your groups be.  And, of course, the answer to that question varies.  Really, it depends on the way you want to structure your students’ interactions with the texts and each other.  You can work these annotations in groups with as few as 2 students or with the whole class.  I will give you suggestions for all of those scenarios below.

Ways to Have Students Participate in Collaborative Annotations

Students pairs—silent seminars.

If you are looking to stick to working with one other student, try Silent Seminars.  (This also works for groups of three.) In a silent seminar, students carry on a conversation without speaking out loud.  It’s good for days when you just need quiet or when not all of your students are in the same room.

Silent Seminar Set Up

Assign groups, determine the passage(s) give them a topic (if you wish) and let them start “talking.”  This can be done very informally with a blank sheet of paper and a pen or you can use a template that you set up in Google Slides or Google Docs.  Or you can do something more fun. For example you can use characters like this Silent Seminar Tool pictured above.  Students then engage in discussing the text through writing in a back and forth manner.

I used silent seminars during my Hamlet unit last spring. Students focused their attention on revenge in Hamlet after we had done some close reading on the Act 3 soliloquies where both men focus on guilt and the purpose for their actions. Student who were physically in the room were paired with students who were at home.

Here is a fun template you can use for Silent Seminars .

Small Groups (3-6)—Pass-a-Passage Same Text

I love Pass-a-Passage Collaborative Annotations and I have used it with all level of students.  This one works better in person (as my experience attempting it in a hybrid setting was all but a failure!).  Students each have the same text:  a poem, a short story story (for my favorite short short stories, check out this post ) or an excerpt. 

You can give specific focus tasks or author’s craft you want the the students to look for in this collaborative close reading exercise and then they each take a turn writing on the other students’ papers. Each person adds additional notes.

Small Groups (3-6)—Pass-a-Passage Different Texts

You can also do Pass-a-Passage Annotations with different texts.  You will need to have a variety of passages that are approximately the same length and for which the order of reading doesn’t matter too much.  I like to use this for close reading with a longer text to pull out a specific theme or motif.  You will need enough passages for the number of students in the groups.  So if your groups will be three then you need three passages.

Students will follow the same procedure and set up regardless of whether they are reading the same text or different texts.

Pass-a-Passage Set Up

This works best if all of your groups are the same size.  Because attendance can be so variable, I will often wait until the students are in class to determine the size of groups.  This is one of those times when a good old counting off to determine you group can be ideal.

I love to jump in with a group to even things out when a class needs just one more person to makes groups even.  So don’t be afraid to be a participant in this process.  The kids love it when you do.

You will also need a timer for this (you can use your phone or something on-line that you can project on the screen).  Determine the amount of time you want to give for each round, then set a time and have student begin adding notes to their own passages.  When time is up, they pass their paper to the person sitting to their right (or left, you can pick the direction).  Set the timer again and have students begin adding annotations to their group member’s passage.  Keep going until you have gone through all members of the group.

Notes about Timing:  I like to give the first read more time.  They will need more time familiarize themselves with the passage and make notes.  I then reduce the time for the subsequent rounds.  You can reduce it each time or just after the round. If you are choosing to give each student a different passage, you will want to keep all the times even.

Writing Utensils

I like to have students “identify” their notes by using different colored writing utensil.  Having colored pencils, colored pens or skinny markers on hand can insure that you have enough variety.  But even if you only have a supply of blue, black and red pens along with pencils, you will have 4 colors.  You can also have students right their names at the top of the page as they complete their round.  That way both you and the students know where specific annotations came from.

About the Annotations

Make it clear that students must add something each round.  This means that if someone “took” their annotation from a previous round they will need to look for something new or they will need to develop the annotations that have already been made.  So if one student notes that something is a simile, the next student might make a note about what the author is attempting to do through the use of that simile and then next student can even take it a step farther.  You might model this if you have another teacher in your classroom or even with a brave volunteer student.  Have the student identify something in the text and you add to the notation.

Be sure that students understand that just pointing out craft in the text doesn’t take the close reading annotations far enough.  They should start to pose questions, discuss impact of an author move and develop theories.

Small Groups (2-4)—Poster Collaborative Annotations

This is another social annotation that has kids working on the same text, but instead of working on one text that they pass around, there are literally working on one text that has been enlarged to let students work on it together.  

Poster Annotations Set Up

This works best if each group has their own text to work on first.  They can be working on different poems or excerpts from the same text.  The text should be enlarged and then attached to a piece of chart paper.  Students can then work on annotating specific things about a text like the syntax or the structure or the characterization right on that large format text.  Once students have completed the annotation, you can have a gallery walk followed by a full class discussion. 

I do a version of this in my Sonnet Group Annotation Assignment .

Mid to Large Groups—Walk Around Collaborative Annotations

This style of collaborative annotations is great for getting kids out of their seats.  Like the poster annotations, you will need large format text available for the students to add their annotation.

Walk Around Annotations Set Up

This works great for short short stories or poems, but definitely could work with excerpts from a larger work.  Again, you need to enlarge what you want students to annotate, but they should also have regular copies to work with as well.  Divide up the text into passages and then hang the enlarged copies around the room.  If you have a large class, you might want two sets of the same text or divide the passage into smaller chunks.

Have students begin by reading or rereading the passages and annotating on their own texts.  Then when they are ready, have them get up and walk around adding annotations to each passage.  Have poster markers ready because it makes it easier to read the annotations from a distance.  

When students have completed the annotation, you can have them walk around and review the annotations, add notes to their own text and prepare to discuss as a full class.  I use this walk-around time to check out what the students have said so that I can pull ideas to bring up in the discussion.

There is a version of this activity in my Flash Fiction Boot Camp Unit .

Mid to Large Groups—Digital Collaborative Annotations

There are several ways that you can have larger groups participate in digital collaborative annotations.  The first is through a digital whiteboard program like Jamboard.  You can read about all the ways you can use Jamboard in the High School English classroom here.

Digital Annotations Set UP

To use a digital whiteboard for social annotations, simply post the passage as the background on the slides of the digital white board, share the link making everyone an editor. Then have students use the tools in the program to begin making notes. If you use a program like Jamboard remember that the annotations are anonymous so you will want to have the kids add their names if you want to know who the author is.

Another way to do digital annotations would be through Google Docs or Goole Slides.  Just share the passage in a link.  Make sure that students have the ability to edit.  And if you are using Slides, save an image of the text as a background then the kids can’t move it.

Both Docs and Slides work well for different reason.  In slides, you can anchor the image of the text so that it cannot be changed, while in Docs you can use both the text tools and the comment tool.  Just like when working with paper, you will want to have kids choose a color if you want to be able to identify who the annotations belong to.

