At the beginning of this semester, I had a lot of reading to do for my classes. I had a textbook and lots of work for every class. It was stressful to manage. Something I learned that helped me was active reading. In class we learned how to preview texts and understand what we were looking for. Another thing that helped is reading any questions or prompts I might have to think about prior too, so I know the purpose of why I’m reading. These minor changes in my mindset have helped me be more attentive to the text. Another skill I have learned throughout the semester that goes with active reading is annotating. Annotative the text is a huge help because it reminds me what the text is saying without re-reading the whole thing, and also helps be make personal connections to the text that I can use later in projects.

“The Hawk” annotations
“The Hawk” annotations

These were my annotations for “The Hawk” by Brian Doyle even after we talked about it as a class. Before going over it with the class I didn’t have a good understanding of the text and I had a hard time seeing all the different perspectives. After going over it with the class I Understood the perspectives, but could explain where they came from myself. This shows how personalized annotations can be to remind you what you are reading and make that personal connection. As we started learning about the different types of annotations and how to preview texts, I had way more understanding of what the writer was saying and the deeper meaning of it.

Front page of “The Limits of Friendship”, context about the author and beginning of text
Page 4 of “The Limits of Friendship”

Here, you can see different annotations such as (Ext) where I extend on the authors ideas or (Ch) where I challenge them with my own perspective. Learning different types of annotations has really helped me break town texts better and understand the deeper meaning. Understanding the reading better through annotations has also helped me response to reading questions. The text I felt most connected to had to be “Joy” by Zadie Smith because it dives deep into personal aspects of her life and what joy really means to her. This helped me realize all the things that I consider joy in my life.

This image shows a reading response to Smiths piece that demonstrates a good understanding of the text. I achieved this through active reading and annotating.