Reading and writing skills are important factors towards a child’s success in school and work. In addition, reading can be a fun and imaginative activity for children, which opens doors to all kinds of new worlds for them. 

Research has identified five essential early reading skills:

• Phonemic awareness — the ability to hear, identify, and play with individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words
• Phonics — the ability to connect the letters of written language with the sounds of spoken language
• Vocabulary — words kids need to know to communicate effectively
• Reading comprehension — the ability to understand and get meaning from what has been read
• Fluency (oral reading) — ability to read text accurately and quickly

Credit: Heather Burrows M.D.