If you don’t want to share a Doc or link with the whole class, you can assign a text through Google Classroom Assignments, then assign group leaders and have them share with the rest of their group.

For more on using Jamboard in High School English Class, check out this post .

Digital Collaborations for the Win!

Using social annotations is a great way to have your kids truly engaged in a text and truly collaborating with each other to share their thinking. I have tried all of these in my classroom and they have all been successful in mixing it up and getting kids thinking and sharing their ideas about texts. Give it a try and let me know in the comments if you do and how you adapt it for your own use.

Related Resources

The perfect list of 20 Short Short Stories for AP Literature and more.

For more on using Jamboard in High School English Class .

Use Sonnets for Collaborative Annotations– read more about teaching Sonnets .

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Flash Fiction Boot Camp Unit for AP Literature

Sonnet Group Annotation Assignment

A fun template you can use for Silent Seminars

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Expanded Student Annotation Assignment Options in Canvas

by Sarah McDaniel | Jun 21, 2021 | Canvas , Canvas Features/Functions , How-tos , Pedagogy

With an updated release of Canvas that launched in mid-May, instructors now have access to an additional Assignment format on Canvas: Student Annotation Assignments . With the addition of Student Annotation Assignments to the suite of resources supported through Canvas, instructors can now make use of two distinct platforms for student annotation assignments and activities, which can be tailored to distinct instructional contexts and learning objectives.

In this post, we will explore two frameworks for student annotation and close-reading exercises – individual annotations, completed independently by students, and social or group annotations, which students generate collectively – and consider which digital annotation tools best suit each purpose. Additionally, we will provide an overview of the new Student Annotation Assignment format and a recommended workflow for designing assignments that make use of it.

I. Student Annotation Assignments on Canvas

Features of canvas annotation assignments.

As a new Assignment format native to the Canvas learning management system, Student Annotation Assignments enable instructors to design assignments that ask students to annotate text- and image-based documents using a variety of annotation features also available to instructors in SpeedGrader. When working with an Annotation Assignment, students have access to a highlighting tool (to select text), a rectangular area selection tool (to select an area of the document), a pin marker (to mark a point of focus at a specific location in the document), a freehand drawing tool, a text box tool, and a strikethrough tool.

In addition, when making use of any of these text selection or modification tools, students can type out marginal comments that describe or reflect on their annotation choices.

Once students have completed their annotations, they click the maroon “Submit Assignment” button to save their work and deliver their annotated version of the document to the instructor through Canvas.

Students are also able to download their annotations – an annotated copy of the document – through the annotation toolbar.

Pedagogical Context for Canvas Annotation Assignments: Individual Work

As the Student View perspective shown above indicates, Canvas Annotation Assignments are designed for independent use by individual students . In brief, students open such assignments as they would any other on Canvas, begin an assignment attempt (by clicking “Start Assignment”), and access an unannotated copy of the original document uploaded by the instructor to begin their annotations. Each student, in other words, accesses a fresh copy of the document and creates and submits annotations that are visible only to the instructor.

As a result, Canvas Annotation Assignments are not effectively suited to group annotation work , for the simple reason that annotations are generated and submitted on an individual rather than a collaborative basis. However, individual annotation exercises – performed individually by students and submitted to the instructor for assessment – have a wide variety of instructional uses across the disciplines and can be used to help students prepare for group annotation work.

In the language-learning classroom, for example, individual annotation exercises represent one streamlined way to assess students’ reading comprehension skills (asking students to make translations, highlight particular parts of speech or grammatical structures, paraphrase passages, and raise comprehension or discussion questions responsive to the text) while challenging students to develop their fluency as readers, writers, and speakers through tasks that work through layers of cognitive complexity.

Across humanities and social sciences classrooms, individual annotation exercises can enable instructors to gain insight into and assess their students’ use of interpretive strategies and modalities through targeted reading exercises that challenge students to generate observations about a text or document, develop an argument or thesis about it, and gather evidence to support that thesis from their initial observations – an activity that could either precede the drafting of an argumentative essay or serve as a standalone exercise to develop the scaffolding for an argumentative essay.

In a variety of STEM contexts, individual annotation exercises can challenge students to represent their thinking and their work clearly in response to problems and questions – that is, to elucidate and emphasize the process of their problem-solving in addition to the solutions, products, and outcomes they ultimately generate.

Creating Canvas Annotation Assignments: Workflow for Instructors

For instructors, creating Canvas Annotation Assignments is just as straightforward as creating any other Canvas Assignment:

• We recommend uploading to your Canvas site the file you wish students to annotate before creating your Annotation Assignment. You may do so by navigating to the Files tab and uploading files there. This helps prevent occasional hiccups in correctly linking the Canvas Assignment with the file.

Grading Student Annotation Assignments

After students have attempted and submitted this assignment, you can view, assess, and provide feedback for student work using SpeedGrader. In opening each student’s submission, you will be able to view all annotations, mark-up, and comments the student generated.

II. Hypothes.is Integration on Canvas

A second format for student annotation activities and assignments on Canvas is the social annotation platform Hypothes.is, available for instructor use through the Canvas – Hypothes.is integration. As a platform designed specifically to support the work of social annotation, Hypothes.is is ideally suited to collaborative, group-based exercises in reading and annotation.

Unlike with Canvas Annotation Assignments, Hypothes.is activities and assignments are visible by default to all members of a Canvas site; as students contribute annotations, these become visible to their colleagues, who are then able to respond to and comment on the observations and ideas that have been shared. Instructors at UChicago have found that Hypothes.is activities are a good way to promote students’ engagement with each other, to encourage discussions of close reading, and to make the reading process more transparent.

To access Hypothes.is activities in Canvas, students click on the name of the activity (under Modules or Assignments) and load a new tab that displays the document undergoing annotation. The Canvas – Hypothes.is integration makes use of a collapsible annotation applet that loads on the right-hand side of this tab.

An additional important difference between Canvas Annotation Assignments and Hypothes.is lies in the way that annotations are saved and the document formats that are supported. Canvas Annotation Assignments make use of an image-based overlay process, incorporating student highlights, comments, and other modifications onto approximated locations in the document. Hypothes.is, on the other hand, makes use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to tie annotations and highlights – the two annotation strategies available to students – to particular characters or strings of characters in the document. Accordingly, Canvas Annotation Assignments are compatible with a variety of file formats (.pdf, .docx, .png, .jpeg) and enable students to produce annotations on non-textual features of a document (such as images, diagrams, and interstitial space), while Hypothes.is can be used to annotate web pages and PDFs for annotation and does not support the annotation of non-textual features of a document. Annotations produced through Canvas Annotation Assignments can thus at times be less precise (not tied to specific characters) than those generated in Hypothes.is (which are highly portable across browsers and devices because they are tied to specific characters), while Canvas Annotation Assignments allow for the annotation of additional non-textual features.

