I advocate years 1 and 3 to be “story input years” and years 2 and 4 to be “reading input years”. I find that the kids get kind of spoiled if given too many stories in level 2. In year 1 they get burned out on stories by spring anyway. When, in year 2, we hit them hard with more stories, they can turn on us.
So by not giving them a lot of stories in level 2 we make them want them more in level 3, where had we featured stories in level 2 they would not want to do them in level 3. Level 4, of course, is the big reading year. What to do in level 2, then? I guess we have to give them the novels, because reading is so critical, although CI students complaining about those novels seems like it is fast becoming a national sport.
If we have to use them, for lack of better things to read, I would always want my kids to read “down”, so that we only focus on readings based on stories and no – zero – novels in level 1. In that way, when the kids start reading really simple texts in level 2, when most of us present those in level 1, it is so easy for the kids that it seems like a movie in their minds, which is exactly the way Susan Gross describes reading should be.
Of course, in level 1 when they read stories they created, even if they are somewhat complex, it is effortless for them because of all the reps that went into the creation of the story. Reading stories created by the class is in my view the high road to building the reading skill in comprehension based classes.