Starting Early, Vol. 26, No. 2
“Reading and Language in the Early Grades”

What’s the focus of your research? 
Understanding why some students have so much more trouble learning to read than others, and then addressing those challenges. 

If readers take one big idea from your Future of Children article, what should it be?
In early childhood settings, we can prepare children to succeed as readers more effectively by focusing on language skills and world knowledge than by focusing on letters and sounds.

What did you learn from writing a Future of Children article?
I learned how little information about the language and knowledge affordances of early childhood settings is available from the widely used assessments of classroom quality.

Catherine Snow is the Patricia Albjerg Graham Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.