Instructors at UChicago have found creative ways to respond to the affordances and limitations of each platform; for an in-depth exploration of faculty use of Hypothes.is and social annotation at UChicago, please see “ Social Annotation and the Pedagogy of Hypothes.is ” on the Academic Technology Solutions blog. For a comprehensive treatment of the technical specifications and steps required to implement Hypothes.is in Canvas, as well as effective practices for its use, please see “ Use the Hypothesis-Canvas Integration ” on the UChicago IT Knowledge Base.

If you have any questions about Canvas Annotation Assignments, Hypothes.is, digital annotation, or other topics in Canvas, Academic Technology Solutions can help. Set up a consultation with us , or drop by our Virtual Office Hours .

• How do I annotate a file as an assignment submission in Canvas? (Canvas student guide)
• Student Annotation Submissions (Canvas instructor video)
• Use the Hypothesis-Canvas Integration
• Social Annotation and the Pedagogy of Hypothes.is

(Featured photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash )

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17 Awesome Annotation Activities

March 23, 2023 //  by  Laura Spry

By teaching kids annotation skills we can greatly improve their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. It’s important to first explain what annotation means so that learners understand why they will be working through this process. We’ve sourced 17 awesome annotation activities to get you started. Let’s take a look.

1. Poetry Annotation

To successfully annotate poetry, students must analyze and interpret the different elements of a poem in order to gain a deeper understanding of its literary devices and meaning. This activity teaches students to focus on the importance of looking into depth and complexity by focusing on the elements of speaker, pattern, shift, and description.

Learn More: Gifted Guru

2. Annotate Texts

This handy guide breaks down the key elements of learning to annotate texts. Start by using the cards that have two stories in the same genre. Dissect these using the prompts. Next, give students two stories that are from different genres and have them discuss the differences.

Learn More: Teaching with a Mountain View

3. Annotation Symbols

Annotation symbols can be used to provide additional information or clarification about a particular text. Have your students pick up to 5 of these symbols to annotate another student’s work. Having them read others’ work is great practice and symbols make great annotation tools!

Learn More: Pinterest

4. Annotate Books

Before you can annotate a book, it’s important to read it actively. Meaning, engaging with the text, taking notes, and highlighting key points. This is key when teaching students about annotation. Start by asking your students to annotate a page from your class text. They can start by underlining keywords individually and then add more detail during class discussion.

Learn More: The Wordy Habitat

5. Rainbow Annotation

By teaching students to use different colored sticky notes they can easily scan an annotated text for specific information. Here, they have used red for angry emotions, yellow for funny, clever, or happy sections, and green for surprising moments. These can easily be adapted for any text. Work together as a class to make your own colored key to ensure a variety of annotations are used!

6. Annotation Bookmarks

Encourage a variety of annotations by handing out these cool annotation bookmarks. Easily kept inside student books, there will no longer be an excuse for forgetting how to annotate! Students can add some color to these bookmarks and match the colors when annotating a text.

Learn More: Ideas by Jivey

7. S-N-O-T-S: Small Notes on the Side

Reminding students not to forget their SNOTS is sure to help them remember to make Small Notes On The Side! Using a green, kids are taught to underline key points. They can then go back over the text to circle important words, add diagrams, and make notes of what they would like to include in their response.

Learn More: The Applicious Teacher

8. Projector and Whiteboard

By setting your camera above a text and displaying this on your whiteboard, you can show your students how to annotate in real-time. Go through the common steps involved in basic annotation and let them have a go at annotating their own text using the methods you have shown.

Learn More: Teaching Teens in the 21st

9. Label the Turtle

Younger kids will need to be exposed to the labeling process before learning to annotate. This cute sea turtle activity teaches kids the importance of using the correct labels in their written work. The turtle can also be colored in once the written work is complete!

Learn More: Homeschool Preschool

10. Annotate the Flower

Working with real-world materials is a surefire way to get kids engaged with their work! Using a flower, have learners label the different parts.  Additionally, they can complete a drawing of their activity and add labels and extra annotations to each part.

Learn More: Lessons 4 Little Ones

11. Practice Notetaking

Notetaking is a skill that almost everyone will require in their lifetime.  Learning to take good notes is key when learning to annotate texts. Have your students gather on the carpet with their whiteboards. Read a few pages from a non-fiction book and pause for them to write down important things that they’ve learned. 

Learn More: Primarily Speaking

12. Mind Map to Annotate

Here, the key points are choosing a central idea by drawing or writing a keyword in the center of a piece of paper. Then, branches are added for key themes and keywords. Phrases are the sub-branches and gaps and connections should be filled with more ideas or annotations. This simple process helps students plan their annotations.

Learn More: Chloe Burroughs

13. Create a Color Key

Encourage students to make the correct labels by using a colored key. The descriptions will vary depending on the type of text you are annotating. Here, they have used blue for general plot information and yellow for questions and definitions.

Learn More: Tumblr

14. Annotation Marks

These level annotation marks can be placed in the margin of students’ work when annotating to show key points. A question mark symbolizes something the student does not understand, an exclamation mark indicates something surprising, and ‘ex’ is written when the author provides an example.

15. Annotate a Transcript

Provide each student with a transcript of a Ted Talk. As they listen, they must annotate the talk with notes or symbols. These will be used to help them write up a review of the talk. 

Learn More: TED Talks

16. Annotation Station

This activity requires careful observation and attention to detail. It works best as a small group or individual assignment. It works well as an online method by using breakout rooms in Google Meet or Zoom. Provide your students with an image to annotate. Students can then add details and make observations about the image. If you have touchscreen devices, students can use the pen tool to draw on top of the picture. For non-touch devices, use the sticky note tool to add observations.

Learn More: Chromebook Classroom

17. Annotate a Timeline

This can be adapted to your class book or topic. Discuss an appropriate timeline and set groups of students to provide collaborative annotations for that part of the story or area of history. Each student must provide a key piece of information and a fact to add to the annotated timeline.

Learn More: Mr T does Primary History

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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.

