1. Retelling or Synthesizing
The process of synthesizing occurs during reading:
 Proficient readers maintain a cognitive synthesis as they read. They monitor the overall
meaning, important concepts, and themes in the text as they read and are aware of
ways text elements fit together to create that overall meaning and theme. A proficient
reader’s synthesis is likely to extend the literal meaning of a text to the inferential level.
 Proficient readers are aware of text elements and patterns in fiction and nonfiction and
understand that being aware of them as they read helps them predict and understand
the overall meanings or themes.
 As they read, proficient readers attend more directly to character, setting, conflict,
sequence of events, resolution, and theme in fiction and to text patterns such as
description, chronological, cause and effect, comparison/contrast, and problem/solution
in nonfiction. They use their knowledge of these elements to make decisions about the
overall meaning of passage, chapter, or book.
 Proficient readers actively revise their cognitive syntheses as they read. New
information is assimilated into the reader’s evolving ideas about the text, rendering
some earlier decisions about the text obsolete.
The process of synthesizing occurs after reading:
 Proficient readers are able to express, through a variety of means, a synthesis of what
they have read. The synthesis includes ideas and themes relevant to the overall
meaning from the text and is cogently presented.
 Proficient readers use synthesis to share, recommend, and critically review books they
have read.
 Proficient readers purposefully use synthesis to better understand what they have read.
Syntheses are frequently an amalgam of all comprehension strategies used by proficient
readers.
Prompts for synthesizing:
 Can you tell me what the piece is about in just a few sentences?
 Can you show me a place in the piece where your thinking changed?
 How did your thinking change?
 Do you have some new ideas or information?

2. GIST Strategy: Select appropriate paragraph
1. Students read the first sentence for the purpose of retelling it in their own
words
2. Students generate summaries and are asked to retell the first sentence in a
statement of fifteen words or less
3. Students read the first two sentences and are asked to retell the first two
sentences in fifteen words or less
4. Continue this process through the rest of the paragraph until you have one
statement in 15 words or less that gives the GIST of the paragraph.
5. You may start in groups.
6. Move students from paragraphs to short passages.
Example: Early Explorers
In 1872, a group of scientists set out from England on a four-year voyage to study the world’s oceans. They took
rock and mud samples and recorded temperatures and currents. Their ship, the HMS Challenger, had laboratories
so the scientists could examine the plants and animals they scooped up from the seafloor. Their findings filled 50
books – but the study of the oceans had only begun.
First Sentence
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First and Second Sentence
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First, Second and Third Sentence
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Entire Paragraph
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