In celebration of Presidents’ day on February 15th, Hypothesis will host a week-long annotatathon of the greatest speeches in American presidential history, beginning February 12th.

As part of the Letters to the Next President 2.0 initiative from the National Writing Project, teachers and students are invited to use the Hypothesis annotation tool to help answer the question: what does a president sound like? What types of words and phrases and ideas are particularly “presidential”?

Using Hypothesis–here’s a Quick Start Guide to the tool–highlight such “presidential” words, phrases and ideas, and tell us why in a note. There are nine historical speeches to choose from. Classes can annotate publicly or in private groups. Either way, use the hashtag “nextprez” in your annotations. (Here’s a stream of “nextprez” annotations.)

Choose from the following great speeches in American history. (Note: The second link is a special via link that is automatically annotatable; the first requires the Hypothesis Chrome extension or bookmarklet to annotate.)

 

• Washington Farewell Address | [“via” link]

 

• Lincoln Gettysburg Address | [“via” link]

 

• Lincoln Second Inaugural | [“via” link]

 

• FDR’s First Inaugural | [“via” link]

 

• FDR’s 1941 State of the Union | [“via” link]

 

• Eisenhower’s Military Industrial Complex speech | [“via” link]

 

• JFK Inaugural Address | [“via” link]

 

• Johnson’s “American Promise” speech | [“via” link]

 

• Reagan Brandenburg Gate speech | [“via” link]