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• Brief Communication
• Open access
• Published: 25 March 2024

Assessing GPT-4 for cell type annotation in single-cell RNA-seq analysis

• Wenpin Hou   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0972-2192 1 &
• Zhicheng Ji   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9457-4704 2  

Nature Methods ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Computational models
• Gene expression profiling
• Machine learning
• Transcriptomics

Here we demonstrate that the large language model GPT-4 can accurately annotate cell types using marker gene information in single-cell RNA sequencing analysis. When evaluated across hundreds of tissue and cell types, GPT-4 generates cell type annotations exhibiting strong concordance with manual annotations. This capability can considerably reduce the effort and expertise required for cell type annotation. Additionally, we have developed an R software package GPTCelltype for GPT-4’s automated cell type annotation.

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Cell type annotation is a fundamental step in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) analysis. This process is often laborious and time-consuming, requiring a human expert to compare genes highly expressed in each cell cluster with canonical cell type marker genes. Although automated cell type annotation methods have been developed (Supplementary Table 1) , manual annotation using marker genes remains widely used.

Generative pre-trained transformers (GPT), including GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, are large language models designed for language understanding and generation. Recent studies have demonstrated their effectiveness in biomedical contexts 1 , 2 . In this Brief Communication, we hypothesize that GPT-4 can accurately annotate cell types, transitioning the annotation process from manual to a semi- or even fully automated procedure (Fig. 1a ). GPT-4 offers cost-efficiency and seamless integration into existing single-cell analysis pipelines such as Seurat 3 , avoiding the need for building additional pipelines and collecting high-quality reference datasets. The vast training data of GPT-4 enables broader applications across various tissues and cell types, and its chatbot nature allows for user-driven annotation refinement (Fig. 1a,b ).

a , Comparison of cell type annotations by human experts, GPT-4, and other automated methods. b , Example of GPT-4 annotating human prostate cells with increasing granularity. c , Example of GPT-4 annotating single, mixed and new cell types.

We systematically assessed GPT-4’s cell type annotation performance across ten datasets 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , covering five species and hundreds of tissue and cell types, and including both normal and cancer samples (Supplementary Table 2) . GPT-4 was queried using GPTCelltype, a software tool we developed ( Methods ). For competing methods, we evaluated GPT-3.5, a prior version of GPT-4, and CellMarker2.0 13 , SingleR 14 and ScType 15 , which are automatic cell type annotation methods that provide references applicable to a large number of tissues ( Methods and Supplementary Table 1) . Cell type annotations by GPT-4 or competing methods were evaluated based on their agreement with manual annotations provided by the original studies. The degree of agreement was measured using a numeric score ( Methods ). Supplementary Table 3 presents an example of evaluating GPT-4 cell type annotations in human prostate tissue, and details of all cell type annotations and their evaluation results are included in Supplementary Table 4 .

We first explored different factors that may affect the annotation accuracy of GPT-4 (Fig. 2a and Supplementary Table 5) . We found that GPT-4 performs best when using the top ten differential genes, and when differential genes are derived using the two-sided Wilcoxon test. GPT-4 exhibits similar accuracy across various prompt strategies, including a basic prompt strategy, a chain-of-thought 16 -inspired prompt strategy that includes reasoning steps, and a repeated prompt strategy ( Methods ). In subsequent analyses, both GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 used the basic prompt strategy with the top ten differential genes obtained from Wilcoxon test as inputs for applicable datasets.

a , Average agreement scores for varying numbers of top differential genes, statistical tests for differential analysis, and prompt strategies. b , Proportion of cell types with varying agreement levels in each study and tissue, most abundant broad cell types, malignant cells, different cell population sizes, and major cell types versus cell subtypes. c , log 2 -transformed ratio of type I ( COL1A1 and COL1A2 ) and II ( COL2A1 ) collagen gene expression. d , e , Comparison of average agreement scores ( d ) and running times ( e ). In e , n  = 59 for GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 and n  = 36 for ScType and SingleR. Each boxplot shows the distribution (center: median; bounds of box: first and third quartiles; bounds of whiskers: data points within 1.5× interquartile range from the box; minima; maxima) of running time. f , Financial cost of querying GPT-4 API versus cell type numbers. g , GPT-4’s performance in identifying mixed/single cell types and known/unknown cell types, and under different subsampling and noise levels in multiple simulation rounds (dots). h , Reproducibility of GPT-4 annotations. i , Consistency of agreement scores between two versions of GPT-4.

GPT-4’s annotations fully or partially match manual annotations in over 75% of cell types in most studies and tissues (Fig. 2b ), demonstrating its competency in generating expert-comparable cell type annotations. This agreement is particularly high for marker genes from literature searches, with at least 70% fully match rate in most tissues. Though lower for genes identified by differential analysis, the agreement remains high. However, results from datasets published before September 2021 should be interpreted cautiously as they predate GPT-4’s training cutoff. GPT-4 performs better for immune cells like granulocytes compared to other cell types (Fig. 2b ). It identifies malignant cells in colon and lung cancer datasets but struggles with B lymphoma, potentially due to a lack of distinct gene sets. The identification of malignant cells could benefit from other approaches such as copy number variation 9 . Performance dips slightly in small cell populations comprising no more than ten cells (Fig. 2b ), possibly due to the limited available information. GPT-4 annotations fully match manual annotations more frequently in major cell types (for example, T cells) than in subtypes (for example, CD4 memory T cells), while over 75% of subtypes still achieve full or partial matches (Fig. 2b ).

The low agreement between GPT-4 and manual annotations in some cell types does not necessarily imply that GPT-4’s annotation is incorrect. For instance, cell types classified as stromal cells include fibroblasts and osteoblasts expressing type I collagen genes, and chondrocytes expressing type II collagen genes. For cells manually annotated as stromal cells, GPT-4 assigns cell type annotations with higher granularity (for example, fibroblasts and osteoblasts), resulting in partial matches and a lower agreement. For cell types that are manually annotated as stromal cells but identified by GPT-4 as fibroblasts or osteoblasts, type I collagen genes show substantially higher expression than type II collagen genes (Fig. 2c ). This agrees with the pattern observed in cells manually annotated as chondrocytes, fibroblasts, and osteoblasts (Fig. 2c ), suggesting that GPT-4 provides more accurate cell type annotations for stromal cells.

GPT-4 substantially outperforms other methods based on average agreement scores ( Methods and Fig. 2d ). Using GPTCelltype as the interface, GPT-4 is also notably faster (Fig. 2e ), partly due to its utilization of differential genes from the standard single-cell analysis pipelines such as Seurat 3 . Given the integral role of these pipelines, we regard the differential genes as immediately available for GPT-4. In contrast, other methods like SingleR and ScType require additional steps to reprocess the gene expression matrices. Compared to other methods that are free of charge, GPT-4 incurs a $20 monthly fee for using online web portal. Cost of GPT-4 API is linearly correlated with the number of queried cell types and does not exceed $0.1 for all queries in this study (Fig. 2f ).

