Web annotation is a genre of information technology that allows a user to annotate information in a shared document and anchor a discussion to the annotated information. When it is used socially in online classes, web annotation can support social reading, group sensemaking, knowledge construction, and community building (Chen, 2019; Kalir et al., 2020, Zhu et.al, 2020).To support several University of Minnesota instructors’ pivot to online teaching , we conducted a study that was focused on engaging undergraduate students in reading and discussing course materials in online classes. Following a co-design approach, we worked closely with instructors to design a generic scaffolding framework for social annotation activities and supported them to implement the framework, with course-specific customizations, in their classes. All participating courses are piloting a web annotation tool named Hypothes.is that is integrated in Canvas and allows students to read and annotate socially. This document describes the scaffolding framework, an important outcome of the study, which can be applied in various online/hybrid class settings.