A lot of SharpReading's initial study of the reading process relied heavily on the work of Michael Pressley, in particular his book 'Reading Instruction that Works: A Case Study for Balanced Teaching'.  This confirmed and guided a lot of the work we had been doing with beginning teachers. The challenge was to equip these trainees with simple and effective reading routines to maximise time spent with levelled reading groups.  Pressley proved to be the best source from which to base our approach.

“When a reader slowly analyses a word into component sounds and blends them, a great deal of capacity is consumed with little left over for comprehension of the word let alone understanding the overall meaning of the sentence.” (Pressley 2015)

Michael Pressley ”Reading Instruction that works: A case for balanced teaching” (2015 4th edition)

With this in mind, our initial guided reading routine (The 5 Bits) provides a structured routine that builds success and confidence for the beginning reader.  By front loading the message that is on the page through careful discussion, we free the learner up to experience success with deciphering the squiggles on the page. Each of the 5 Bits (practice actions) that occur on each page give the learner the opportunity for success. They are not overloaded with unrealistic expectations. 

"As students master the 'constrained' skills involved in decoding, their reading becomes more fluent, which frees them to use more of their cognitive resources for the complex 'unconstrained' task of working out text meaning." 

New Zealand Ministry of Education 2017

To help manage the cognitive load in reading, teachers are very aware of the need to level and group students and use levelled texts in order to manage the challenge and attain learner success. We take this one step further by presenting teachers with a developmental progression that is set in stages (1-6) and insist that they recognise the importance of the order of these stages. We start with the decoding stage.  

"Even if we keep in mind the caveat that reading is more than word recognition, ... the active processing of sentences and paragraphs cannot occur unless the reader can recognize individual words reliably and efficiently. That is why learning to decode is so important. " Pressley, 2006, page 52

At each stage we use reading routines that focus on different aspects of reading as students develop their reading ability.  We start with a routine for decoding (our Stages 1&2) and then move to one for constructing meaning (our Stage 3). From Stage 3 we scaffold more strategies to develop depth to thinking (our Stages 4-6) until we end up with readers who can independently operate high order critical thinking about text as they are reading. We focus on students gaining fluency with reading strategies in a staged, layered process and are very careful not to overload students by expecting too much too soon.

“The goal with comprehension strategy instruction ... is to teach students to take over their own reading and thinking….once the strategies have been introduced, the teacher’s role in the conversation is limited to prompting students to be active in deciding how they might process the text.”  Pressley 2015

Teaching a strategy and allowing students to practice until they are fluent with using that strategy is essentially how our reading progression moves from one stage to the next.  The Stage 3, '5 Steps Routine' that uses the retell strategy “I think that means…" is not changed until students show some mastery with their ability to unpack sentences. This takes time but gives students and teachers mental space to practice and make visible progress - they know where to focus their energy. For the teacher, they quickly realise this means they can not do the thinking for the students.  They have to allow students the opportunities to practise, to make errors and learn. They generate a new habit of teaching, to work hard at 'prompting' for better use of a strategy.

Michael Pressley - Short Biography
Michael Pressley (Mike) was awarded the title of University Distinguished Professor of Michigan State University, the highest academic honor within the university. Mike was a prolific author and his research led to balanced approaches to reading research instruction and assessment, to greater understanding of the cognitive processes underlying reading comprehension, and to policies and practices in education that have improved reading achievement of children in elementary schools in America and around the world.