CommonLit

Best Practices Secondary Classrooms Elementary Classrooms CommonLit Provides Cross-Curricular Support

• 2 min read
Re Marzullo

Re Marzullo

Selections that can be used across content areas

When a student struggles to read grade-level texts, this challenge impacts performance in all academic classes, not just in English Language Arts courses. With recent reports showing declining reading scores nationwide, it’s clear that students need literacy scaffolding tools across other academic courses. To provide that scaffolding while still engaging in authentic content-area texts, science and social studies teachers across the country turn to CommonLit. 

Featuring a robust selection of non-fiction texts with hundreds of lessons on topics like the Civil War, Ancient Civilizations, and Science of the Body, CommonLit gives social studies and science teachers the opportunity to help students gain additional months of learning through using robust content-area selections from vetted sources. 

Timely Texts and Primary Sources Build Literacy Across Subjects

CommonLit’s Text Library includes a wide range of lessons—from primary source documents to modern articles—perfect for social studies and science classrooms. Students can analyze The Bill of Rights to better understand the foundations of American democracy, or read “Ecosystems Feel the Heat from Climate Change” to explore the impact of global warming on the natural world. These texts keep students engaged with authentic, real-world content while building reading proficiency, critical thinking, and evidence-based writing skills. 

Social Studies and Science Texts with Supportive Scaffolding 

The scaffolding tools available in each CommonLit text help students access important subject-specific knowledge. 

  • Lessons feature accessibility tools like Read Aloud and text translations that are available in over 40 languages. 
  • Annotation tools allow students to take notes while they read. 
  • You can chunk the text for students via Guided Reading mode, which requires students to answer in-text questions before they can move on in an article. 
  • Each CommonLit text features Related Media—carefully curated and timely videos providing background information, additional context, and exciting visuals to help build background knowledge. 
  • Paired Texts are aligned in topic to the original text but vary in difficulty and genre, allowing for greater flexibility and choice for teachers.

All of these tools offer students varying levels of support while providing the social studies and science content that teachers need to cover.

Discussion, Writing, and Assessment Tools Support Content-Area Teachers with Instruction

When teachers access and assign lessons on CommonLit, they also get insightful discussion questions that spark conversation, deepen content understanding, and hone speaking and listening skills. Additionally, the assessment questions provided with each lesson offer a quick way to track students’ reading comprehension. Instantly graded by the online system, the results provide easy-to-navigate data charts and information on student progress. Plus, each lesson in the CommonLit Text Library features a short answer question, giving students meaningful practice in writing, citing evidence, and reasoning—critical skills for all subject-area teachers. 

Reach More Students with CommonLit

As schools nationwide look to boost reading proficiency, CommonLit can help with ready-to-use texts that seamlessly connect to course content. Teachers across the country rely on these texts to support both their course material and their students. 

Ready to see the impact with your students? Get started now by assigning a social studies or science-focused text from the CommonLit Text Library.

Connect with our team to learn how you can bring CommonLit 360, rated all-green by EdReports, to your school or district today.

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