The weekly Lunch & Lit aims to bridge the research to practice divide by bringing scientists and practitioners. To view recordings and resources from previous seasons, visit the Lunch & Lit 2023-24 and 2024-25 archives. Past presenters include:
Lunch & Lit sessions are on Fridays, beginning at 1:00 pm ET/ 12:00 CT/ 10:00 PT. They run for 60 minutes, including a presentation (recorded and posted to this page) and discussion (for Lunch & Lit participants only). If you are interested in participating in the Lunch & Lit, send us an email (see the About Us page).
May 15, 2026
John Strong, Laura Tortorelli & Blythe Anderson
Read STOP Write: Adolescent Literacy Intervention in Grades 4-9
Session Recording
Recommended Resources:
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy Article
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy Podcast
Read STOP Write Website
May 8, 2026
Ryan Lee-James
Evidence-Based Practice: Applying a Seminal Framework for Radical Change
Session Recording
Recommended Resources:
Evidence-Based Practice: https://www.asha.org/research/ebp/?srsltid=AfmBOorBiS7yPZXxUJ89UpxnM55p1cmo-u7vOmkOv5SxsisTjJ6VUqDu
The EBP Process: https://www.asha.org/research/ebp/evidence-based-practice-process/
May 1, 2026
Joan Schumann
MTSS as the Operating System for Educational Equity in America (& Beyond)
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Read: MTSS: Keeping the Promise of America’s Education System
Skim the sections on:
- “Our Great Equalizer Needs an Operating System”
- “Why Using Data Is Superior to Status-Quo Student Sorting”
- “Implementation Science: Ensuring Every Class is a ‘Good Class’”
Reflection Questions:
- Where is MTSS functioning as a coherent system vs. a set of tiers in your school/district?
- How is screening data currently being used (not just collected)?
- What percentage of your students are meeting benchmarks—and what does that suggest about Tier 1? How might you consider focusing on all tiers at once?
- Where might students be labeled instead of flexibly supported?
April 24, 2026
Susanne Nobles & Manjula Raman
Exploring AI-Generated Texts
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Shen, L., Kane-Cabello, J., Candelaria, P. Y., Stratford, D., & Clemens, N. H. (2025). Can artificial intelligence tools generate text that is useful for reading practice?. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 09388982251352564.
Ilyas, C. M. A., Noor, S. E., Tashk, A., Cooreman, B., Beier, S., & Bækgaard, P. (2025, May). Reading the readers’ mind through eye tracking: Can AI generated texts match human authors?. In Proceedings of the 2025 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (pp. 1-7).
Kurokawa, S., & Salingre, M. (2025). Syntactic and lexical comparison between AI-generated reading passages and Japanese universities’ national test. Journal of Studies in Language, Culture and Society (JSLCS), 8(1), 295-309.
April 17, 2026
Julie Van Dyke
You, too, can teach Syntax like an expert… and why it’s important to do it!
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
April 3, 2026
Dave Stevenson & Liz Kline
Reading Futures
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Browse: Reading Futures Curriculum
Watch: Muncie Community Schools (Case Study)
March 27, 2026
Erin Fitzpatrick & Debra McKeown
“Nothing Continued to Happen”: Addressing Attrition, Lack of Fidelity, and Other Barriers to Implementation in High-poverty, High-mobility, Urban Settings
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Erin Fitzpatrick, Debra McKeown, Megan C. Brown, and Nicole Patton-Terry. “Nothing Continued to Happen”: Addressing Attrition, Lack of Fidelity, and Other Barriers to Implementation in High-Poverty, High-Mobility Urban Settings.
March 20, 2026
Kristen McMaster
Supporting Early Writing Instruction Using Data-Based Instruction
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Reading: Poch, A. L., Allen, A. A., Jung, P. G., Lembke, E. S., & McMaster, K. L. (2021). Using Data-Based Instruction to Support Struggling Elementary Writers. Intervention in School and Clinic, https://doi.org/10.1177/10534512211014835.