We further assessed GPT-4’s robustness in complex real data scenarios (Fig. 1c ) with simulated datasets ( Methods ). GPT-4 can distinguish between pure and mixed cell types with 93% accuracy, and differentiate between known and unknown cell types with 99% accuracy (Fig. 2g ). When the input gene set includes fewer genes or is contaminated with noise, GPT-4’s performance decreases but remains high (Fig. 2g ). These results demonstrate GPT-4’s robustness in various scenarios.

Finally, we assessed the reproducibility of GPT-4’s annotations using prior simulation studies ( Methods ). GPT-4 generated identical annotations for the same marker genes in 85% of cases (Fig. 2h ), indicating high reproducibility. Annotations of two GPT-4 versions showed identical agreement scores in most cases, with a Cohen’s κ of 0.65, demonstrating substantial consistency (Fig. 2i ).

While GPT-4 excels in cell type annotation, which surpasses existing methods, there are limitations to consider. Firstly, the undisclosed nature of GPT-4’s training corpus makes verifying the basis of its annotations challenging, thus requiring human evaluation to ensure annotation quality and reliability. Secondly, human involvement in the optional fine-tuning of the model may affect reproducibility due to subjectivity and could limit the scalability of the model in large datasets. Thirdly, high noise levels in scRNA-seq data and unreliable differential genes can adversely affect GPT-4’s annotations. Lastly, over-reliance on GPT-4 risks artificial intelligence hallucination. We recommend validation of GPT-4’s cell type annotations by human experts before proceeding with downstream analyses.

While this study focuses on the standard version of GPT-4, fine-tuning GPT-4 with high-quality reference marker gene lists could further improve cell type annotation performance, utilizing services such ‘GPTs’ provided by OpenAI.

Dataset collection

For the HuBMAP Azimuth project, manually annotated cell types and their marker genes were downloaded from the Azimuth website ( https://azimuth.hubmapconsortium.org/ ). Azimuth provides cell type annotations for each tissue at different granularity levels. We selected the level of granularity with the fewest number of cell types, provided that there are more than ten cell types within that level. Details of how marker genes were generated are not reported by Azimuth.

For the GTEx 5 dataset, manually annotated cell types, differential gene lists and gene expression matrices were downloaded directly from the publication 5 . In the original study, gene expression raw counts were library-size-normalized and log-transformed after adding a pseudocount of 1 with SCANPY 17 . ComBat 18 was used to account for the protocol- and sex-specific effects with SCANPY 17 . Welch’s t -test was then performed to identify differential genes that compare one cell type against the rest. For each cell type, genes were ranked increasingly by P values, and genes with the same P values were further ranked decreasingly by t -statistics. Top 10, 20 and 30 differential genes were used in this study. Lists of marker genes through literature search and the corresponding cell types were downloaded from the same study 5 , and only cell types with at least five marker genes were used.

For the HCL 6 dataset, manually annotated cell types, differential gene lists and the gene expression matrix were downloaded directly from the publication 6 . In the original study, gene expression raw counts underwent a batch removal process to facilitate cross-tissue comparison and were subsequently normalized by library size and log-transformed after adding a pseudocount of 1. Two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum test was then performed to identify differential genes comparing one cell type against the rest using Seurat 3 . Differential genes were further selected by log fold change larger than 0.25, Bonferroni-adjusted P value smaller than 0.1, and expressed in at least 15% of cells in either population. For each cell type, genes were ranked increasingly by P values, and genes with the same P values were further ranked decreasingly by two-sided Wilcoxon test statistics. Top 10, 20 and 30 differential genes were used in this study.

For the Mouse Cell Atlas (MCA) 7 dataset, manually annotated cell types, differential gene lists and gene expression matrix were downloaded directly from the publication 6 . In the original study, gene expression raw counts underwent a batch removal process to facilitate cross-tissue comparison, and Seurat 3 was used to perform preprocessing and differential analysis. For each cell type, genes were ranked increasingly by P values, and genes with the same P values were further ranked decreasingly by log fold change. Top 10, 20 and 30 differential genes were used in this study.

For non-model mammal dataset 12 , manually annotated cell types and lists of marker genes through literature search were downloaded directly from the original study.

For Tabula Sapiens (TS) 8 , B-cell lymphoma (BCL) 9 , lung cancer 11 and colon cancer 10 datasets, manually annotated cell types and raw gene expression count matrices were downloaded directly from original studies. Raw counts were normalized by library size and log-transformed after adding a pseudocount of 1. Seurat FindAllMarkers() function with default settings was used to obtain differential genes by comparing one cell type with the rest within each tissue. Briefly, genes with at least 0.25 log fold change between two cell populations and detected in at least 10% of cells in either cell population were retained. Two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum test was then performed for differential analysis. In addition, two-sided two-sample t -test was also performed for differential analysis using the FindAllMarkers() function with default settings. For each cell type, genes were ranked increasingly by P values, and genes with the same P values were further ranked decreasingly by log fold changes. Top 10, 20 and 30 differential genes were used in this study.

Cell type annotation methods

Gpt-4 and gpt-3.5.

All GPT-4 (13 June 2023 version) and GPT-3.5 (13 June 2023 version) cell type annotations in this study were performed using GPTCelltype, an R software package we developed as an interface for GPT models. GPTCelltype takes marker genes or top differential genes as input, and automatically generates prompt message using the following template with the basic prompt strategy:

‘Identify cell types of TissueName cells using the following markers separately for each row. Only provide the cell type name. Do not show numbers before the name. Some can be a mixture of multiple cell types.\n GeneList’.

Here ‘TissueName’ is a variable that will be replaced with the actual name of the tissue (for example, human prostate), and ‘GeneList’ is a list of marker genes or top differential genes. Genes for the same cell population are joined by comma (,), and gene lists for different cell populations are separated by the newline character (\n). GPT-4 or GPT-3.5 was then queried using the generated prompt message through OpenAI API, and the returned information was parsed and converted to cell type annotations.

For chain-of-thought prompt strategy, the following sentence was added to the beginning of the message generated by the basic prompt strategy: ‘Because CD3 gene is a marker gene of T cells, if CD3 gene is included in the marker gene list of an unknown cell type, the cell type is likely to be T cells, a subtype of T cells, or a mixed cell type containing T cells’.

