This article reports on a study that investigated a professional development initiative in Australia to address a decline in reading comprehension scores in the middle and upper years of Primary school. It describes the professional learning journey of a middle primary teacher and his literacy coach over a period of 12 months as they worked to improve the teacher's knowledge and skills to explicitly teach reading comprehension. A series of classroom observations and interviews at the beginning, middle and end of the school year were analysed for the kinds of reading skills taught and the nature of the instruction. The data suggest that there were significant changes in the teacher's pedagogical repertoires and practices and an observed improvement in the student's understandings of different comprehension knowledge, skills and strategies.