This Year 6 reading comprehension unit focuses on A New Beginning, an original fiction text by children’s author Dan Smith.
The story follows a nervous pupil navigating their first day at secondary school. It explores themes of transition, friendship and growing confidence. With informal, authentic language and a relatable setting, this engaging narrative provides a rich foundation for developing reading comprehension and writing skills.
Explicit vocabulary focus
The pack includes three fully resourced lessons that guide pupils through the complete story. Each lesson features an explicit vocabulary focus on informal language, helping pupils recognise the difference between formal and informal registers. PowerPoints explore word choices such as “tick!”, “kickabout”, “kids”, and “stuff”, supporting pupils to identify tone, register and style in context.
Teachers receive a fully annotated version of the text with notes to:
- support close reading
- highlight opportunities for drama, discussion and visualisation
- prompt meaningful questioning
Suggested activities include model reading, paired and choral reading, role play and writing in role. These are all aimed at encouraging deeper understanding and personal connections with the text.
In addition to building key reading skills like retrieval, inference, sequencing, prediction and empathy, this pack includes targeted reflection resources to help pupils track character development and their own emotional response to the story. Children will consider what the text teaches about change and confidence, and revisit their ideas as the narrative unfolds.
This resource pack includes:
- A New Beginning by Dan Smith (PDFs: plain, illustrated, and annotated)
- PowerPoint versions of the text (with and without highlights)
- Teaching sequences and PowerPoints for parts 1-3
- Big Questions PowerPoints and worksheets
- Explicit vocabulary focus slides for informal language
- Revisit-the-text resources
- Full teaching notes with reading strategy guidance and suggested discussion points
This unit can be taught as a standalone module or as part of a wider Year 6 Real Comprehension sequence exploring the theme of transition through fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Real Comprehension offers thematic units from Years 1 to 6 that develop reading fluency, confidence and understanding.