Drawing from research on reading, this paper suggests various methods of stimulating cognition in beginning readers. Defining cognition as the process by which a person gains knowledge, or understands or comprehends, discussion in the paper centers on the following topics: (1) perceptive and cognitive skills; (2) prior experience; (3) knowledge of the code of writing; (4) motivation, purpose, and interest; (5) perceptibility; (6) adequacy and completeness of coding system; (7) time spent on comprehension instruction; (8) holistic and subskill instructional approaches; (9) questions to guide comprehension; (10) think-time; (11) subskill instruction; and (12) semantic webbing. (HOD)