For repeated prompt strategy, GPT-4 was queried with the basic prompt strategy repeatedly for five times. The annotation result that appears most frequently among the five queries was selected as the final cell type annotation.

GPT-4 (23 March 2023 version) cell type annotations were performed by manually copying and pasting prompt messages to GPT-4 online web interface ( https://chat.openai.com/ ). The prompt message was constructed using the following template:

‘Identify cell types of TissueName cells using the following markers. Identify one cell type for each row. Only provide the cell type name. \n GeneList’.

Computationally identified differential genes in eight scRNA-seq datasets and canonical marker genes identified through literature search in two datasets were used as inputs to GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 (Supplementary Table 2) . Cell type annotation for HCL and MCA was performed and evaluated once by aggregating all tissues, similar to the original studies. In other studies, cell type annotation was performed and evaluated within each tissue.

SingleR 14 (version 1.4.1) R package was used to perform cell type annotations with default settings. For HCL and MCA datasets, the gene expression matrices after batch effect removal, library size normalization and log transformation across all tissues were used as input. For all other datasets, SingleR was performed separately within each tissue, and the input is the log-transformed and library-size normalized gene expression matrix. The built-in Human Primary Cell Atlas reference 19 was used as the reference dataset for all SingleR annotations. SingleR generates single-cell level cell type annotations by returning an assignment score matrix for each single cell and each cell type label in the reference. To convert single-cell level annotations to cell-cluster level annotations, for each manually annotated cell type, we assigned the reference label with assignment scores summed across all single cells in that manually annotated cell type as the predicted cell type annotation.

ScType 15 (version 1.0) R package was used to perform cell type annotations with default settings. To meet the need for computational efficiency when working with large datasets, we developed an in-house version of ScType. We utilized vectorization to optimize the most time-consuming steps, while still generating the same output of the original ScType software. The input gene expression matrices to ScType were the same as used in SingleR described above. The built-in cell type marker database was used as the reference for all ScType annotations. Manually annotated cell types were treated as cell clusters and given as inputs to ScType. ScType directly generates cluster-level cell type annotations.

CellMarker2.0

CellMarker2.0 (ref. 13 ) only provides an online user interface and does not have a software implementation. We used the exact same marker gene sets or top ten differential gene sets identified by two-sided Wilcoxon tests for GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 cell type annotations as inputs of CellMarker2.0.

Evaluations of cell type annotations

Cell type annotations by GPT-4 or competing methods were compared to manual annotations provided by the original studies. Each manually or automatically identified cell type annotation was assigned an unambiguous cell ontology (CL) name 20 and a broad cell type name when applicable. A pair of manually and automatically identified cell type annotations was classified as ‘fully match’ if they have the same annotation term or available CL cell ontology name, ‘partially match’ if they have the same or subordinate (for example, fibroblast and stromal cell) broad cell type name but different annotations and CL cell ontology names, and ‘mismatch’ if they have different broad cell type names, annotations and CL cell ontology names.

To facilitate comparison, we assigned agreement scores of 1, 0.5 and 0 to cases of ‘fully match’, ‘partially match’ and ‘mismatch’ respectively, and calculated average scores within each dataset across cell types and tissues.

Simulation studies and reproducibility

To generate simulation datasets, we used canonical cell type markers through GTEx literature search of human breast cells, the top ten differential genes from the human colon cancer dataset, and the top ten differential genes from the vasculature tissue of the TS dataset as templates. Simulation studies were performed separately for the three tissue types.

To generate simulation datasets of mixed cell types, marker genes for each mixed cell type were created by combining the marker gene lists of two randomly selected cell types. Ten mixed cell types were generated in each simulation iteration. Additionally, we incorporated the original cell type markers of ten randomly chosen cell types as negative controls of single cell types. This entire simulation process was repeated five times. Subsequently, GPT-4 was queried using these simulated marker gene lists, and its performance in differentiating between mixed and single cell types was assessed.

To generate simulation datasets of unknown cell types, we compiled a list of all human genes using the Bioconductor org.Hs.eg.db package 21 . In each simulation iteration, ten simulated unknown cell types were generated. The marker genes for each unknown cell type were produced by combining ten randomly selected human genes. Additionally, we included ten real cell types and their marker genes as negative controls of known cell types, similar to the previous simulation study. This entire simulation process was repeated five times. Subsequently, GPT-4 was queried using these simulated marker gene lists, and its performance in distinguishing between known and unknown cell types was assessed.

To generate simulation datasets with partial marker gene information, we randomly subsampled 25%, 50% or 75% of the original marker genes. The simulation process was repeated five times. Subsequently, GPT-4 was queried using these subsampled marker gene lists, and the performance was assessed by agreement scores.

To generate simulation datasets with contaminated information, we added randomly selected human genes to the original marker gene list. The numbers of randomly selected genes are 25%, 50% or 75% of the number of original marker genes. The simulation process was repeated five times. Subsequently, GPT-4 was queried using these subsampled marker gene lists, and the performance was assessed by agreement scores.

We assessed the reproducibility of GPT-4 responses by leveraging the repeated querying of GPT-4 with identical marker gene lists of the same negative control cell types in simulation studies. For each cell type, reproducibility is defined as the proportion of instances in which GPT-4 generates the most prevalent cell type annotation. For instance, in the case of vascular endothelial cells, GPT-4 produces ‘endothelial cells’ eight times and ‘blood vascular endothelial cells’ once. Consequently, the most prevalent cell type annotation is ‘endothelial cells’, and the reproducibility is calculated as \(\frac{8}{9}=0.89\) .

GPT-4 API financial cost

According to information provided by OpenAI, the application programming interface (API) cost for running GPT-4 13 June 2023 version is $0.03 for every thousand input tokens and $0.06 for every thousand output tokens. For each query, we obtained i and o , which represent the numbers of input tokens and output tokens respectively, through the OpenAI API. The total API financial cost is thus calculated as $(0.00003 i  + 0.00006 o ).

