ABSTRACT
To effectively teach guided reading, it helps to understand the reading process as it represents the ways a reader accesses and integrates information from multiple cues for the purpose of gaining understanding. The term balance in the field of literacy has come under scrutiny and scholars have, with good reason, criticized it. It can represent an oversimplification of the reading process and implies that there is some moment of stasis in the act of reading. Actually, the process of reading involves constant activity and mental motion. One more model of reading is that of students who have skill in maximizing both print and meaning in isolation, but are not proficient at integrating the two sources of information. These students may access one source without checking it against the other. In terms of meaning, they may listen to books read aloud and answer questions well, and they may have extensive vocabularies.
