Practice Annotation with "The Story of an Hour"

When starting students off with annotating, they often struggle for what is important enough to write down or how to probe the text for deeper meaning.

An easy text to start with is "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin.  Specifically, use this online text by Anne Woodlief: https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/webtexts/hour/storyofhour.html

Woodlief has gone through and linked certain words and phrases that have more meaning than others.  She doesn't just give the meaning away, she posits a question to the reader to help them focus on why this may be important to the meaning of the story.

How I Use It

I give my students this handout: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M2ZrrKOaCqdicGwzHPOW2GnntlE-t8tOH9iZjMfQqE8/edit

Students should read the story with no clicking of links and just write their first impressions.  Then, they will go back through the story, click each link and write their response on the handout.  There are so many links that I give them up to eight that they can leave blank.  Makes them feel like they are getting away with something.

Why It Works

It is a short text, so students do not get lost in it. By doing this early, students will start to see how little things - words, phrases, placement - all have a greater impact on the analysis of the story.  Often students don't know what is important enough to write about.  This gives them some guidance.

All in all, it takes most of a class period to do.  It is easy set up on my part and serves as a great introduction to literary analysis for AP Lit (though can be done with other classes).  It is the third thing I do to get students ready for AP Lit analysis.  The first is the break down "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" using different literary critical theories, followed by archetype notes (probably the best thing to give students confidence that they can break down a text).  After this activity, we are ready to go full force into the class.