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

The data used in this manuscript are all downloaded from publicly available data sources. Specifically, HubMAP Azimuth data were downloaded from the Azimuth website ( https://azimuth.hubmapconsortium.org/ ). GTEx manually annotated cell types and differential gene lists were downloaded from the supplementary materials of the original study 5 . GTEx gene expression matrix was downloaded from the GTEx website ( https://gtexportal.org/home/datasets ). Marker genes from literature search were downloaded from the supplementary materials of the original study 5 . HCL manually annotated cell types and differential gene lists were downloaded from the supplementary materials of the original study 6 . HCL gene expression matrix was downloaded from figshare ( https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/HCL_DGE_Data/7235471 ). MCA manually annotated cell types and differential gene lists were downloaded from the supplementary materials of the original study 7 . MCA gene expression matrix was downloaded from figshare ( https://figshare.com/s/865e694ad06d5857db4b ). BCL gene expression matrix and manually annotated cell types were downloaded from Zenodo ( https://zenodo.org/record/7813151 ). Colon cancer gene expression matrix and manually annotated cell types were downloaded from GEO under accession number GSE132465 . Lung cancer gene expression matrix and manually annotated cell types were downloaded from GEO under accession number GSE131907 . TS gene expression matrix and manually annotated cell types were downloaded from UCSC Cell Browser ( https://cells.ucsc.edu/?ds=tabula-sapiens ). Marker genes and cell type annotations for the non-model mammal dataset were downloaded from the supplementary materials of the original study 12 . All relevant information about data is described in Methods . All data generated in this study are included in the supplementary tables.

Code availability

The GPTCelltype package (v.1.0.0) is provided as an open-source software package with a detailed user manual available in the GitHub repository at https://github.com/Winnie09/GPTCelltype . The software is released in Zenodo under https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8317406 for all versions (ref. 22 ). All codes to reproduce the presented analyses are publicly available in the GitHub repository at https://github.com/Winnie09/GPTCelltype_Paper and also in Zenodo under https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8317410 ( https://zenodo.org/record/8317410 ) (ref. 23 ). R version 4.0.2 was used to perform the analyses in the manuscript.

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Acknowledgements

Z.J. was supported by the National Institutes of Health under award number U54AG075936 and by the Whitehead Scholars Program at Duke University School of Medicine. W.H. was partially supported by the National Institute Of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award number R35GM150887 and by the General Fund at Columbia University Department of Biostatistics. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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W.H. and Z.J. conceived the study, conducted the analysis and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Wenpin Hou or Zhicheng Ji .

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Nature Methods thanks Qin Ma and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Lin Tang, in collaboration with the Nature Methods team. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Reporting summary, peer review file, supplementary table.

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Hou, W., Ji, Z. Assessing GPT-4 for cell type annotation in single-cell RNA-seq analysis. Nat Methods (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-024-02235-4

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-024-02235-4

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Expanded Student Annotation Assignments in Canvas

by Sarah McDaniel | Jun 21, 2021 | Instructional design , Services

With an updated release of Canvas that launched in mid-May, instructors now have access to an additional Assignment format on Canvas: Student Annotation Assignments . With the addition of Student Annotation Assignments to the suite of resources supported through Canvas, instructors can now make use of two distinct platforms for student annotation assignments and activities, which can be tailored to distinct instructional contexts and learning objectives.

In this post, we will explore two frameworks for student annotation and close-reading exercises – individual annotations, completed independently by students, and social or group annotations, which students generate collectively – and consider which digital annotation tools best suit each purpose. Additionally, we will provide an overview of the new Student Annotation Assignment format and a recommended workflow for designing assignments that make use of it.

I. Student Annotation Assignments on Canvas

Features of canvas annotation assignments.

As a new Assignment format native to the Canvas learning management system, Student Annotation Assignments enable instructors to design assignments that ask students to annotate text- and image-based documents using a variety of annotation features also available to instructors in SpeedGrader. When working with an Annotation Assignment, students have access to a highlighting tool (to select text), a rectangular area selection tool (to select an area of the document), a pin marker (to mark a point of focus at a specific location in the document), a freehand drawing tool, a text box tool, and a strikethrough tool.

In addition, when making use of any of these text selection or modification tools, students can type out marginal comments that describe or reflect on their annotation choices.

Once students have completed their annotations, they click the maroon “Submit Assignment” button to save their work and deliver their annotated version of the document to the instructor through Canvas.

Students are also able to download their annotations – an annotated copy of the document – through the annotation toolbar.

Pedagogical Context for Canvas Annotation Assignments: Individual Work

As the Student View perspective shown above indicates, Canvas Annotation Assignments are designed for independent use by individual students . In brief, students open such assignments as they would any other on Canvas, begin an assignment attempt (by clicking “Start Assignment”), and access an unannotated copy of the original document uploaded by the instructor to begin their annotations. Each student, in other words, accesses a fresh copy of the document and creates and submits annotations that are visible only to the instructor.

As a result, Canvas Annotation Assignments are not effectively suited to group annotation work , for the simple reason that annotations are generated and submitted on an individual rather than a collaborative basis. However, individual annotation exercises – performed individually by students and submitted to the instructor for assessment – have a wide variety of instructional uses across the disciplines and can be used to help students prepare for group annotation work.

In the language-learning classroom, for example, individual annotation exercises represent one streamlined way to assess students’ reading comprehension skills (asking students to make translations, highlight particular parts of speech or grammatical structures, paraphrase passages, and raise comprehension or discussion questions responsive to the text) while challenging students to develop their fluency as readers, writers, and speakers through tasks that work through layers of cognitive complexity.

Across humanities and social sciences classrooms, individual annotation exercises can enable instructors to gain insight into and assess their students’ use of interpretive strategies and modalities through targeted reading exercises that challenge students to generate observations about a text or document, develop an argument or thesis about it, and gather evidence to support that thesis from their initial observations – an activity that could either precede the drafting of an argumentative essay or serve as a standalone exercise to develop the scaffolding for an argumentative essay.

In a variety of STEM contexts, individual annotation exercises can challenge students to represent their thinking and their work clearly in response to problems and questions – that is, to elucidate and emphasize the process of their problem-solving in addition to the solutions, products, and outcomes they ultimately generate.

Creating Canvas Annotation Assignments: Workflow for Instructors

For instructors, creating Canvas Annotation Assignments is just as straightforward as creating any other Canvas Assignment:

• We recommend uploading to your Canvas site the file you wish students to annotate before creating your Annotation Assignment. You may do so by navigating to the Files tab and uploading files there. This helps prevent occasional hiccups in correctly linking the Canvas Assignment with the file.

Grading Student Annotation Assignments

After students have attempted and submitted this assignment, you can view, assess, and provide feedback for student work using SpeedGrader. In opening each student’s submission, you will be able to view all annotations, mark-up, and comments the student generated.

II. Hypothes.is Integration on Canvas

A second format for student annotation activities and assignments on Canvas is the social annotation platform Hypothes.is, available for instructor use through the Canvas – Hypothes.is integration. As a platform designed specifically to support the work of social annotation, Hypothes.is is ideally suited to collaborative, group-based exercises in reading and annotation.

