Complete Comprehension
The essential resource for teaching comprehension, combining a skills-based approach with explicit vocabulary instruction and stimulating enrichment activities.
Comprising six books of teacher's notes and photocopiable resources, Complete Comprehension is a whole-school programme designed to support children from their first steps in comprehension through to secure ownership and confident application of comprehension skills.
Written by a team of expert authors, the series breaks down the complex process of reading comprehension into separate skills that closely match the curriculum requirements for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. Each teaching unit targets one comprehension skill, which is introduced through a modelling session and then practised using test-style questions. Explore the Complete Comprehension series leaflet to find out more.
The Complete Comprehension series will help to:
Each Complete Comprehension resource includes:
Each Complete Comprehension book contains up to 24 text passages, which are arranged in themed pairs and linked by either author or subject matter.
The texts have been carefully selected in order to provide a rich and diverse reading repertoire that can be embedded into your school’s wider curriculum. These pairings have been planned to facilitate discussion and comparison of related texts as you move through the book.
Beetle Boy, a popular fictional story about an adventurous beetle enthusiast, has been paired with Beetle Boy: The Beetle Collector’s Handbook, a factual book written in the style of an old guide. The pairing of these texts gives children the chance to explore the similarities and differences between them, as well as explore other topics such as science and nature.
The ultimate resource for teaching comprehension, combining a skills-based approach with explicit vocabulary instruction and stimulating enrichment activities.
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Each teaching unit provides a comprehensive, five-step lesson plan structured around a high-quality text extract. It includes a vocabulary toolkit, modelling slides for guided practice, child-friendly skills graphics, targeted comprehension questions matching specific content domains, and enrichment activities to encourage reading for pleasure and cross-curricular discussion.
Every unit in the Schofield & Sims Complete Comprehension series features a dedicated Language toolkit designed for explicit vocabulary pre-teaching. Before pupils read the main text extract, teachers are provided with key vocabulary definitions, contextual activities, and teaching notes to remove word-level barriers and close the word gap
Schofield & Sims Complete Comprehension is a whole-school programme explicitly mapped against the National Curriculum reading content for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 (Years 1 to 6). The series breaks down complex reading comprehension into separate, teachable skills, including retrieval, inference, and word meaning, ensuring systematic progression and targeted practice across all primary year groups.
Assessment is built into the programme at two levels. The mark schemes and teacher guidance within each unit support ongoing formative assessment, helping you identify where individual pupils are struggling with a particular skill. At the end of each term, an optional Progress check provides more formal practice in the style of the SATs Reading paper, offering a helpful transition towards the national tests without replacing your existing assessment approach.
Each Complete Comprehension book includes lesson plans, teacher's notes, photocopiable text passages and pupil question sheets, along with mark schemes for all questions. Every book also comes with a unique code that provides access to a range of downloadable resources, including modelling slides for each teaching unit, printable comprehension texts, a skills graphics slideshow, skills deskmats for pupils, and pupil question sheets to support remote or independent work.
The Complete Comprehension series is designed to complement your existing English lessons rather than replace them. Teaching units are flexible in length and can be spread across a week or delivered in a single session. With seven units per term, the programme leaves the remaining weeks free for other reading work, giving you space to fit it around your wider curriculum.
Each teaching unit targets one of nine comprehension skills: word meaning, prediction, retrieval, inference, sequencing, word choice, summarising, comparison and relationship. These mirror the skills identified in the Reading Test Framework, which underpins the KS1 and KS2 SATs Reading papers. Word meaning, retrieval and inference are treated as the cornerstones of comprehension and appear across both key stages.
Each Complete Comprehension book contains up to 24 text passages arranged in themed pairs, linked by either author or subject matter. These are organised into teaching units, with seven units per term. The remaining weeks in each term are left free for other reading work.
Each teaching unit is built around five steps: preparing pupils to engage with the text, pre-teaching key vocabulary, introducing the target skill through a modelling session, practising the skill through focused questions, and extending learning through discussion and wider reading. Units can be taught across a week or combined into a single session, depending on your timetable.
Complete Comprehension is a structured, whole-school reading comprehension programme from Schofield & Sims, designed for primary schools from Year 1 to Year 6. Each book in the six-book series is dedicated to a single year group and provides everything a teacher needs to plan and deliver focused comprehension lessons, including lesson plans, teacher's notes, photocopiable pupil resources and mark schemes.
Explore Complete Comprehension further with a free booklet containing one unit from each book sent directly to your school.
