Great texts are central to teaching reading comprehension skills. We source high-quality texts and we explore them for their audience, their purpose, their structure, their vocabulary and the imagination that they inspire. Together we discuss the impact of the text, make links between our own experiences and what we have read, how the text makes us feel, discuss questions and thoughts it provokes and we 'magpie' phrases or words we wish to apply in our own writing. 

We use the VIPERS acronym, developed by the Reading Shed, to identify and develop specific skills that make an effective reader:

Vocabulary         Inference        Prediction        Explanation         Retrieval        Sequence or Summarise

These six skills focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and allow us to ensure that teachers ask, and pupils are familiar with, a range of questions.  They allow the teacher and child to immerse themselves in the text in a range of lenses.