Over the course of the semester you will be required to annotate a certain number of readings.

Goal: Low states writing assignment to help you develop your ideas, make connections with reading materials in this course and others, develop critical reading and thinking skills.

We will be using Hypothesis to annotate our online readings in a private class group. Click here to join our group. You will also have the option to sign up for a new Hypothesis account, if you don’t have one already.

Once you have an account and are in the group, here is a great quick-start Hypothesis guide, and here are some more Hypothesis resources. Here is a great video about the basics of using the annotation tool:

As far as what makes a good annotation, here is a link to a good guide from Hunter College. What I’m looking for:

• Thoughtful questions
  • Questions that challenge the assumptions of the reading
  • Questions about things you don’t understand in the reading
  • Questions about the methodology or perspective of the author
  • Questions about the central argument of the reading
• Connections/Comments
  • Connecting the reading to other readings in this class or other classes you are taking. How is reading connected to other things you’ve read? What are the parallels? Differences? Interesting insights
  • Connecting the reading to current events in the country/world
  • Comments about what you agree/disagree with
  • Comments about what the author does well and doesn’t do well
  • Comments that suggest how you would approach the subject matter differently.

I’m expecting each student to make a certain number of annotations depending on how involved/deep they are. You could ask a few questions or make a couple of substantive comments, for example.