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The UF Lastinger Center for Learning is providing very high-quality professional learning at a time when our teacher wor...
10/21/2026

The UF Lastinger Center for Learning is providing very high-quality professional learning at a time when our teacher workforce really needs it! We just got a look at Literacy Lab, a new three-day professional learning experience for K–5 teachers, coaches, and school leaders, developed by the good folks at the Center and our past president.

Literacy Lab is not built around a specific program or approach to Tier 1 instruction and intervention. Most educators will return to the instructional materials their school or district has already adopted. The goal is to help educators become more informed, critical users of those materials by learning about and practicing the “active ingredients” found across many effective approaches. The ability to examine your materials, know what they do well, where they may not meet the needs of some students, and how to adjust and respond is key knowledge for teachers.

Making those adjustments well depends on knowing what students need, so Literacy Lab also builds educators’ skills in data-based decision-making. Participants spend time:

- Administering, scoring, and analyzing specific diagnostic and progress monitoring assessments

- Identifying profiles of reading difficulty

- Working through a structured data-based problem-solving cycle

- Learning how problem-solving works at all three tiers of instruction

From there, the focus moves to instruction. Over the three days, we learned how to implement evidence-based instructional strategies that appear across effective programs such as:

- Using Elkonin boxes and word chains to build early decoding skills

- An advanced decoding routine that helps students read multisyllabic words

- Fluency building with complex text for intermediate students with substantial reading difficulties

- Classwide intervention (partner reading with paragraph shrinking)

- Explicitly teaching background knowledge

- Writing brief gist statements

- Planning explicit vocabulary instruction and distributed vocabulary practice

- And more, including morphology, sentence-level instruction, and writing to support reading

The slides in this post are a small sample of the learning. They range from data-based decision-making and assessment interpretation to early and advanced decoding, fluency-building intervention, vocabulary instruction, writing, and more.

Literacy Lab is not an open-enrollment, free online course. It's delivered to schools and districts through a formal partnership. If you’re a school or district leader and would like to learn more, please contact the partnerships manager at [email protected] or visit https://lastinger.ufl.edu/about-us/contact-us/.

Are you wondering what evidence-based, fluency-oriented instruction looks like? We love this teacher-friendly article fr...
09/08/2026

Are you wondering what evidence-based, fluency-oriented instruction looks like? We love this teacher-friendly article from the brilliant Dr. Melanie Kuhn. It's free!

Link here:https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1255158.pdf

Below, we've described the four instructional routines in the article, but check out the pictures for a handy one-pager we created, along with the individual lesson plans for each!

But first, an important caveat about text fluency instruction:

Text fluency instruction is meant for students who are solidly on their way to basic decoding skills, typically after first grade. It is not a substitute for decoding instruction. As the article puts it, it's rare that an entire class of first graders is ready for fluency work. The whole-class approaches described in the article are appropriate for most second and third graders.

The routines:

- FORI (Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction): A whole-class approach for grades 2–3. The class reads one shared text across five days, moving through progressively less-supported readings (teacher read-aloud to echo reading to choral reading to partner reading to extension activities). The purpose is to get students reading connected text for 20–30 minutes a day, with a heavy dose of scaffolding so they can handle challenging material.

- Wide FORI: Follows the same whole-class, five-day structure, but students read three different texts in a week instead of one. Exposes students to a wider range of vocabulary and concepts. Comprehension gains with Wide FORI tend to be a bit stronger.

- FOOR (Fluency-Oriented Oral Reading): A small-group version for struggling readers at any grade level. Groups meet three times a week for 15–20 minutes and read a single text repeatedly (echo to choral to partner reading). Works well as a Tier II fluency intervention.

- Wide FOOR: The small-group version of Wide FORI. Uses a different text at each session. In the research, this group made greater comprehension gains than the repeated-reading (FOOR) group.

Also from the paper: The four principles of effective fluency instruction:

- Modeling: Show students what fluent reading sounds like by reading aloud regularly, across genres from poetry to nonfiction. It provides a model, though on its own it won't build fluency. Fluency is built with extensive practice, but students need to hear the modeled goal before they can reach it.

- Extensive opportunities for practice: Fluency comes from time spent reading, not just from hearing good reading. These approaches emphasize daily connected-text reading from under 10 minutes (typical) to 20–30. Reading volume is of the utmost importance!

