Pathways

What does the Northern Ireland Curriculum say about comprehension?

The statutory requirements for reading in the Northern Ireland Curriculum include a number of expectations related to comprehension and responding to texts.

Pupils in key stage 1 should be enabled to:

• read, explore, understand and make use of a range of traditional and digital texts
• research and manage information relevant to specific purposes, using traditional and digital sources, and present their findings in a variety of ways
• use a range of comprehension skills, both oral and written, to interpret and discuss texts
• explore and begin to understand how texts are structured in a range of genres, for example, represent a sequence of events from a story
• explore and interpret a range of visual texts
• express opinions and give reasons based on what they have read
• begin to use evidence from text to support their views, for example, predicting, inferring and deducing.

Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (2007), Northern Ireland Curriculum Primary p54
https://ccea.org.uk/learning-resources/northern-ireland-curriculum-primary

Pupils in key stage 2 should be enabled to:

• use traditional and digital sources to locate, select, evaluate and communicate information relevant for a particular task
• represent their understanding of texts in a range of ways, including visual, oral, dramatic and digital
• consider, interpret and discuss texts, exploring the ways in which language can be manipulated in order to affect the reader or engage attention
• begin to be aware of how different media present information, ideas and events in different ways
• justify their responses logically, by inference, deduction and/or reference to evidence within the text
• reconsider their initial response to texts in the light of insight and information which emerge subsequently from their reading.

Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (2007), Northern Ireland Curriculum Primary p56
https://ccea.org.uk/learning-resources/northern-ireland-curriculum-primary

For more details and examples see the Northern Ireland Curriculum specifications.