tigger,
reading is more than phonics. Actually I feel phonics is helpful to a certain extent. But imagine reading a book as a beginner and more than half of the book is full of words you do not know. If you are diligent and patient and really determined to read that book, you will use phonics to slowly decode the word and read them... that is assuming you know all your phonics rule very well, noting that many of English words are either sight words or need a specific phonic rule to read properly.
In so doing, by the time you finished decoding, you may not truly be reading anymore ie. with understanding. The experience may not be that enjoyable to a beginner (or anyone).
A slowly graded reader introducing new words slowly, repetitively using those words and practising them seemed more attractive to me. That's the reason why I still put my two children on Peter & Jane series.... as I read with them daily, I realised how well they had introduced new words and use it repeatedly to reinforce. I just tell S the new word once or twice and he will remember it. And for those high frequency words like "the", "there", "should" etc, by the time he read a few books, he know them very well. Sometimes, when we encounter new words, I may or may not ask him to use phonics to decode it...
So reading with them is still a key to aiding their improvement I think, at least for beginners.
In reading 1 page a day, it reduces the time spent (as time is really limited) and I also asked them a few questions out of the passage we read, encouraging them to answer me in full sentences. Hopefully this prepares them for comprehension in future.
Because P&J can be quite dry... I do read other stories for them or we will take turn to read a page each out of a book... like recently we took turn to read a page each from The Elves and the Shoemaker.
