My active reading strategies have transformed a lot over the course of the beginning of the semester. In high school, I never had to annotate or employ active reading strategies, so coming into this class it was a bit of a new skill to acquire.  I have now acquired this new skill and have implemented it in all of my other classes and I have noticed that it has helped me tremendously in comprehending the texts I am reading and take the text one step further and dive into critical thinking.

In class today, we learned how to “code” our annotations and see what is the most abundant type of annotations we are doing in our reading. I was mostly doing “U” and “R.” “U” stands for understanding, and using annotations to comprehend the texts better. One strategy I use is circling important or confusing words and doing more research on the meaning. I also tend to restate passages into simpler and smaller paraphrases so that I can go back and remember the main idea of whatever passage I was reading. This helps organize my brain while reading. The other main type of annotations I use fall under the “R” category, which is drawing relationships within the reading. The primary strategy I use is making connections with the text to either myself, other texts I’ve read, or to the world and broader phenomenons. I find that doing this allows me to form a deeper and stronger connection with the reading and the author and I enjoy reading it more.

By using annotation strategies, I am able to take reading one step further, and build that strong connection with the text and take it to a whole other level of comprehension.