Last week you collaboratively annotated the transcript of “Struggle for Smarts” with ~ 1/2 class. This meant there were ~15 students all adding notes in the margins of one document. We knew it would get messy with so many people working on one document. It meant there was not a bunch of room in the margins for people who came to the activity later. At the same time, it gave everyone a chance to see the variety of ways to annotate and to get an idea of what classmates thought about the text.

This week you’ll be doing the same thing but in smaller groups (~9). As a team, your group will be responsible for annotating the whole transcript. Please keep in mind that we’re practicing annotating for comprehension this week. This means your annotations can still include your thoughts and reactions, but I am specifically asking you to focus your reading on analyzing and making sense of Breaks’ spoken word piece by:

• Asking questions.
• Explaining main ideas in your own words
• Noticing and explaining figurative language.
• What is his message? Comment on how he argues his point.
• What is his purpose? What does he want readers/listeners to do, to think, to feel?
• Who is his audience? Annotate where you see evidence of intended audience.
• What is genre? Point out how the genre is effective or not effective.
• Digging deeper by doing quick internet searches to better understand his references.
• Making sense of words or terms that aren’t familiar to you.