- Scaffolding: Support that lets students succeed with texts that would otherwise be too hard. It can be repeated readings (the repetition itself acts as the scaffold) or assisted reading alongside a teacher or stronger peer. Without it, independently reading challenging texts would be frustrating.

- Prosody (incorporating prosodic elements): Explicitly teach expression: phrasing, stress, emphasis, pacing. The goal is expressive reading that reflects meaning, which is an entirely different goal from just increasing speed. Phrasing and other important elements of prosody has to be taught directly!

Useful facts from the article:

- Second graders in the original FORI study gained an average of 1.8 years of reading growth in year one and 1.7 years in year two, roughly double the expected pace!

- The "challenging but not frustrating" sweet spot for the small-group work is texts students can read at 85–90% accuracy, which is a lower accuracy level than what many of us were trained on! Remember, fluency instruction builds accuracy, and brief instruction on challenging words, prior to reading, can build enough accuracy that students can benefit from fluency instruction.

From the "Still as true today as it was 20 years ago" files, we're reading this excellent report from back in 2007: Teac...
08/29/2026

From the "Still as true today as it was 20 years ago" files, we're reading this excellent report from back in 2007: Teaching All Students to Read: Practices from Reading First Schools With Strong Intervention Outcomes. During the Reading First years, The Florida Center for Reading Research collected information about schools that were having greater-than-average outcomes for students with literacy difficulties. This document condensed their findings into 7 common traits observed in successful schools.

The whole brief 22-page report is worth the time for any implementation-focused leader or educator who is interested in promoting practices that effective schools use. Find the full text here:https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED498784.pdf

1. Strong Leadership: In every successful school, strong direction came from the principal, the reading coach, or a literacy team, and the one trait they all shared was knowledge of literacy development and instruction. These leaders knew their students by name, knew which children were at risk, knew what each reading program addressed, and could explain a clear vision for the school. That knowledge drove concrete decisions. One principal described his first step as identifying the children in need, then building his staffing and schedule around them. He set his intervention budget first, in the spring, and then found the funds to cover it, on the principle that budget should reflect student needs. Leaders also took an active role in data meetings, and protected reading time when building the master schedule. Teachers across these schools said their principal's door was always open and that the principal would not ask them to do anything he or she would not do.

2. Positive Belief and Teacher Dedication: Staff at successful schools believed all their students could learn to read, and they held that belief even though their students faced the same language barriers, poverty, and limited home support cited by less successful schools as reasons for failure. The difference was that successful schools did not use those factors as explanations for why students could not learn. They raised the bar rather than lowering it, and they backed high expectations with support, so that when a teacher needed more books or more paper, the leader found the money. The consistent example set by the leader was the key ingredient.

3. Data Utilization and Analysis: Successful schools held regular data meetings, usually every two weeks or monthly, with a clear structure and the right people present. A defining feature was that someone in the room, most often the principal, could make school-level decisions and act on them immediately, which cut out the delay of tracking down an administrator between meetings. These schools used forms and systems to track each child's programs, modifications tried, and additional test data such as mastery measures or reports from computer-based programs, alongside DIBELS scores. Less successful schools knew they were supposed to meet about the data but had no plan for making decisions, so teachers left still unsure of what to do next. One principal also stressed using spring data to plan for the following year, arguing that waiting until fall to plan interventions is too late, and that spring data should guide textbook purchases and budget priorities. Schools scheduled these meetings in two main ways: during teacher planning periods, or during the school day by bringing in substitutes who rotated through classrooms so each teacher could attend in turn.

4. Effective Scheduling: Principals consistently named scheduling as one of the most critical parts of an effective intervention program, because specific time has to be set aside or intervention does not happen reliably. They worked around four challenges: protecting an uninterrupted reading block of 90 minutes or more, identifying specific times for intensive intervention, arranging staff for the most efficient use of support personnel, and building in common planning time for grade-level teams. Two structures for intervention were most common:

- In the first, a 90-minute reading block is followed by a separate 30-to-45-minute period outside the block, with the intervention almost always delivered by support personnel rather than the classroom teacher.

- In the second, the block is extended to 105-120 minutes and the intervention is integrated into the reading block itself, delivered sometimes by the classroom teacher and sometimes by support staff.