Website: http://earlywritingproject.org/
March 6, 2026
Shawn Datchuk
Is Simple Sentence Writing Really All That Simple?
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Datchuk, S., Zimmerman, L., Wagner, K., & Poch, A. L. (2022). Five steps to teach simple sentence writing to students with learning disabilities. Teaching Exceptional Children. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/00400599221120063
Free sentence-writing curriculum materials
Free handwriting curriculum materials
February 27, 2026
Ola Ozernov-Palchik
Not So Universal Literacy Screening: The Leaky Pipeline from Identification to Instruction and the Role of AI
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11881-025-00342-1
EVAL: https://www.bu.edu/hic/centers-initiatives-labs/eval/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrUsx8i-AxU
February 20, 2026
Tricia Zucker
How Educators Use Strive-for-Five Conversations to Build Vocabulary
Session Recording
Recommended Resources:
Cabell, S.Q. and Zucker, T.A. (2024), Using Strive-for-Five Conversations to Strengthen Language Comprehension in Preschool through Grade One. Reading Teacher, 77: 522-532. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2266. e
CIRCLE Vocabulary Collection (hundreds of freely available K–8 vocabulary cards)
February 6, 2026
Amanda VanDerHeyden
The Science of Learning with Amanda VanDerHeyden
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
VanDerHeyden, A. & Burns, M. (2023). The Instructional Hierarchy: Connecting Student Learning and Instruction. Perspectives on Language Volume 49, Issue 1 Perspectives on Language Vol 49, Issue 1.
VanDerHeyden, A. Fluency before function: a case against early calculator use. SpringMath.
January 30, 2026
Courtenay Barrett
From Evidence to Everyday Practice: Leveraging Implementation Science to Improve Literacy
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Barrett, C.A., Sleesman, D.J. & Amin, T. A Mixed Methods Examination of Decision-Making During Program Exploration and Implementation in Schools. Prev Sci 25, 459–469 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-024-01655-0.
January 23, 2026
Rebecca Silverman
From Language to Literacy: The Critical Role of Language Comprehension in Reading Comprehension
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Silverman, R.D. & Keane, K. From Language to Literacy: The Critical Role of Language Comprehension in Reading Comprehension (2026). This is a chapter excerpt from Guilford Publications. Language and Literacy Beyond Decoding: Evidence-Based Instruction in Grades PreK-6. Edited by Rebecca D. Silverman and Kristin Keane.
To reorient yourself to ROAR, consider checking out last year’s session with Dr. Silverman’s colleague, Dr. Jason Yeatman: Rapid Online Assessment of Reading (ROAR): A bridge between the lab, community, and classroom, Part 2.
January 16, 2026
Margaret Quinn
A Multidimensional View of Early Writing: Process, Product, and Transformation
Session Recording
Recommended Resources:
Quinn, M. F., & Rohloff, R. (2023). Not Just Handwriting and Spelling: Assessing Early Composing Skills. YC Young Children, 78(1), 24–32. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27251095
January 9, 2026
Courtney Hattan
Integrating content area and literacy instruction in contextually relevant ways: Lessons from a research practice partnership
Session Recording
Recommended Resources:
Hattan, C., Baumann, J., Parkinson, M. M., & MacPhee, D. (2025). Exploring the Power and Possibility of Contextually Relevant Social Studies–Literacy Integration. Education Sciences, 15(10), 1401. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15101401
Hattan, C., MacPhee, D., & Zuiderveen, C. (2026). Vocabulary Instruction During Elementary Classroom Discourse: Observing 1st Through 3rd Grade Teachers’ Instructional Practices. Literacy Research and Instruction, 65(1), 89–115. https://doi.org/10.1080/19388071.2025.2457679
December 19, 2025
Phil Capin
What We See and What Students Need: Insights from Observation Studies of Reading Comprehension Instruction
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Philip Capin, Katlynn Dahl-Leonard, Colby Hall, Na Young Yoon, Eunsoo Cho, Eleni Chatzoglou, Sarah Reiley, Melodee Walker, Emma Shanahan, Tim Andress & Sharon Vaughn (2025) Reading Comprehension Instruction: Evaluating Our Progress Since Durkin’s Seminal Study, Scientific Studies of Reading, 29:1, 85-114, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2024.2418582.
