Annotation Bookmarks: Remember what you read this summer (and all school year long!)

Are you trying to catch up on your To Be Read pile this summer like I am? After spending a week or two rotting on the couch, I enjoy the part of the summer where I’m ready to engage my brain again, and have the time to do it. 

During the school year, I’ll often end up with a pile of books that were recommended by colleagues or suggested on social media that, despite my best intentions, never get read. Now that I have the time to sit and read my TBR pile, I don’t have the opportunity to put the things I’m reading and learning into practice like I might during the school year, which means I often forget what I read in the book, or that I learned new tools to change my teaching practice.  

To ensure that I have some key takeaways that I can easily access when I’m ready to use the information I learn as I read this summer, I created an annotation bookmark that helps me to summarize information, as well as remember how I marked up the book so that I can easily go back and find important information. These bookmarks serve as both a tool for mindful reading, as well as a quick reminder of key points from the book.   

I’ve attached two files to this post: one that is two tall/skinny bookmarks on a portrait page, and another that is wider/shorter landscape bookmarks, also two to a page. I added the different page formats after realizing that the tall bookmarks don’t fit some of the books I read, and the bookmarks ended up getting bent or torn. Now, I keep a couple of each kind printed on card stock and stacked by my bookshelf so that every time I start a new book I can choose a bookmark that will best fit the book and my bookshelf. 

Using the bookmarks After writing the title and author at the top, I add a stack of tape flags in five different colors in the Annotation Legend section. As I read, I use the tape flags to note things that I want to remember; each flag representing a different category of information. I add these categories as I read, based on the information in the book and how it’s presented. For example in the last book I read, I flagged information in these categories: Things to Remember, Acronyms and Definitions, Chapter Summaries, Things to Try Out, and Inspirational Stories. Other categories I often include are Strategies, Models, or Helpful Examples. Since these categories are blank, you can decide what will be most helpful for what you want to remember. 

I know that many teachers, especially Secondary folks, encourage students to annotate as they read, and this bookmark can assist students with being mindful as they’re reading as well. 

Create a copy of these files to personalize bookmarks for yourself or your students.

Editing in Pages is easy! Each bookmark is a text box that can be reformatted or rearranged using text formatting tools. I added stars from the Shapes menu for the star rating at the bottom. A classroom budget friendly alternative to tape flags would be to use shapes for students to use to mark their text. For example, heart ❤️  for ideas that students connect with, exclamation mark ! for information that surprised them, and a question mark ? for information they need clarified or have questions about. It would be interesting for students to edit the bookmark to create their own personalized annotation bookmark as well.      

Here’s part of my Summer TBR; what are you reading this summer?