Use annotation marks -- underline, circle, question mark, star -- to mark up a nonfiction text while reading for meaning.
Read this passage: "In 1937, pilot Amelia Earhart attempted to fly all the way around the world. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, had completed most of the journey when their plane vanished somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, on a leg between New Guinea and a tiny island called Howland Island. Ships searched the ocean for weeks, but no confirmed wreckage was ever found. Nearly ninety years later, the disappearance is still one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in aviation history."
Good readers mark up a text as they go, like a detective circling clues. Underline the main idea sentence. Circle any unfamiliar word. Put a question mark next to anything confusing. Put a star next to a surprising fact. A quick word or two in the margin explaining WHY you marked something makes the annotation even more useful later.
Mastery looks like: They can annotate a short nonfiction passage with all four marks, choosing thoughtfully rather than marking everything.
Common stumbles: Marking too much, which defeats the purpose, or too little, treating annotation as busywork instead of using it to think.
See it visually
Interactive, spoken-aloud tools that show this idea in motion.