December 12, 2025
Dan Reynolds, Sara Rutherford-Quach & Anna Jennerjohn
Beyond the Surface: Leveraging HQIM for Robust Reading Comprehension
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
December 5, 2025
Mindy Bridges
Using Think-Alouds to Observe Adolescent Reading Strategy Use and Its Relationship to Reading Comprehension
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Carolyn A. Denton, Christopher A. Wolters, Mary J. York, Elizabeth Swanson, Paulina A. Kulesz, David J. Francis, Adolescents’ use of reading comprehension strategies: Differences related to reading proficiency, grade level, and gender, Learning and Individual Differences, Volume 37, 2015, Pages 81-95, ISSN 1041-6080, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2014.11.016.
November 21, 2025
Andrea Setmeyer, Jill Pentimonti, Vivek Ramakrishnan & David Chalk
Developers Discuss Literacy-Focused AI Products and Their Potential Applications
Session Recording
Recommended Resources:
The Algorithmic Turn: The Emerging Evidence on AI Tutoring That’s Hard to Ignore by Carl Hendrick (The Learning Dispatch Substack Entry dated 11.8.25)
Guidance for Generative AI in Education and Research from UNESCO (2023). [As a reference only. Please note the rubrics to assist in co-designing uses of Generative AI to support teaching and learning beginning on page 31].
November 14, 2025
Andrea Setmeyer, Jill Fain Lehman & Adam Kronk
Generative AI: What it is, what it’s not, and what it means for K-12 education
Session Recording
Recommended Resources:
Watch: Generative AI: A recorded presentation by Jill Fain Lehman on language, meaning, and the human experience as it relates to interacting with AI. [The entire presentation is great, but I’d suggest watching at least the 25 minute section from 8:47 – 33:33.]
Read: Are We Living in a Golden Age of Stupidity: An article by Sophie McBain published on October 18, 2025 in The Guardian. [Pre-print research article: Kosmyna et al., 2025]
October 24, 2025
Barbara Hammond, Liz Woody-Remington, Kim Garcia & Leslie Connelly
Indian River County’s “Moonshot Moment”
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Children’s Literacy Project recently produced a series of videos to share the work and the learning. Link to the Moonshot Series
October 17, 2025
Stephanie Stollar
MTSS for Reading Improvement
Session Recording
Recommended Resources:
Sarah Brown and Stephanie Stollar on Anna’ Geiger’s Triple R Teaching podcast.
MTSS Playlist on the Reading Science Academy YouTube channel.
October 3, 2025
Noel Gunther, Tami Mount & Carla Sanford
An Introduction to Reading Universe
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Short videos: Teaching the Digraph ’th’ – Introductory lesson with third-graders
Writing stronger sentences: Which conjunction works best? – Lesson on conjunctions
Reading: Two-page introduction to Reading Universe
Website: Reading Universe
September 19, 2025
Elfrieda (Freddy) Hiebert
When Students Don’t Read Enough: Examining Scientific Evidence on Text and Volume
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Article: Hiebert, E. H. (2025). Unpacking automaticity: Scaffolded texts and comprehension. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 68(4), 369-379.
Blog: Why Every Minute of Reading Matters:
Website: www.textproject.org (specifically free texts and/or: Teaching Toolkit on reading stamina in silent reading)
Short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEaBksn_7JY&list=PLwIychIT3IChz_e0oM8LYzucp9yJFvAbg (Take the Seven Minute Challenge)
September 12, 2025
Cherish Sarmiento & Adrea Truckenmiller
Using long words as a metric for vocabulary knowledge
Session Recording
Presentation:
Recommended Resources:
Sarmiento, C. M., Truckenmiller, A. J., Cho, E., & Wang, H. (2025). Academic language use in middle school informational writing. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(2), 384-404. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12724 .
