A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

The Reading Summit keynote speaker was Catherine E. Snow, Chair of the Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, which produced the National Research Council (NRC) report. During her speech, Snow outlined exactly how children learn to read. She focused on what can be done to prevent reading difficulties, with special emphasis on stimulating environments in early childhood. She also addressed the special challenges of children with limited English proficiency and called for improvement in assessment and in teacher education.

• Outline of keynote address

Catherine E. Snow
Biographical Sketch from
"Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children"

Catherine Snow is the Henry Lee Shattuck professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research involves the areas of language and literacy acquisition, as we as second-language acquisition and bilingualism. She has held teaching or research positions at Erasmus University and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, at the University of Cambridge in England, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and at Universidad Autonoma in Madrid. She has M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in psychology from McGill University; her doctoral thesis focused on language acquisition and mothers' speech to children.

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