adventures of a typical high school student

Hello everyone!

I have another back-to-school post for you all today: how I read and annotate books for school. In middle school I never had any strategy and was honestly always confused about what I was doing or looking for whenever I read for school purposes; I was used to reading for fun and only paying attention to the main plot. That didn’t work out so well once I started high school; luckily, I had an amazing English teacher to guide my class and now I feel much more confident in my annotating skills. I’m going to pass on my strategies and main tips, but just know different things work for different people- it also depends on your school/teachers and what they actually tell you to look for in a book.

• Have a bunch of different colored highlighters and make a key in the front of the book for themes/motifs/symbols (or a mix, whatever you’re looking for) – Assigning a color to a theme will make it much easier to identify when flipping through your book or pulling quotes for essays, and it also may help you remember things better just by the color association. This is a lifesaver because when you find something that represents the theme/symbol/motif you just highlight it with that color and you’re good! My teacher last year always gave us the themes that we would be looking for examples for throughout the book at the beginning of a unit, so I can’t help much if you’re on your own to figure those out when reading- the main themes of a book can often be looked up online though.
• Use SparkNotes or similar sites not IN PLACE OF reading, but SUPPLEMENTING your reading – If you’re reading something confusing and just need the simple version or even a translation sometimes (looking at you, Tale of Two Cities), these websites will always have something to help you out. I would write little notes from these in the margins of the actual book just so the “dumbed-down” version of what was going on was always there for reference. That being said, do NOT skip reading and just use these sites unless you’re on a time crunch and will go back and read at a later time. It’s also helpful to read these sites and the actual text chapter-by-chapter because it’s just extra studying/time spent familiarizing yourself with the material.
• Read a page (or even the whole chapter if this works for you) just to process, then go back and highlight/annotate/look up things you don’t understand – Similar to how reading the SparkNotes is like a second-review, sometimes you just need to actually read a passage twice and get that clarification. It may take a bit longer, but you’ll understand everything SO much better and you’ll have actually read the full thing, not just skipped to the things you want to highlight.
• LOOK UP WORDS/THINGS YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!! – This was something my teacher really drilled into our heads. This is super important to the context of certain sentences/the plot, especially if it’s an older book and there’s just historical/cultural references you don’t understand. Looking at SparkNotes may help you with some of the major things, but it’s important to even look up singular words that you don’t know. Even if they don’t end up being relevant, you’ll be expanding your vocabulary- plus, if those things come up in another book, you’ll recognize them then!

Those are the main things I do whenever we’re reading a book in class. I’m lucky to have had a teacher that pointed us in the right direction of reading strategies last year; I hope these help you out, but I know every teacher might be looking for different things. In high school English classes, you’re pretty much always reading something (unless you’re writing!). I really enjoy reading, but I know it’s a completely different animal when you have to do it in a classroom and it comes with homework and assignments. Just try to enjoy the books you read in class; most of them are probably really good pieces of literature, and often classics. Let me know if you guys have any questions or requests- I’ll be back with more exciting content soon!

-Brooke