It's a particular "method" developed by people like Marie Clay and Lucy Calkins.
Like many great lies, it has a kernel of truth. If you read the word "horse" and have the vocabulary, then related concepts like "saddle" or "pony" might be activated in your brain so you can "autocomplete" them if they come up later without sounding the word out.
Similarly, if you are reading a text about a horse called Bucephalus, then after decoding it the the first couple of times you will have it "cached" and can skim-read it the next few times it appears.
(If you didn't notice that the word "the" was repeated in the sentence above, then you're also not sounding out every word individually as you go along.)
The problem with the method is that it completely fails as a way for new readers to decode text their "autocomplete" is not already trained on. So you get students reading "horse" when the word is "pony" - and teachers arguing that it doesn't matter because they're getting the meaning out of the text which is what really matters, after all.
Like many great lies, it has a kernel of truth. If you read the word "horse" and have the vocabulary, then related concepts like "saddle" or "pony" might be activated in your brain so you can "autocomplete" them if they come up later without sounding the word out.
Similarly, if you are reading a text about a horse called Bucephalus, then after decoding it the the first couple of times you will have it "cached" and can skim-read it the next few times it appears.
(If you didn't notice that the word "the" was repeated in the sentence above, then you're also not sounding out every word individually as you go along.)
The problem with the method is that it completely fails as a way for new readers to decode text their "autocomplete" is not already trained on. So you get students reading "horse" when the word is "pony" - and teachers arguing that it doesn't matter because they're getting the meaning out of the text which is what really matters, after all.