🤔 What Makes a Good Annotation? Here are some tips:  

• Find a sentence that gives a main idea (major claim) in the piece. Add an annotation that (1) summarizes the idea in your own words, and (2) tells us why you think this is important. 
  
• Find a word or a phrase that you don’t understand. Look up the word. Tell us what you think that it means within the context of the piece. It’s OK to not know!
  
• Find a claim in the chapter that resonates with your own experiences. Tell us about why this is the case.
  
• Use links and images (gifs! memes! fun stuff! keep it, you know, PG) to connect ideas in the text to other things that you’re reading and learning
  
• Rather than immediately pushing back and disagreeing with the major point, consider annotating with what you would need to know in order to believe the author.
  
• Add your analysis. This means that you’re extending the point that is being made by adding something to the text that isn’t already there. 

• Respond to someone else’s annotation with kindness and generosity, and also with substance (no one likes an “Yes, I agree.”)Tell us WHY you agree and what you found valuable about a particular annotation, and if you don’t agree, here are some helpful phrases from Sensoy and DiAngelo (2014) that you can use to push back on someone’s point in respectful ways: 

“I’ve been wondering about how we’re using [term / phrase / idea] in this discussion…”

“Can you help me understand whether what I’m thinking right now might be harmful / incorrect / problematic?”

“From my experience / perspective as [identity]…”

“This perspective is new to me, but I’m wondering if it might be accurate to say [XYZ]…”

“This is what I understand you to be saying:. . . . Is that accurate?”

📝 Sample Annotations

In the section below, you can activate your Hypothes.is bookmarklet or extension to see the annotations on the text from Steven Alvarez’s chapter.

⚠️ Not great sample annotations:

“The narrow-minded view that English-only is the only model for literacy learning should be put to rest. English-only does not contribute to meaningful education on any grounds. Decades of research into bilingual learning strongly advocates for all students’ plurilingual learning” (Alvarez 96).

“Rather than assume students are limited writers or at fault in their individualized efforts, we must acknowledge that emerging bilingual students are not limited in their community contexts and instead look to the diverse repertoires they perform. Writing that is truly democratic values all languages and identities as they exist across the nation and not as imagined as English-only” (Alvarez 97).

✅ Better sample annotations:

“The narrow-minded view that English-only is the only model for literacy learning should be put to rest. English-only does not contribute to meaningful education on any grounds. Decades of research into bilingual learning strongly advocates for all students’ plurilingual learning” (Alvarez 96)

“Rather than assume students are limited writers or at fault in their individualized efforts, we must acknowledge that emerging bilingual students are not limited in their community contexts and instead look to the diverse repertoires they perform. Writing that is truly democratic values all languages and identities as they exist across the nation and not as imagined as English-only” (Alvarez 97).

🧐 What Makes a Good Discussion Question? Here Are Some Tips: 

Here are some tips for writing good discussion questions. 

• Make questions open-ended. Rather than asking a “quiz” question (i.e. “What did the author say about plagiarism?”), ask questions that encourage participants to share multiple perspectives (i.e. “What was surprising to you about this essay?”)
   
• Relate the content to your life experiences, and ask your colleagues to relate the content to their own lives and experiences. (i.e. “Growing up, I did a lot of grammar worksheets like the ones Patricia Dunn describes. Did everyone else have a similar experience, or did anyone learn writing in a different way in school?”)
  
• Ask about what was difficult to understand and / or admit when you didn’t understand a point. (i.e. “When the author said XYZ, I understood this to mean ABC. Is that how you understood it, too, or is there another way to make sense of this?”)
  
• Point to moments when you didn’t think that the author explained something well. Ask for further clarification, or ask your colleagues what else they think could have been included. (i.e. “I thought it was kind of confusing when the author was talking about ‘formative assessment.’ Did you all understand what this meant?”)
  
• Ask about the broader implications of the essay (i.e. “If we take Steven Alvarez’s point seriously about treating languages like gifts, what would this mean about the way that we train our teachers?”)
  
• Ask about connections to current events (be specific here, too—don’t just say “what current events does this essay remind you of?” for example)
  
• Ask about what kinds of concrete actions could or should be taken if we accept a particular argument.
  
• Ask about how this essay should change some kind of practice in schools, in society, or elsewhere.