Syncopation is just a fancy word for "the accent isn't where you'd expect it." When the strongest hits land on offbeats — the &s and the e/a positions — the rhythm tugs against the underlying pulse, and the listener feels a kind of forward lean. It's the engine of funk, of reggae, of half the hooks in pop music.
To read syncopation cleanly you need two things. First, you have to keep counting the underlying subdivision even when most of the strokes are off the beat — that's where Counting Eighths Ex 4 (offbeats only) was preparing you. Second, you need to read ties: a curved line connecting two notes of the same pitch, telling you to play the first note and let it ring through the second one's duration without re-striking it. On a drum, "ring through" just means stay silent — but the math has to be right or the next downbeat lands wrong.
One particularly common figure in modern drumming is the & of 3 anticipation: a hit on the upbeat just before beat 4, often tied across into beat 4 so that beat 4 itself stays silent. It's the shape of every "and-a-one" pickup in pop. The exercises below build progressively from clear offbeats to ties to the &-of-3 — count out loud through every example or you'll lose the plot fast.