NOTE: If you participated in the MSM-PREP research study and are looking for the toolkit used during your participation, please email christymurray@austin.utexas.edu so you can obtain the private link.

About the Practice

GET THE GIST is a reading comprehension practice to help students identify and write brief main idea statements about sections of text.

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Students are taught to stop at predetermined points while reading and use a 3-step process to write their gist (main idea):

Step 1) “Who” or “what” is this section about?

Step 2) What is the most important information about the “who” or “what?”

Step 3) Write a gist (main idea) statement that combines the information from steps 1 and 2. (The gist should be in the students’ own words, rather than a sentence copied from the text.)

Teaching students to Get the Gist is important for several reasons:

**It encourages students to monitor their comprehension while reading.

**It helps students integrate important information across sections of text.

**It helps students remember the most important information when they read.