Love the writing story.
Hmmm about the reading. If I were you this year I wouldn't worry too much about it. You could informally mention/see if he knows how to use the following things in nonfiction books...table of contents, glossary, index, bolded words or headings, maps/charts/tables, etc.I wouldn't go out of my way to teach it...just as it occurs.
In phonics you could play with compound words, prefixes, suffixes, root words, word families. Make it fun. Peggy Kaye has a reading games book. I tutor/mentor a little at risk girl at my son's elementary school and we worked on compound words (used a picture book from the non-fiction section that was really cute about compound words) and right after that were reading from her materials and her reading improved so much just from a few minutes of focused work in a problem area. So I guess my point is watch for errors and target those skills.
My children have always loved analogies as fun a way to work on vocabulary. They really didn't need much vocabulary work because they just absorb it.
In elementary school comprehension contains questions about details, sequence of events, settings, predicting, explaining motive of character's action, author's intent or purpose. You want to know if the kids can make connections to the text. Text to self, text to world, text to text are some of the connections you want to see. The other day my tutee was reading about the deep ocean and submersibles and she said "oh I know what those are! just like in the movie Titanic!!!" Yup just like that.
All of this stuff you can just do informally as the two of you read or as games with the word play.
