Strategies for the development of comprehension during the beginning reading stages are discussed in this paper. Among the topics dealt with are relationships between developmental stages of speech production and reading comprehension; ways of creating a reading climate that promotes experiences with literature; specific techniques for using experiences with literature to develop skills in phonics, structural analysis, and vocabulary and to reinforce sight vocabulary; the interdependent roles of phonetic decoding and meaning; and the use of questioning strategies to assess different levels of comprehension. (GT)