This Year 2 reading comprehension unit is built around Corine’s First Day. It's a warm and humorous original fiction text by children’s author Jo Franklin.
The story follows Corine as she tackles first-day nerves at a new school – an experience many pupils will relate to. It’s ideal for developing comprehension skills while also supporting pupils’ empathy and personal reflection.
The unit includes both illustrated and plain versions of the text in PDF format, making it suitable for print or display. PowerPoint versions – available with and without highlights – support whole-class teaching.
A fully annotated version of the text offers clear prompts for close reading. It also identifies opportunities for clarification, drama, visualisation and discussion.
Strong vocabulary focus
The pack is structured around three resourced teaching sessions, each with a strong vocabulary focus. Key words explored include tame, burst and beautiful.
Vocabulary PowerPoints help children understand word meanings in context, consider synonyms and antonyms, and apply the words in varied spoken and written tasks.
Additional worksheets provide opportunities to develop understanding through activities such as sentence construction, zones of relevance and visual labelling.
The unit also supports wider comprehension development through Big Questions for discussion, inference and prediction tasks, personal response prompts, role on the wall activities, and a chance to explore story structure and character development.
The final session includes an engaging twist ending that encourages reflection on story expectations and surprise.
Included in this Year 2 comprehension pack:
- Original text PDFs (plain and illustrated)
- Annotated teacher version of the text
- Text PowerPoints (with and without highlights)
- Three-part teaching sequence with vocabulary PowerPoints
- Worksheets for each session (vocabulary cards, zone of relevance, role on the wall, sketching, question stems, synonym sort, sentence building)
- Whole-text revision activities
- Full teacher notes with suggested reading strategies, discussion points and prompts
This resource is part of the Real Comprehension series, designed to develop deep reading skills through thematic fiction, poetry and non-fiction units for Years 1–6.