This is where the "walk to read" approach comes in. In a walk-to-read model, students physically move during the reading block to a different classroom grouped by common instructional need, so a limited number of trained support staff can be concentrated where they are most needed. One school of 895 students staggered its reading blocks so two grade levels met at a time, and used its ESOL and ESE teachers as reading teachers, giving each grade two to four extra teachers during the block and dropping the reading-block group size to 15 or fewer. In other schools, the classroom teacher delivers tier 2 directly: at one 575-student school, the teacher extended a 90-minute block by 20 minutes, ran three reading groups, met each for 20 minutes while others worked at centers, and saw the most at-risk group a second time for a double dose. Neither approach is presented as better. Walk-to-read maximizes scarce specialists across more students, while the teacher-delivered double dose avoids transition times and allows the teachers who know their students best to deliver intervention.

5. Professional Development: Because it takes more skill to teach students with literacy difficulties than students who learn easily, professional development was treated as a foundation of a teacher's job, and it was differentiated to teachers' experience. High teacher turnover in these schools made it essential to create an ongoing plan for training new teachers. Successful schools used a mix of district staff, literacy team members, publishers, and coaches for ongoing professional development. Follow-up, job embedded training was often described as more valuable than the initial training because the real, implementation oriented issues only arise once a teacher is actually using instructional materials. Schools used several models: sending a coach to workshops to train colleagues on return, relying on publishers and the district for program-specific training, using the coach and literacy team to lead book studies and short workshops during grade-level meetings, and setting up funds teachers could apply for to attend outside conferences and then present what they learned. To protect coaches' time for modeling and data work, several schools used veteran teachers to help support new teachers during common planning meetings.

6. Scientifically Based Intervention Programs: Some schools used intervention programs tied to their core reading program, while others pulled materials from several sources, with tradeoffs for each approach. A single published program offers ready-made materials, built-in professional development, a set scope and sequence, and sometimes a research base, but the cost was higher, and one program cannot meet every child's needs. Drawing from multiple sources allows a closer match between materials and a specific student's needs, but it takes significant time, requires a teacher who understands the data at the student level, and risks teaching the same skill in conflicting ways without a set scope and sequence or research support. Schools that succeeded with the multi-source approach usually had an experienced literacy team, not just a coach, to help analyze data and build materials. Technology played a supporting role throughout, from single-component software such as Read Naturally to programs covering all five reading components, with reports from those programs helping to inform data meetings.

7. Parent Involvement: Principals noticed a clear difference for children who had support at home or after school, and they treated involving families as work that takes deliberate effort, especially where many parents spoke limited English. A recurring practice was making the first contact with a parent a positive one, before any call about a concern, so the relationship starts from a constructive footing. Schools used interpreters at meetings, sent notices home in multiple languages, held parent nights where families could ask about curriculum or learn activities to do at home, and sent parent liaisons to visit homes. Before- and after-school programs extended learning, and several schools solved the transportation problem by using grant or budget funds to run late buses home. One school built family reading events, materials in English and Spanish, and a signed home-school achievement contract into a coordinated effort to make parents feel like a genuine part of their child's education.

While it is a bit dated in some places, the core of the report is still rock-solid when it comes to intervention outcomes for K-3 students.

Is it time to shift from the science of reading to the engineering of reading? A new, excellent article by Dr. Nicole Pa...
08/13/2026

Is it time to shift from the science of reading to the engineering of reading? A new, excellent article by Dr. Nicole Patton-Terry of The Florida Center for Reading Research and Dr. Elizabeth Tipton at Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University makes an argument that the science of reading, for all its value and success, is necessary but not sufficient for improving literacy proficiency for large numbers of students.

The science has largely won the policy fight here in 2026. More than 40 states have passed evidence-based reading laws, and 47 require dyslexia screening. But the authors argue that there is a big difference between knowing "what works" and getting it to work in an actual classroom. Many states require screening without requiring interventions that match the evidence. Districts adopt materials that don't align with the implementation research.

The authors point out that science and engineering are two different fields, with different orientations. Science exists to understand things, so it often isolates one factor at a time and tests these factors under close-to-ideal conditions. While that's a strength when the goal is to build basic knowledge in a field, it means the research often removes the messiness of real schools. Engineering exists for a different reason: to build something that works. It treats the variation, constraints, and obstacles for classrooms, teachers, and students as the actual problem to solve.

