Michelle Brown

More Than a Platform: How CommonLit 360 Was Built for Real Classrooms

Real classrooms need flexible tools. Here’s how CommonLit 360 was built to meet students and teachers exactly where they are. Screen fatigue is a real and growing challenge in...

Michelle Brown

May 19, 2026 3 min read

A teacher helping her student with a CommonLit 360 lesson

CommonLit 360: An ELA Curriculum that Accelerates Learning for All Students

CommonLit’s comprehensive ELA curriculum for grades 6-12 comes with the professional learning, data tracking tools, and wraparound supports you need for seamless adoption. At CommonLit, we want every...

Michelle Brown

May 5, 2026 5 min read

Select novels included in CommonLit 360, including Animal Farm, The Giver, and Fahrenheit 451

Check out the novels in CommonLit 360

CommonLit’s ELA curriculum includes full-length texts in each grade and robust independent reading resources to spark a love of books Who is CommonLit? What is CommonLit 360? CommonLit...

Michelle Brown

January 7, 2026 7 min read

Student smiling and holding a thumbs up while completing CommonLit ELA curriculum lessons at a desk.

A Letter From Our Founder: Unveiling the CommonLit Rebrand

CommonLit has reached an exciting turning point. When you navigate to CommonLit, you’ll notice that things look a lot different – that’s on purpose, and we hope you like it....

Michelle Brown

March 7, 2025 2 min read

The Road Ahead: Important Changes to CommonLit's Spanish Language Resources

A short history of CommonLit Español… CommonLit’s mission is to help students thrive through high quality literacy instruction. Back in 2018, we received a generous grant to expand our...

Michelle Brown

December 4, 2024 2 min read

Students standing arm in arm and smiling.

CommonLit's Impact Over the Last 10 Years

This December, CommonLit will celebrate its 10th Anniversary since its founding in 2013 This journey has been so rewarding as teachers around the world have embraced CommonLit and brought it...

Michelle Brown

December 11, 2023 1 min read

Smiling teacher and student reviewing school work on a laptop computer

CommonLit Usage and Reading Growth in NYC Schools

Recent data from 26 NYC middle schools demonstrate a significant link between CommonLit 360 usage and students’ reading growth. A new study of CommonLit 360 in 26 middle schools in...

Michelle Brown

August 30, 2023 4 min read

Student and teacher work on CommonLit reading lesson.

Student Gains on Statewide English Language Arts Assessments Seen Year After Year for CommonLit 360 TN School District

Blount County, TN saw incredible gains in their state English Language Arts Assessment scores. CommonLit is proud to share the English Language Arts Assessment result in a district that began...

Michelle Brown

July 24, 2023 2 min read

A teacher works on a CommonLit lesson with a group of students.

CommonLit 360 Demonstrates Positive Gains on Student Reading Achievement and Teacher Practice

A study in collaboration with Mathematica shows impressive student and teacher growth with the use of CommonLit 360 CommonLit 360 is our comprehensive ELA curriculum for grades 6-12. Each...

Michelle Brown

February 9, 2023 5 min read

CommonLit and Quill.org Team Up to Launch AIWritingCheck.org Site to Help Teachers Identify AI-Generated Writing

Quill.org and CommonLit.org launched AIWritingCheck.org, a free tool that allows educators to determine whether a text passage was created by humans or AI. Education technology nonprofits Quill....

Michelle Brown

January 25, 2023 3 min read

Middle school students and teacher discuss lesson around table.

Research Shows Accelerated Reading Comprehension Gains with CommonLit

Learn all about the benefits of implementing CommonLit’s evidence-based digital literacy program and benchmark assessments. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that students with higher usage of CommonLit’...

Michelle Brown

August 16, 2022 3 min read

Announcing CommonLit 360 Edition 2.0

In the middle of 2021, CommonLit published six CommonLit 360 [https://www.commonlit.org/en/library/units?contentTypes=text&grade=6&initiatedFrom=library] (Edition 1.0 COVID-19...

