As children move from toddler to school age, they will learn about a variety of reading and writing skills, including print concepts, letter knowledge, phonics, and vocabulary. However, if we could tie all of these skills together, they're really designed to help children learn one thing: how to look at print and understand what it says.

Comprehension, or understanding what we read, involves a set of skills and strategies that begin early in life and that continue to become refined and deepen as the years go by. The earlier we can support children on the road to understanding, the better. With your help, children can begin to develop strategies early on that will help them use text as a bridge between themselves and the world.

To comprehend what they read, children must continually draw on their own experience. Having a solid information base is a vital part of becoming a skilled reader. Therefore, the best way to support children's comprehension skills is to provide varied and interesting experiences, while supporting their understanding of basic concepts and vocabulary.

Wordless books provide a wonderful opportunity for your child to practice the story language of books without being encumbered with print.  Here are a few tips on making the most of reading with your child.  Your child needs to look carefully at the illustrations to derive meaning.

·  Immerse your child in the reading of wordless books through questions, e.g. Why do you think… How do we know…  What do you think is going to happen next…  Can you explain…

· Take picture walks through wordless books, and demonstrate how you are able to read the story by looking at the illustrations.

· Model rich, descriptive story language, add your own details to story lines, but remain within the parameters of the story.

· Speak as the characters and create sound effects to read the text.

· Engage your child in the reading of the wordless texts with you.

· Later, allow your child to retell the story on their own.

Phonics is one method of teaching children how to read and write.  It's all about sounds. There are 44 sounds in the English language, which we put together to form words.  Some are represented by one letter, like 't', and some by two or more, like 'ck' in duck and 'air' in chair.  Children are taught the sounds first, then how to match them to letters, and finally how to use the letter sounds for reading and spelling.

Phonics is a branch of linguistics where the sounds and physical properties of human speech sounds are studied. Phonics reading is highly essential in every child’s education. The report of National Reading Panel indicates that teaching children phonics will help them in many ways in life. In the first instance, phonics reading is very important in helping children to learn how to spell words. It will be impossible for a person to spell any word correctly if the person is not able to recognize the sounds of the letters used in forming the words. When a child is taught phonics, the child will be able to recognize sounds in words and will be able to spell them correctly.