Several things in the article are worth our attention:

One is how the field talks about failure. When a well-researched program doesn't work in practice, we tend to call it an implementation problem, which can sometimes amount to blaming the teacher. The authors argue that this is not a teacher problem, but a design problem. An intervention that only works under perfect conditions has a design flaw. The job of building usable instructional materials belongs to the people designing it, not to the teacher trying to implement it during a normal school day.

Another of the many important points in the paper focus on the time it takes to build and scale truly usable and effective materials, as well as the implications for that time scale. Genuinely powerful reading interventions, like the Assessment to Instruction software (https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/teaching-tools/learn/a2i.html) and the Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (https://www.serpinstitute.org/stari) can take a decade or more to develop, test, revise, and build to scale. Schools need help now, so this instructional void gets filled by EdTech products that are easy to use but aren't always built on solid science. Because they're convenient, they sometimes get chosen over interventions that actually work.

The authors are careful to say they aren't knocking the science of reading. They're scientists themselves, and they're clear that you can't build anything without the underlying science, the same way you can't build a bridge without physics. Their point is that knowing what works and building something that reliably works in a real classroom are two different skills, and the field has poured far more into the first than the second. That's where the implementation gap comes from.

The article ends with the authors acknowledging that many researchers are doing engineering work, and that some would take issue with making a distinction between science and engineering. From the article: "Our hope is that by giving this work a name, by making it distinct from that of science, we can elevate its importance and make it something that is explicitly discussed, trained, funded, and rewarded. Furthermore, by highlighting that engineering differs from science in its priority for problem solving according to relevant boundary conditions, we hope that this will make even more clear the necessity of including communities, practitioners, and individuals who experience reading difficulty in the research. Because for the engineer, it is these communities' problems and questions that should be at the center of the research, not our own.

Link to the full text here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/mbe.70053

Is teaching the 6 syllable types necessary for students to learn to read multisyllable words? The answer is complicated!...
07/15/2026

Is teaching the 6 syllable types necessary for students to learn to read multisyllable words? The answer is complicated!

One article we love on the subject of teaching students to read multisyllable words is Helping Students With Dyslexia
Read Long Words Using Syllables and Morphemes by Devin Kearns and Victoria Whaley. It provides pragmatic, helpful guidance on supporting students with word-reading difficulties as they tackle long words. Full text here:https://education.ufl.edu/patterson/files/2020/05/KearnsWhaley2019.pdf

Many of us here at the Reading League Florida were trained early in our careers through our Orton-Gillingham programs to explicitly teach the 6 syllable types and to teach students a series of rules for how to divide long words into chunks. Our views have changed as we've implemented other evidence-based interventions that relied on more flexible syllabication strategies.

Identifying the syllables in a word essentially comes down to two pieces of knowledge: every syllable has to have a vowel sound, and syllables can be divided only so that they start and end like monosyllabic words do (e.g. a syllable cannot end in -str or cannot start with nd-)

Another key takeaway is about the importance of teahcing students to recognize morphemes. Circling, or mentally noting affixes is a very effective way of breaking a long word down into more manageable chunks.

It's also important to teach students mispronunciation correction, commonly through vowel flexibility. Students should understand that single-letter vowels in multisyllable words can be pronounced with the long sound, the short sound, or schwa. Students can practice saying both sounds for a vowel and practice reading syllables containing them.

This isn't to say that teaching the 6 syllable types is ineffective. There simply isn't research to say one way or the other whether teaching syllable division rules and syllable types is an effective practice.

To that end, we appreciate the great work by the folks at AIM Institute for Learning & Research. They've been putting out an excellent series of deep dives on topics that educators deserve nuanced, comprehensive, and evidence-informed answers to. Check out their deep dive into syllable types and syllable division: https://nexus.aimpa.org/deep-dives/syllable-types-and-division

We firmly believe that strengthening vocabulary is one of the most powerful ways to develop students' literacy. Vocabula...
07/02/2026

We firmly believe that strengthening vocabulary is one of the most powerful ways to develop students' literacy. Vocabulary instruction is so often an "active ingredient" in effective instruction and intervention. We've learned so much about vocabulary development and instruction during our careers, so we want to highlight a few recent resources we've been learning from!