Michelle Brown

July 28, 2022 2 min read

Lessons about Grief, Trauma, and Loss

Use these lessons to facilitate discussion and help students process complex emotions around tragic events. If you’ve dealt with grief in your own life, you know that it never...

Michelle Brown

May 31, 2022 4 min read

Introducing: The CLEAR Corpus, an open dataset to advance research

CommonLit collaborated with Georgia State University to create an dataset of almost 5,000 reading passages to support a wide range of research. About the CLEAR Corpus The CLEAR (CommonLit...

Michelle Brown

December 6, 2021 3 min read

CommonLit 360: A Free Curriculum with Affordable Wraparound Services

Wraparound services include professional development, school and districtwide data reports, and benchmark assessments I am so excited to share that after three years of work, CommonLit has published its brand...

Michelle Brown

September 21, 2021 3 min read

Students working on their assignments together on a desk.

CommonLit 360 is a Knowledge-Building Curriculum. Kids will Love these Unit Topics.

A run-down of the knowledge forward approach within the CommonLit 360 Curriculum for grades 6–10 I’ll never forget the moment in my teaching career when the lightbulb...

Michelle Brown

September 8, 2021 5 min read

Introducing the CommonLit 360 Curriculum

It’s free. It’s easy to use. It’s fully digital. CommonLit 360 (Edition 1.0 COVID-19 Emergency Release Version) is a one-of-a-kind comprehensive curriculum...

Michelle Brown

May 20, 2021 5 min read

A teacher and two students sitting at a table. The teacher is pointing at a computer and smiling.

How CommonLit 360 Can Help Address "Learning Loss"

CommonLit 360 is a comprehensive ELA curriculum for grades 6-12 that accelerates reading comprehension for struggling readers. Educators everywhere are thinking about how to maximize instructional time now that...

Michelle Brown

May 11, 2021 7 min read

A student sitting at a table and looking at a CommonLit lesson on her computer.

The CommonLit and Georgia State University Readability Prize Project

Our Commitment to Research At CommonLit, we believe that it is our responsibility to add to the learning and education research fields, and involve stakeholders like teachers and students directly...

Michelle Brown

April 14, 2021 3 min read

A table with a computer open to a CommonLit lesson, printed graphic organizers, a pencil cup, and colorful markers.

Putting Cognitive Science Research to Practice

Earlier this year, we were discussing ways that we might incorporate machine learning and AI into CommonLit’s digital features. During the discussion, one of our engineers said something that...

Michelle Brown

October 28, 2020 6 min read

Teachers: We Hope These Distance Learning Units Can Help

We are here for you — our team developed units with high-interest texts, vocabulary activities, and writing lessons for any virtual learning model CommonLit’s Distance Learning Units were specifically...

Michelle Brown

September 16, 2020 6 min read

A student sitting at a table, looking at a computer screen, and smiling.

Resources to Support Teleschool Plans: COVID-19

The CommonLit team is here to help schools that are coping with closures related to COVID-19. In this blog post, we highlight strategies for using CommonLit digitally with students....

Michelle Brown

March 9, 2020 3 min read

Students raise their hands during a CommonLit lesson

CommonLit's 360 Curriculum: Culturally-Responsive Materials

Our framework for creating culturally-responsive materials I. Our Mission CommonLit is a nonprofit organization. Our mission is to ensure that all students graduate high school with the reading, writing,...

Michelle Brown

March 3, 2020 4 min read

A Big Announcement: CommonLit is building a full-course curriculum. Here's why.

CommonLit is excited to announce that it is developing a full-year OER curriculum for ELA. In this blog post, CommonLit’s Founder & CEO explains why CommonLit has made...

Michelle Brown

March 3, 2020 4 min read

Students raise their hands as they answer questions during a CommonLit lesson.

Usage of CommonLit Linked to Greater Student Gains

We hired an external research team to measure CommonLit’s effectiveness. We are thrilled to share the story of our impact. CommonLit’s nonprofit mission is to build the best...

Michelle Brown

October 9, 2019 4 min read

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