Encourage a love of reading with Complete Comprehension

Our new series of books, Complete Comprehension, is designed to help primary schools develop their pupils into strategic readers. As a whole-school programme, it breaks down the complex process of reading comprehension into curriculum-aligned skills that are essential for meaningful reading. These comprehension skills form the basis of the teaching units, each of which consist of a detailed lesson plan, modelling session, photocopiable questions and a high-quality text passage.

The books have been authored by primary literacy specialists Laura Lodge, Jo Gray and Jane Sowerby. Drawing on their collective experience of implementing reading strategies, the authors based Complete Comprehension on classroom best-practice, resulting in a practical series that prioritises teaching children the skills they need to become successful readers.

Targeted comprehension skills

Each teaching unit targets one of nine comprehension skills that are essential for building reading confidence. In particular, word meaning, retrieval and inference are seen as cornerstones of comprehension and are therefore the focus skills in multiple units. All nine comprehension skills mirror those identified in the Reading Test Framework, helping teachers to grasp the nuances of the different question types and model using effective answering techniques for their pupils.

Each Complete Comprehension book includes up to 24 text passages that have been carefully chosen from classic fiction, contemporary fiction and non-fiction to provide a broad reading repertoire and help children to develop the foundational word knowledge they need to access the curriculum. Featuring work by Katherine Rundell, Michael Morpurgo, Malorie Blackman, Abi Elphinstone and Pádraig Kenny, the passages will spark pupils’ interests and support the development of reading for pleasure.

Increasing cultural capital

The text passages have also been paired to encourage comparison-making and draw on background knowledge, helping children to understand what they are reading and increase cultural capital. In addition to discussing the text passages in their intended pairs, there are many other links to be made between the texts in each book, including literary features and texts of the same genre. As many of the links are cross-curricular, these extra class discussions can be a useful way to strengthen children’s wider knowledge.

Additional online resources

Each Complete Comprehension book is supported by a wealth of online downloadable resources, including printable texts and modelling slides for each teaching unit. The books come with a unique code that will provide access to this exclusive content in addition to our free resources.

View a free teaching unit

A teaching unit for each year group is available to view and download from our Complete Comprehension webpage. If you would like to place an order or speak to our team about how Complete Comprehension can help your school, simply call 01484 607080, email sales@schofieldandsims.co.uk or order online.

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