What constitutes effective vocabulary instruction? In a fantastic article from 2019, Dr. Margaret McKeown described the components: Present both definitional and contextual information, provide encounters with words in multiple contexts, and engage students’ active processing of word meanings. Read the full article here:https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1234125.pdf

We're so thankful that the concepts of interleaved and distributed practice are really starting to be more well known, thanks in large part to our Florida friends at UFLI! These concepts apply to all domains of literacy, not just phonics instruction. Interleaved and distributed vocabulary practice is the only way that firm connections are built between words and concepts. Students need not only initial exposure and processing of words, but continual processing of and connection to related concepts!

The IES Practice Guide on Improving Adolescent Literacy makes the following recommendation:

- Use repeated exposure to new words in multiple oral and written contexts and allow sufficient practice sessions: Words are usually learned only after they appear several times. In fact, researchers estimate that it could take as many as 17 exposures for student to learn a new word. Repeated exposure could be in the same lesson or passage, but the exposures will be most effective if they appear over an extended period of time. Words that appear only once or twice in a text are typically not words that should be targeted for explicit instruction because there may never be enough practice to learn the word completely. Students should be provided with the definitions of these infrequent words."

Link here to the IES Practice Guide:https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/WWC/Docs/PracticeGuide/adlit_pg_082608.pdf =17 In the screenshots, you'll also see a sneak peek of something that some of us here at TRLFL are working on.

A recent large systematic review of research on vocabulary instruction (Wright & Cervetti, 2016) found:

- Teaching word meanings has a direct, positive effect on comprehension of the text in which the words appear. This is consistently one of the strongest pieces of support for vocabulary instruction as a tool for content learning!

- Active processing of vocabulary is more effective than passive approaches like telling students the definition. There are a wide variety of kinds of active processing activities which ask students to read about, write about, and speak about the words they're learning! Check out the screenshots for some examples from the McKeown article

- Vocabulary instruction and intervention tend not to affect generalized comprehension. This means that vocabulary instruction often does not affect comprehension of new text if that new text doesn't contain any of the words that students have been previously taught.

Read "A Systematic Review of the Research on Vocabulary Instruction That Impacts Text Comprehension" here: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Systematic-Review-of-the-Research-on-Vocabulary-Wright-Cervetti/611b4246f9f364b577dde1512c999fce7c709fae

Also for secondary folks, we love this older video from AdLit that exemplifies active vocabulary processing embedded in a lesson on craft and structure. Student annotate an Abraham Lincoln speech to note when his tone is "conciliatory" or "firm": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28nB00VRK2M&t=341s

One active vocabulary processing activity we think is engaging and powerful is the linear array. We first read about linear arrays in the seminal text Bringing Words to Life by Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (stop reading this and buy that book if you haven't heard of it!) https://www.guilford.com/books/Bringing-Words-to-Life/Beck-McKeown-Kucan/9781462508167?srsltid=AfmBOopD8HdvPWmpzILRQ11k_mJsji4kzwLSoJl_bt9iQ06rgalES4pZ

Working in small groups, students arrange a set of related vocabulary words along a line between two anchor words that are thematically related to the text you’re teaching. Linear arrays help students determine shades of meaning between thematically related words and can be used to provide students with opportunities to process vocabulary in discussion.

A resource we love that features linear arrays is the recent infographic series based on the recommendations of the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices. It presents strategies that classroom teachers and specialists can use to increase the reading ability of adolescent students. There are four recommendations from the practice guide included in the infographics, one of which covers vocabulary. Check out the ELA guide here:https://ies.ed.gov/sites/default/files/rel-southeast/document/2025/12/6.2.x.14%20Improving%20Adolescent%20Literacy%20ELA.pdf

The science guide here:https://ies.ed.gov/sites/default/files/rel-southeast/document/2025/12/6.2.x.14%20Improving%20Adolescent%20Literacy%20Science.pdf

And the social studies guide here:https://ies.ed.gov/sites/default/files/rel-southeast/document/2025/12/6.2.x.13%20Improving%20Adolescent%20Literacy%20Social%20Studies.pdf

In the pictures of this post, you'll see a linear array we've used for a recent lesson on how search engines and other algorithmically based social media platforms can spread misinformation. In the comments, give ordering those words your best shot!

