When annotating, I generally want you doing four things with pen and book:

Circle vocabulary words, new and interesting words;
Writing questions--plot based--but primarily theme based question;
Making connections (between the text and your life, within the text);
Analyzing for the author's purpose (a.k.a.: thematic focus).

I will typically provide you with a focus for a text, provide you with some pre-reading insight to direct this fourth goal of annotation.

To prepare for Monday's essay test, you should use the list of student quotes to check your annotations. The following passages seemed important to your peers. Did they seem that way to you? Flip through your copy of the text, and revisit the following passages, checking your annotations. You do NOT need to re-annotate the passages. Rather, evaluate your annotation technique. What did you mark? What words did you circle? What questions did you ask? What themes did you note?

Click on the quote marks above to see the student selected quotes.