Unlike with Canvas Annotation Assignments, Hypothes.is activities and assignments are visible by default to all members of a Canvas site; as students contribute annotations, these become visible to their colleagues, who are then able to respond to and comment on the observations and ideas that have been shared. Instructors at UChicago have found that Hypothes.is activities are a good way to promote students’ engagement with each other, to encourage discussions of close reading, and to make the reading process more transparent.

To access Hypothes.is activities in Canvas, students click on the name of the activity (under Modules or Assignments) and load a new tab that displays the document undergoing annotation. The Canvas – Hypothes.is integration makes use of a collapsible annotation applet that loads on the right-hand side of this tab.

An additional important difference between Canvas Annotation Assignments and Hypothes.is lies in the way that annotations are saved and the document formats that are supported. Canvas Annotation Assignments make use of an image-based overlay process, incorporating student highlights, comments, and other modifications onto approximated locations in the document. Hypothes.is, on the other hand, makes use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to tie annotations and highlights – the two annotation strategies available to students – to particular characters or strings of characters in the document. Accordingly, Canvas Annotation Assignments are compatible with a variety of file formats (.pdf, .docx, .png, .jpeg) and enable students to produce annotations on non-textual features of a document (such as images, diagrams, and interstitial space), while Hypothes.is can be used to annotate web pages and PDFs for annotation and does not support the annotation of non-textual features of a document. Annotations produced through Canvas Annotation Assignments can thus at times be less precise (not tied to specific characters) than those generated in Hypothes.is (which are highly portable across browsers and devices because they are tied to specific characters), while Canvas Annotation Assignments allow for the annotation of additional non-textual features.

Instructors at UChicago have found creative ways to respond to the affordances and limitations of each platform; for an in-depth exploration of faculty use of Hypothes.is and social annotation at UChicago, please see “ Social Annotation and the Pedagogy of Hypothes.is ” on the Academic Technology Solutions blog. For a comprehensive treatment of the technical specifications and steps required to implement Hypothes.is in Canvas, as well as effective practices for its use, please see “ Use the Hypothesis-Canvas Integration ” on the UChicago IT Knowledge Base.

If you have any questions about Canvas Annotation Assignments, Hypothes.is, digital annotation, or other topics in Canvas, Academic Technology Solutions can help. Set up a consultation with us , or drop by our Virtual Office Hours .

• How do I annotate a file as an assignment submission in Canvas? (Canvas student guide)
• Student Annotation Submissions (Canvas instructor video)
• Use the Hypothesis-Canvas Integration
• Social Annotation and the Pedagogy of Hypothes.is

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Letovo Schoolcampus / atelier PRO

• Curated by Fernanda Castro
• Architects: atelier PRO
• Area Area of this architecture project Area:  39000 m²
• Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2018
• Photographs Photographs: NARODIZKIY , Dmitry Voinov , atelier PRO
• Interior Design : Atelier PRO , Thijs Klinkhamer
• Landscape Designer : Buro Sant en Co
• Client:  Letovo
• Project Architects:  Dorte Kristensen, Pascale Leistra, Karho Yeung
• Design Team:  Thijs Klinkhamer, Abel de Raadt, Alessia Topolnyk
• Russian Co Architect:  Atrium, Moscow
• City:  Moscow
• Country:  Russia
• Did you collaborate on this project?

Text description provided by the architects. The official grand opening of a special school, Letovo School , took place in Moscow last September. The assignment entailed a 20 hectare schoolcampus with educational facilities, student housing and school staff housing. The school campus offers extended outdoor sports facilities with a soccer stade, a running track, tennis courts and basketball courts. In addition there is a greenhouse, a treeyard and ample space for wandering and relaxation in the green.

While the architecture and interior of the school were designed by atelier PRO, the landscape design was developed by Buro Sant en Co landscape architecture. Russian firm Atrium Architectural Studio was responsible for the technical execution. In 2014 Atelier PRO had won the international design competition, the construction began mid-2016 and the campus was taken into use by mid-2018.

Letovo, a dream come true Letovo School is a special school for gifted and motivated children aged 12 to 17. The idea to create the school came from entrepreneur and philanthropist Vadim Moshkovich: ‘My dream was to offer talented children from all over the country access to high-quality education, regardless of their parents’ financial means. This school makes it possible for them to continue their studies at the 10 best universities in the country or at one of the top 50 universities in the world.’

Landscape-inspired design and shape Located in Novaya Moskva,southwest of Moscow ,the campus sits atop a beautiful plot of land that slopes down to a forest-lined river. Distinctive level variations were applied in and around the school to integrate the architecture into the landscape.

The shape of the large complex brings it down to a human scale for the children: the building appears to dance across the landscape due to its dynamic design. Due to the perspective effect one only ever sees part of the building's full size when walking around, which gives the impression of a refined scale. The building’s contours and flowing curves create surprising indoor and outdoor spaces as well.

The heart of the school: the central hub The central hub is the place where day-to-day life at the school unfolds. This flexible, transformable space will be used throughout the day as an informal meeting place. The dance studio on the ground floor can be transformed through a few simple adjustments into a theatre with a stage, a cosy living room or an auditorium that can accommodate 1,000 people for special events such as graduation ceremonies and large celebrations, as seen at the grand opening. This central hub connects the building’s three wings: the art wing, the south wing with science- and general-use rooms and the sports wing

Learning environment with a diversity in working spaces Letovo envisioned an innovative and modern take on existing education in Russia. In the spatial design, this perspective translates into space for theoretical education as well as special areas for group work and independent study in the tapered building wings. In the library wing there are silence spaces workshop spaces and a debating room. These are all supportive to the student’s personal development. 

Sports programme In addition to the extended sports outdoor facilities, the indoor supply of sports facilities is substantial. These cover fitness rooms, martial arts rooms, a swimming pool, a small and a large sports hall. Around the sports hall there’s an indoor running track which can be used throughout the year. It is available to school staff and external users as well.

The interior, also designed by atelier PRO, is tailored to the aims of the ambitious programme. The design of the interior also focuses extensively on the various spaces where students can go to chill and meet up with friends. The extreme cold in this area makes the school’s indoor atmosphere important for relaxation.

Ambitous learning environment The Russian client has established a private, non-profit school which aims to be the most prestigious school in the country and to offer the best educational programme through a Russion and an IB (International Baccalaureate) curriculum. Students’ personal development is paramount, with the school adopting a holistic approach. It is a true learning environment that provides scope for a range of disciplines, areas of interest and recreational opportunities to foster children’s development. This aim is supported by the campus facilities and functions.

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Address: zimenkovskaya street, sosenskoye settlement, moscow, russia.

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