The research base on main-idea and summary writing strategies is extremely deep. We’ve known for decades that writing in...
06/07/2026

The research base on main-idea and summary writing strategies is extremely deep. We’ve known for decades that writing in response to reading improves comprehension of text more than most other comprehension strategies, and teaching students to summarize text is a powerful lever that we can pull. If you haven’t read Graham and Hebert’s 2010 Writing to Read report, it’s an excellent one!https://media.carnegie.org/filer_public/9d/e2/9de20604-a055-42da-bc00-77da949b29d7/ccny_report_2010_writing.pdf

Teaching students to “Get the Gist” and summarize text appears across so many different evidence-based comprehension approaches. One approach that has many years of research showing its effectiveness, and teaches students gist and summary writing among a few other high utility strategies, is Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR). Here is a link to the most updated 2025 version of the curriculum, care of the Meadows Center at the University of Texas: https://meadowscenter.org/resource/ca-csr-lessons/. The full curriculum is built around Texas standards, but exemplifies instruction nicely.

One article we love about main idea/gist writing is Using Paraphrasing and Text Structure Instruction to Support Main Idea Generation from Drs. Sharon Vaugh and Elizabeth Stevens. Gists are small main ideas. Students write a brief, in-their-own-words main idea sentence after each section of text (typically 1–3 paragraphs). A summary is what you get when you string together multiple gists and connect the ideas using text structure. The connection can happen through students' knowledge of text structure and their use of key signal words tied to each text structure: although, because, so, consequently, next, in contrast, as a result, and so on. Those connectives are key for understanding and showing the underlying logical structure of the text. We’ve attached some screenshots of some good parts of the article, but here’s a breakdown too:

Main idea is a tough skill, especially for students with language-based learning difficulties.

It breaks a hard skill into 3 steps- (1) Who or what is this mostly about? (2) What's the most important idea about that who/what? (3) Put it together to write the gist.

It builds toward summarizing: Students who can gist a paragraph are far better prepared to summarize a whole text later on.

Step 2 is the hardest one for many students: Kids often grab a random detail instead of the most important idea. Teach text structure (description, problem–solution, compare–contrast) as a "fix-up" tool, alongside rereading and checking headings.

Model, then release: I do, we do, you do. Think aloud as you find the gist, practice together, then let them try independently with feedback.

Several prominent reading researchers wrote this 2019 paper: "The 'GIST' of the Reading Comprehension Problem in Grades 4 and 5."https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED624292.pdf It makes the case that summary writing is a key missing skill in upper elementary literacy instruction. Key points to understand:
Across two years of Texas state assessment data, students in grades 4 and 5 scored significantly lower on main idea and summary items than on any other comprehension item type (vocabulary, text structure, comparison, etc.). Summary and main idea were clearly the weak link.

Most classroom instruction in summarizing isn't evidence-based. Surveys of 155 teachers showed widespread use of strategies like hashtags, "beginning-middle-end," "somebody-wanted-but-so-then," and "caveman talk." The authors argue that these condensed texts don't teach students to identify main ideas or connect ideas across sections, which is the actual cognitive work that a summary requires.

Where evidence-based strategies (text structure, main idea, summarization) are used, they're poorly scaffolded. Textbook analyses show these skills appear on a 6–8 week spiral with too little practice between exposures for students to consolidate them. This goes along with the critique of the "skill of the week" approach, rather than teaching a small number of high leverage strategies (like summary) and using them consistently over the year as a tool to access and process content and text.

After a full day of PD that modeled paraphrasing into one's own words, teachers were asked to write a main idea for an article on Hurricane Harvey. Average score: 5.8 out of 8. Of the 72% who wrote an acceptable main idea, 80%+ copied sentences verbatim from the text rather than synthesizing in their own words. The authors call this "knowledge retelling rather than knowledge transformation." The implication is that we can't expect students to synthesize across sections if the adults teaching them are stuck at copy-delete themselves. Summary instruction has to be taught explicitly and practiced for teachers and students.

Bottom line: gist/main idea and summary are high-leverage, under-taught and often poorly taught skills, and the path forward is explicit instruction using text structure as the scaffold for both generating main ideas and integrating them into a synthesized summary.

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