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Reading · Grade 5 Reading

Chapter 1: Analyzing a Text

Annotating as You Read

Write down what you thought, not just what looked important.

Lesson
2
Time
About 18 minutes
Practice sheets
0 of 3 done
Part 1 of 5Get Ready

Get Ready

To annotate is to write your thinking beside the words. A good note says what you thought.

Today’s story

The Last Day of the Pool

A story about a swimming pool closing. About 230 words.

Words to know

  • annotateTo write your thinking next to the words you are reading.
  • marginThe blank space along the edge of a page.
  • railA metal bar that people hold on to or lean on.

Read and Answer

Read one page. Then answer the question in the yellow box.

Page 1 of 3

The Corn Street Pool opened in 1908 and closed on a Tuesday in August. For the last hour, anybody could swim for free. There were more people in the water that afternoon than there had been on any day Idris could remember. He had been coming since he was four.

The tiles around the shallow end had turned the color of weak tea after a hundred and sixteen years of water. The corners nobody could reach with a brush were green. Long bars of light fell from the high windows across the water. The noise bounced off the roof the way it always had. Everybody sounded like they were shouting from farther away than they really were.

Why is highlighting on its own so weak?

Page 2 of 3

At four o’clock, the lifeguard blew the whistle, and everybody got out. Nobody argued about it.

They opened the valve at 4:30. Idris sat on the edge, feet in, and watched the water drop past one tile, then another, until he could not feel it.

The deep end went last. It took almost an hour, and by the end, fourteen people were left, standing at the rail and not talking much.

Underneath, where the water had been, there was a drain, a lost pair of goggles, and a penny.

Page 3 of 3

Somebody said it was a shame. Somebody else said the roof had needed fixing for years.

Idris walked home the long way.

Read It All

Answer all the questions to open the whole story.

My Notebook

Finish the story first. Then write two things you noticed.

What You Learned

  • A highlight on its own saves almost nothing.
  • A useful note holds a question, a connection or a reaction.
  • Mark less, and write down why.
For the grown-up

Highlighting rates as one of the least effective study techniques in the research, and it is the one children default to. Annotation works when the mark carries a proposition: a question, a link, or a reaction. The rule of thumb is that a mark you could not explain a week later was not worth making.

Ask your child to explain a highlight from last week. The answer makes the case better than any rule.