Making great literacy lessons easy. Why join Plazoom?

A Powerful Comprehension Programme for Years 1-6

Real Comprehension is a unique, whole-school reading comprehension programme designed to develop sophisticated skills of inference and retrieval; build rich vocabularies; and encourage the identification of themes and comparison between texts from years 1 to 6.

Real Comprehension - 54 original texts - 18 themes

Select a year group to view and download resources

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6

READ ME

Check out a progression map of themes from years 1 - 6

View progression map

READ ME

Explore thematic wider reading suggestions for the full programme

Download book lists

Why choose Real Comprehension?

Access 54 original fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts by published children's authors - all age appropriate, thematically linked, and fully annotated for ease of teaching.

Build deeper understanding for children of all abilities through a variety of close-reading and guided reading techniques, plus fully resourced teaching sequences for every text.

Improve pupils' ability to make high-level inferences and links between texts, and extend their vocabulary with focused lessons.

Access your year group as an individual subscriber - or unlock all 54 units of Real Comprehension with our best value school subscription offer.

How does Real Comprehension work?

1. Introduce the theme

Explore words related to the theme; discuss ideas pupils have about it

(see teacher notes for unit overview and guidance)

2. Explore the texts (fiction/non-fiction/poetry} by children's authors

Check prior knowledge

READ IN SECTIONS

Build familiarity with a layered read
Secure understanding with a close read
Deepen engagement with supplied activites (e.g. emotion graphing)
Tackle Big Questions as a class and independently

REVISIT THE WHOLE TEXT

Practise 'difficult easy' questions
Discuss pupils' personal responses
Develop vocabulary with focused lessons

3. Pull it all together

Explore the theme with the questions provided
Share whole books and extracts from the reading list
Relate the theme to wider reading, and children's own experiences
Have their ideas changed since the start of the unit?

Meet The Creators

Real Comprehension is the result of a powerful and creative collaboration between four outstanding literacy consultants: Christine Chen and Lindsay Pickton, Rachel Clarke, and Ruth Baker-Leask. Between them, they have over 45 years' experience of working with primary schools, and each of them is passionate about helping young people grow into confident, capable and, above all, enthusiastic readers and writers.

Amazing Authors

We are delighted to have worked with some of the UK's most talented children's authors in the development of Real Comprehension. Every text in the programme is a joy to read, and pitched perfectly for its intended age group - here are just a few of the writers whose work is included:

Joshua Seigal

An award-winning poet, Joshua visits schools, libraries and theatres around the country, and you may have spotted one of his critically-acclaimed poetry shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Sue Hardy-Dawson

Yorkshire born Sue is a poet, artist, and illustrator, whose work has been widely published. Before becoming a poet she worked with children for over twenty years. She is dyslexic and takes a special interest in encouraging reluctant readers and writers.

Dan Smith

Dan's first 18 years were spent following his parents across the world to Africa, Indonesia and Brazil. He has been writing short stories for as long as he can remember, and is now an award-winning author of adventure stories for younger readers, and thrillers for adults.

Subscribe as a school for
BEST VALUE access to:

Real Comprehension for ALL year groups
Real Writing - our model texts based writing programme for years 1 to 6
1,500+ high quality literacy resources across the curriculum
Exclusive video CPD content
And more...

Subscribe now