For a student to give their full attention to comprehending the text, decoding the words should be easy, automatic and unconscious. As a general principle, the less a student needs to focus on decoding, the more they can focus on comprehension. Choose levels a student can decode effortlessly.

The decoding test will quickly tell you which levels are suitable for a student. As soon as a student begins to slow down, starts to make errors, or is obviously concentrating to decode the words, stop. That level is not appropriate for your student, but all levels below that point will be just fine.

You may have some students who decode well but who have little or no idea how to structure writing; students whose understanding of sentence structure is very weak, or students who have little or no sense of paragraphing. These students will also benefit from beginning at the lower levels to develop these skills. It does not matter if a student is reading well below the level of their decoding skill. These books are not about decoding practice; they are about comprehension, and the follow-on writing assignments are about organising thoughts and ideas into a coherent framework.