What Is Marginalia, And Why Should I Care About It? (2024)

Marginalia is any mark, doodle, or comment in the margin of a book. Marginal annotations personalize a book. They give the book meaning to its reader. Sometimes called “close reading,” annotation is intentional interaction with a text.

Readers use annotation to

• Improve recall of the text’s content,
• Make connections between prior knowledge and new learning, and
• Capture reactions to the text

All to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material.

Readers can use many different annotation strategies. Common annotations include highlighting text, circling vocabulary words, underlining main ideas, drawing pictures or diagrams, asking questions, and summarizing key sections.

Marginalia and annotation are powerful reading comprehension skills. Annotating while reading helps students recognize patterns, ask questions, visualize key points, and break down complex texts; as a result, it helps students focus and think critically as they work to understand complex content (Lloyd et al.). In short, annotating holds the reader’s thinking. Marginalia is the physical evidence of that thinking.

There are benefits to reading comprehension that extend beyond the classroom, too. Students with strong reading comprehension skills have expanded vocabularies and are better able to retain content. They have improved concentration and critical and analytical thinking skills. Most importantly, these students have higher academic confidence and self-esteem (School of Education and Social Policy at Merrimack College).

Annotating skills don’t come naturally to most students — and teaching annotating skills isn’t easy! A great and effective place to start is through modeling. Educators can display short and simple texts and read and think out loud, making notes along the way. Students will see and hear the thinking needed to annotate effectively.

Move into guided practice by providing students with opportunities to annotate with scaffolds. Students can work with partners or in small groups to hear their peers think out loud. Give them a rubric or checklist of items to look for in the text and annotate. The checklist or rubric should include common features that help the reader construct meaning from the text:

• headings and subheadings
• vocabulary (have students differentiate between known and unknown vocabulary words)
• questions that come up during reading
• connections to prior learning
• illustrations, charts/graphs, or visual models
• section summaries

Start by keeping the checklist simple. As students prove effective annotation skills, teachers can change items on the checklist. Changes can reflect skills gained or new skills to practice. Later, the checklist can include a section for reflection, where students explain what they’ve annotated and why. Soon, they’ll be ready for independent practice.

A common challenge for students is the “annotate everything” trap. Teachers can help students steer clear of this trap by stating a purpose for reading. In doing so, teachers will focus students’ attention on what to annotate. Clearly state one or two specific concepts to look for while reading — students can even write them down on the text! Tell students that if the text they want to annotate doesn’t match that purpose, it shouldn’t be considered when trying to make meaning from the material. As they read, students will use that purpose for reading to differentiate between what’s important and what isn’t. In turn, they’ll feel confident that they are looking for “the right things” and avoid the trap of highlighting entire pages of material.

There are no hard and fast rules for annotation. Educators should feel free to have some fun with the annotation process and the marginalia that their students create.

Some ideas to help include:

• Make it social! Kids can work in groups to complete their annotation checklists.
• Rename the “annotation checklist”! Call it a “scavenger hunt” and add a competitive element — now students are playing a literacy game.
• Create a unique class reading key! Work with students to create a list of symbols your class will use to explain different ideas. Hearts, smiley faces, question marks, and lightning bolts have nothing on the creative ideas that students will come up with.
• Challenge students to annotate in pictures only. Turn it into a recall and reflection piece by requiring a written explanation of what those illustrations mean later.
• Create an air of mystery! Turn annotations into a game of chance by assigning concepts to a number on a dice or a spinner wheel (or deck of cards — whatever you have handy!). For example, a 3 = vocabulary words, a 4 = ask a question, and a 5 = write a summary of the section. This is a great activity to do as a class via teacher modeling! Put kids into groups and watch student engagement soar.

Many people associate marginalia and annotating text with reading on paper. But digital texts are here to stay, and for many, they’re harder to read. Familiarize students with online tools for annotating to have students apply their skills for paper texts to digital ones.

Glose for Education’s platform is a great place to practice annotating digital texts. There are hundreds of free classic texts available and thousands of other titles in the Glose for Education Bookstore. And, Glose allows educators to upload their own PDFs for their students to engage with. Students can annotate texts on any of their devices, even offline, and any notes they make will sync once they’re back online.

Glose’s suite of annotation tools includes

• multi-colored highlighters
• a built-in dictionary,
• book-related emojis for reacting to content
• interactive comments that can include gifs, supplemental links, replies, and more.

When employed correctly, annotations give mountains of information about students’ learning to educators. Of course, marginalia paints a clear picture of who is actually reading the text and who isn’t. But educators can also use annotation to reflect on and adjust instruction.

Starting a new unit? Consider giving students a copy of the end-of-unit assessment to annotate. Just like giving a pretest, students will likely show knowledge of some of the content. The difference between having students just take the assessment as a pretest and having them annotate it is that you might gain some extra insights (as opposed to the all-too-familiar “IDK” for every answer). Have students look for chances to connect assessment questions to prior learning. As they attempt to answer the test questions, they can isolate areas of confusion by asking meaningful questions or pointing out exactly where they got “stuck.” Teachers can use this information to differentiate their instruction and to guide the direction of the unit (Tovani).

Annotations are another tool to guide instruction during a unit. By looking at students’ marginalia, teachers can check to see what students know and any misconceptions. Patterns around strategies used to annotate, vocabulary, problem-solving, and key takeaways can help teachers plan their next lesson(s). Teachers can also offer differentiated scaffolds to support students based on data from annotations. The feedback for teachers is invaluable.

And that feedback goes both ways. Educators can use marginalia as an entry point to provide meaningful feedback to their students. They can push them to dive deeper into the content. They can ask a question to challenge a point of view. They can even offer a bit of praise (Tovani).

Annotation is a learned skill. It’s important to keep emphasizing that the goal of annotation is understanding the text. Learners are always working to make meaning from reading. As a result, marginalia and understanding are ongoing processes.

Not only does annotating inform the meaning that students create from a text, but it also informs teacher instruction. The margins of a text are a safe space for students to take academic risks as they construct meaning. Teachers and students, take note.

Glose for Education is an online platform that makes reading a social experience. By creating shared spaces to interact with digital texts, readers learn from one another. To learn more about how Glose for Education can support your annotation instruction, click here. And, download this free lesson plan, “Do You Have Marginalia?”, to annotate texts using Glose with your students.

Works Cited

“7 Strategies for Teaching Students How to Annotate.” Waterford.org, 23 Jan. 2019, https://www.waterford.org/resources/strategies-for-teaching-students-how-to-annotate/.

Lloyd, Zena T., et al. “Using the Annotating Strategy to Improve Students’ Academic Achievement in Social Studies.” Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning, vol. 15, no. 2, 2022, pp. 218–231., https://doi.org/10.1108/jrit-09-2021-0065.

Tovani, Cris. “Annotating as an Assessment Tool.” Education World, https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/Annotating-as-an-Assessment-Tool.shtml. Excerpt from So What Do They Really Know? Assessment That Informs Teaching and Learning.