This chapter highlights the component skills that each child needs in order to learn and develop as a reader. In researching reading skills and their development, this unpacking and differentiating allows one to isolate, manipulate, and measure specific variables. It explores how building a coherent, rich understanding of these dimensions of learning occurs at the intersection of social-affective neuroscience, human development psychology and education, among other disciplines and fields. The chapter focuses on the use of event-related potentials (ERPs), noninvasive recordings of real-time neural activity. The purpose and power of the field of Mind, Brain and Education (MBE) is to integrate diverse perspectives and methods to understand whole people in context and across development. Finally, the chapter addresses the critical roles that students have played in developing and designing MBE research in the author's lab, and how undergraduate students can contribute meaningfully to ongoing conversations in MBE.