CommonLit 360 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 child to graduate with the reading comprehension, writing, communication, and problem-solving skills they need to be successful. That’s why we created CommonLit 360, a comprehensive ELA curriculum for grades 6-12 with everything teachers need to ensure student success.
CommonLit 360 is research-backed and evidence-based in supporting reading growth across middle and high school students. Additionally, CommonLit 360 for middle school received all-green ratings from EdReports in 2024.
In this blog post, we’ll highlight the key benefits of the CommonLit 360 Curriculum and how we work with schools and districts to provide an affordable set of wraparound services to support your adoption of the program and reach your school’s ELA goals.
What Is CommonLit 360?
CommonLit 360 is a full-year English Language Arts curriculum for grades 6-12, rated all green by EdReports for middle school, designed to support rigorous reading, writing, discussion, and vocabulary development. The curriculum consists of six complete thematic units per grade built around an essential question. Each unit centers engaging texts and guiding questions, complete with structured lesson plans to help teachers facilitate close reading, collaborative discussion, and analytical writing.
Curious what a year of instruction looks like in a CommonLit 360 classroom? You can check out the full Scope and Sequence for CommonLit 360, or explore our grade level overviews: 6th Grade, 7th Grade, 8th Grade, 9th Grade, 10th Grade, 11th Grade, & 12th Grade.
The Principles Behind CommonLit 360
CommonLit 360 was carefully developed by our team of experienced educators to align with four guiding principles, ensuring that each unit and lesson is designed to support student growth and success.
All students can engage with and learn rigorous, grade-level content
All students are capable of achieving success with grade-level learning. CommonLit 360 units are designed around high-interest themes and rigorous grade-level content, providing access to high-quality texts and learning activities that empower students to challenge themselves. Over the course of the year, students explore multi-genre units, novel studies, research units, and evidence-based argument units anchored by compelling essential questions about adolescence, community, justice, and more. With high expectations and appropriate support, all students can develop their academic language and literacy to grade-level proficiency.
Teachers drive student outcomes
Teachers play a vital role in fueling their students' academic development. As needs vary from classroom to classroom and student to student, teachers are entrusted to make decisions about the content and instruction that is best suited for their own students. CommonLit 360 provides teachers with robust, grade-level instructional materials and resources to develop and enhance their own pedagogical practices, maximizing their ability to meet the diverse needs of the students in their classrooms.
Deep engagement fosters deep learning
Deep learning arises when students are genuinely engaged with content that matters to them. CommonLit 360 emphasizes depth over breadth of knowledge, helping students create a strong, conceptually rich foundation while encouraging critical thinking. A curriculum that resonates with students can ignite their curiosity and inspire them to delve deeper into the topics and themes they explore.
Learning is fundamentally social
Learning is an inherently social process where students acquire knowledge and skills through interaction, collaboration, and observation. CommonLit 360 incorporates cooperative and peer-assisted learning strategies into every unit, developing academic abilities and social skills in tandem. Discussion is woven throughout every unit so that students are consistently thinking, talking, and learning alongside their peers.
Research
CommonLit 360 is already accelerating learning in hundreds of schools and districts across the country. Partnering with CommonLit gives teachers and administrators the support they need to roll out the 360 curriculum effectively. The two studies below highlight the impact of CommonLit 360 on student learning.
CommonLit 360 Demonstrates Positive Gains on Student Reading Achievement and Teacher Practice
CommonLit worked with an external collaborator, Mathematica, on an ESSA Tier 3 study that found that students of teachers who use CommonLit 360 experienced 2.1 months of additional learning compared to other students. These students also reported higher levels of engagement in the classroom — feeling like class was interesting and enjoyable — and they reported higher levels of cultural awareness — feeling proud of their backgrounds and getting to learn about others’ backgrounds.
Case Study: Lakewood Middle School’s Success with CommonLit 360
CommonLit conducted an ESSA Tier 3 case study with Lakewood Middle School in New Jersey – a school that adopted CommonLit 360 as its core English Language Arts curriculum in school year 2022-2023. The percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations on the NJSLA was 10.5 percentage points higher in 2022-2023 than in 2021-2022. Lakewood Middle School more than doubled the number of students who scored proficient on the CommonLit Assessment Series from the beginning to the end of the school year.
Read more about our impact and efficacy research here.
How You Can Roll Out CommonLit 360
We recommend the CommonLit School Essentials PRO Plus package to schools and districts utilizing CommonLit 360 to ensure success in rolling out the curriculum.
School Essentials PRO Plus costs just $6,850 per school per year and includes access to:
Professional Development
Through curriculum-based learning experiences, CommonLit Professional Development enhances teachers’ skills, knowledge and confidence to meet their students’ needs. Including:
- Up to four 45-60 minute virtual professional development sessions for your team
- Unlimited access to CommonLit’s professional development webinars, exclusively for schools and districts with School Essentials PRO Plus
- Access to unit-specific internalization modules and planning resources for every unit in CommonLit 360
- Access to dozens of self-paced modules via CommonLit’s Professional Development Portal
- Option to purchase On-Site Professional Development
CommonLit 360 Curriculum Implementation Support
A CommonLit partnership includes a dedicated CommonLit account manager who provides:
- A kickoff meeting and mid-year curriculum implementation check-in with CommonLit experts
- Live facilitation of leader trainings (titled Building Your CommonLit 360 Leader Toolkit sessions)
- Ongoing support from CommonLit 360 experts to ensure your school’s implementation of CommonLit 360 is a success
Data & Assessments
This package includes Unit Skills Assessments for CommonLit 360, which provide teachers with additional insight into student learning throughout each unit. There are two assessments per unit, and they measure students’ comprehension of cold-read texts while helping teachers monitor progress toward grade-level skills.
Integrations
CommonLit 360 seamlessly fits into a school’s toolkit by integrating directly with Google Classroom, Clever, Canvas, and ClassLink.
Using CommonLit 360 as your shared curriculum
Our goal at CommonLit isn’t just to provide great unit materials. It’s to ensure schools have the structure, insight, and support needed to make those materials truly work for students.
That’s where School Essentials PRO Plus — and our team of CommonLit 360 experts — come in.
