The document outlines the six stages of reading development from emergent readers to advanced readers. It describes the progression from learning letter sounds to fluent decoding to reading for understanding and analysis. It also defines key concepts in teaching reading such as phonics, phonemes, graphemes, syllabic structures, sight words and methods for teaching phonics including synthetic, analytic and analogy approaches. Finally, it discusses three key strategies for teaching reading: modeled, guided and independent teaching.