Introducing the Complete Comprehension: Fiction and Complete Comprehension: Nonfiction expansion packs!

For Complete Comprehension: Fiction and Complete Comprehension: Nonfiction users, Jennifer Serravallo has created an enhancement with response forms, rubrics, summaries, sticker templates, and planning forms for nine more titles to use alongside the 28 already in your kit! Best of all, this is Jen’s and Heinemann’s gift to you! Just log in to your online resources, and the materials will be there for you.

Each expansion pack gives your students more choice in what they read for assessment and you more options for matching students’ interest with their assessment book.

We asked Jen about the expansion packs and why she felt it was so important to share it with you now.

Q: Why did you create expansion packs?
A: At the time of the kit's release, I chose from a limited selection that had to be in paperback and officially leveled. Since then, more titles have become available, which means more choices for your readers and for you.

I have sought out books with racial, religious, cultural, geographic, and gender diversity. When we look at our classroom libraries, the texts we choose to use in our teaching, and the titles we offer children for assessment, it’s critical we broaden the range of authors, storylines, and protagonists so that they see themselves reflected in what they are reading and so they can have an empathic reading experience with authors and characters who may be outside their community. All of the titles in the original collection are great books! I just wanted to add more options so that the offerings are more intentionally diverse.

Q: What level(s) are the new titles?
A: Each expansion pack includes nine additional titles ranging from J–W. I recommend that whenever teachers offer students a book for assessment they give them a choice of six or more titles in the kit from a range of levels. With these new books, every reader in a classroom will now have more titles to choose from.

Q: And it’s free in a teacher’s online resources?
A: Yes, that was very important to me. All the materials a teacher needs to assess and evaluate student responses—response forms, planning forms, book summaries, rubrics, and printable stickers to place inside of books—are now available in the online resources for Complete Comprehension: Fiction and Complete Comprehension: Nonfiction. There’s no charge, they are simply there.

The only thing teachers or schools will need to get on their own are the printed trade books. They may have some already at school, or may need to order them. Either way, it's crucial that the book that gets stickered up has the same ISBN as the one that was used to create the assessment. The list of the new titles and their ISBNs is in the online resources too. For quick and easy ordering, go here.

Q: So how does a teacher use it?
A: They only need to go to their registered online resources page on Heinemann.com to view or print all the materials. If you have access to a color printer, I recommend you use that! If you'd like to print book labels, you'll need Avery© brand Easy Peel© Return Address Labels #8167 (1/2” x 1-3/4”), to feed into your printer. Otherwise, you use it exactly like you use the 28 books in the physical kit.

So go ahead and explore your Complete Comprehension: Fiction and Complete Comprehension: Nonfiction resources right now. We think you’ll find that each expansion pack will make an already flexible tool even more powerful.

Jennifer Serravallo is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Reading Strategies Book and The Writing Strategies Book, which have been translated into Spanish, French, and Chinese. These and her other popular books and resources help teachers make goal-directed responsive strategy instruction, conferring, and small group work doable in every classroom. Her newest titles are Teaching Writing in Small Groups, A Teacher’s Guide to Reading Conferences, Understanding Texts and Readers, and the assessment and teaching resource Complete Comprehension for Fiction and Nonfiction.

Jen is a frequently invited speaker at national and regional conferences and travels throughout the US and Canada to provide full-day workshops and to work with teachers and students in classrooms. She is also an experienced online educator who regularly offers live webinar series and full-day online workshops, and is the creator of two self-paced asynchronous online courses, most recently Strategies in Action: Reading and Writing Methods and Content.

Jen began her career in education as an NYC public school teacher. Now as a consultant, she has spent the last fifteen+ years helping teachers across the country create literacy classrooms where students are joyfully engaged, and the instruction is meaningfully individualized to students' goals. Jen is also a member of Parents Magazine Board of Advisors for education and literacy. 

Jen holds a BA from Vassar College and an MA from Teachers College, where she has also taught graduate and undergraduate classes.

Learn more about Jen and her work at Hein.pub/serravallo, on Twitter @jserravallo, on Instagram @jenniferserravallo, or by joining The Reading and Writing Strategies Facebook Community