How to Teach The Great Gatsby: A Full 5- to 7-Week Unit, Plus 5 Book Pairing Lessons

Whether you're building a complete Great Gatsby unit from scratch or already teaching it and need support for specific chapters, here's what CommonLit offers for both.

Nobody in the novel actually knows how Gatsby made his fortune, and Fitzgerald never fully answers it either. That mystery hangs over every party in the book, and it's the kind of question that keeps high school readers actually turning pages instead of skimming for the plot.

CommonLit supports teaching The Great Gatsby in two different ways, and which one you need depends on where you are in your planning. CommonLit 360 is a full, ready-built curriculum: each unit comes with a multi-week sequence of reading, writing, vocabulary, and discussion lessons that walks a class through the entire novel from start to finish. Knowledge-building lessons guide students towards a Culminating Task worthy of students' time.

A Book Pairing is something smaller: a handful of standalone supplemental lessons, each matched to one specific chapter or scene, meant to support a novel you're already teaching on your own, whether that's inside or outside of CommonLit 360. Here's what each one actually includes.

New to CommonLit? These lessons are free with an educator account. Go to CommonLit.org, click "Sign Up," choose "I Am an Educator," and confirm your school email to unlock the full Book Pairing or CommonLit 360 unit.

Option 1: Teach the Full Unit With CommonLit 360

If you're staring at your planner, thinking to yourself: how am I going to teach this novel? Our 360 unit might be for you. CommonLit 360's 11th Grade, Unit 1 is a complete, ready-to-teach unit built around the novel, no lesson planning required.

The unit runs five to seven weeks and is built around two essential questions: how has the American Dream evolved over the last hundred years, and what makes a novel "great"? From there, it's fully mapped out for you:

• An introduction activity to launch the unit
• 12 reading lessons that move chapter by chapter through the novel, each one targeting a specific skill like setting, characterization, structure, or point of view
• Three companion texts built directly into the reading arc: an informational piece on 1920s immigration policy, Claude McKay's poem "America," and a satirical piece from The Onion
• An optional set of supplemental texts, offered in English and Spanish, for building reading volume and stamina, including works from Edgar Allan Poe, Carl Sandburg, and Langston Hughes
• 4 writing lessons that build toward a culminating book review essay, in which students argue whether the novel earns its reputation as "the great American novel"
• Vocabulary instruction, daily discussion including a jigsaw activity on symbolism, and a grammar lesson on syntax, all pulled directly from the text
• 2 Related Media Explorations and an optional on-demand essay on whether Fitzgerald's critique of American society still holds up today

In short: if you're planning to teach The Great Gatsby as a full unit, CommonLit 360 has already done the planning. You just need the novel itself, since it isn't included and has to be sourced separately.

Option 2: Already in the Middle of Teaching The Great Gatsby? Use Book Pairings for Specific Moments

If you're already teaching The Great Gatsby and have a plan, you need a handful of short lessons that support the moments in the novel that are hardest for students to sit with on their own.

That's what a Book Pairing is built for: a small set of short lessons, matched text by text to specific chapters in the novel, that build the background knowledge students need to see past the parties and into what Fitzgerald is actually arguing about wealth, love, and self-invention. Each one comes with its own summary and a "When and How to Pair" note telling you exactly where to use it and what to ask.

Here are five Book Pairing lessons that we chose for this post, but the full Book Pairing for The Great Gatsby has 10 in total, so there's plenty more if you want to build out the unit further. 

"The Roaring Twenties" by Mike Kubic 

Read this before students start the novel. It gives them the historical backdrop of the era Nick Carraway is narrating, so ask students to track how the decade's prosperity shapes every major character's attitude as they read.

"Keeping Up with the Joneses" by CommonLit Staff 

Pair this with Chapter II, right after the scene in the New York apartment. Ask students how that conversation, and the one in this text, both revolve around status, wealth, and possessions.

"At A Window" by Carl Sandburg 

Introduce this poem at the end of Chapter V, once Gatsby is caught staring at the green light across the water. Have students weigh Sandburg's speaker against Gatsby's longing, and what each one is actually asking for.

"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley 

After Chapter VI, pair this poem about self-determination. Ask students to compare Henley's speaker with Gatsby's own reinvention, from clam-digger to Dan Cody's steward to a man of substantial wealth, and whether Gatsby's version of self-made success holds up the same way.

"The Lost Generation" by Mike Kubic 

Save this for after students finish the novel. It gives them broader context on Fitzgerald and the era he was writing in, so use it to discuss how The Great Gatsby critiques the excesses of the very decade it's set in.

For teachers: If you're planning the full novel study from scratch, look into CommonLit 360's 11th Grade, Unit 1 before you start building your own lesson plan. If you're already underway, pull two or three Book Pairing lessons into whatever chapters are coming up next. And if The Great Gatsby isn't the only novel on your reading list this year, there's a good chance CommonLit already has a pairing built for that one too. Browse the full Book Pairings library and search your other titles.

For administrators: If your ELA team is deciding between building their own Great Gatsby unit or adopting one that's already built, connect with the CommonLit team to see how CommonLit 360 can work for your ELA department.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Book Pairing on CommonLit?

A Book Pairing is a set of supplemental lessons, each built around a short story, poem, or nonfiction text, that CommonLit's team has matched to a specific novel for the goal promoting knowledge-building, spark classroom discussion, and unearth deeper thematic understandings. Every entry includes a summary and a "When and How to Pair" note explaining when and how to introduce it during the unit.

What is CommonLit 360? 

CommonLit 360 is a comprehensive English Language Arts curriculum for grades 6-12 that is designed to drive student growth in reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. Each grade level has 6 units of instruction that are horizontally and vertically aligned.

Does CommonLit 360 include a unit for The Great Gatsby? 

Yes. CommonLit 360's 11th Grade, Unit 1 is a complete unit built around The Great Gatsby, including 12 chapter-by-chapter reading lessons, companion texts, writing instruction, and a culminating book review essay.

How long does the CommonLit 360 Great Gatsby unit take to teach? 

The unit is designed to run 5 to 7 weeks, assuming 90 minutes of daily instruction.

What's the difference between the CommonLit 360 unit and a Book Pairing for The Great Gatsby? 

The CommonLit 360 unit is a full instructional arc meant to replace lesson planning entirely. A Book Pairing is a smaller, standalone set of supplemental lessons meant to support specific moments in the novel for teachers who are already teaching it outside of CommonLit 360.

Does CommonLit have a Book Pairing for The Great Gatsby? 

Yes. CommonLit's Book Pairing for The Great Gatsby includes 10 lessons in total, spanning historical context, poetry, and informational texts matched to specific chapters.

Can I print the lessons paired with The Great Gatsby? 

Yes. Every lesson in a Book Pairing can be assigned digitally through CommonLit or printed for offline use.