Data-Driven Instruction with CommonLit

“Year-end tests are autopsies, not assessments: they explain what went wrong after it is too late to change course.” — Paul Bambrick-Santoyo in Leveraging Leadership At CommonLit, we believe...

A Peek Inside CommonLit's Plan to Raise Student Achievement

At CommonLit, our dedicated team of educators is committed to raising student achievement and ensuring that all students are on a path to college and career readiness. In fewer than...

How to Set Up Your Students on CommonLit

Looking to set up your classes and students on CommonLit but aren’t sure how? Fortunately, we’ve made it easy and straightforward to do so. If you haven’t...

Students Will Love These 10 Funny Reading Lessons

Spark joy with these great picks from the CommonLit library It is easy to forget with the rigorous demands of testing that reading also needs to be fun for students....

Multiple Choice Relay Races for Test Prep

Students use text evidence to quickly support their choices This is our second post in the test prep series. At CommonLit, we’re all about getting students prepared, while still...

This Jigsaw Game Will Make Test Prep Fun and Productive

Students dive deep and discuss a universal theme It’s finally spring! For most, this means a welcome break from the cold, dark days of winter. But for teachers, spring...

Use Clever with CommonLit Today

Simplify student login and manage class rosters through secure Clever integration CommonLit has partnered with Clever [https://clever.com/] to simplify online learning for students using CommonLit. Through this partnership,...

CommonLit and Clever Announce Partnership

Clever to simplify student logins and provide secure data integration for CommonLit users Washington, DC —CommonLit [https://www.commonlit.org/], a free edtech literacy tool for readers in grades 3–...

Celebrate Women with These 10 Reading Passages

Women trailblazers, authors, poets, and characters that will inspire your classroom In fifth grade, I dressed up as Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean,...

Using CommonLit's Benchmark Assessments to Ensure Student Growth

A Q&A with a District Curriculum Supervisor Jayne VanNosdall is the Curriculum Supervisor of English (6–12) for Brick Township Public Schools in New Jersey. For this Q&...

Six Simple Ways to Get Your Students Talking

In this post, history teacher Lucas Richardson shares strategies to increase student talk time. Does anyone remember Ben Stein’s part as the boring economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s...

10 Reading Passages Celebrating African Americans

Diverse poetry, short stories and informational texts African Americans are an integral part of our nation’s history and literary traditions. It always surprised me when high school students in...

How One School Invigorated Their Reading Program with CommonLit

A Q&A with a Reading Coach/English Teacher Update January 19, 2019: In this Q&A from January 2018, “CommonLit for Leaders” is referenced several times. That...

An Administrator's Advice for Rolling Out CommonLit in your District

A Q&A with a District English Curriculum Specialist Roxanne Friday is the English Curriculum Specialist for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Roxanne has worked closely with the CommonLit team to...

5 Reasons Teachers Love CommonLit

Why teachers everywhere are using the edtech literacy tool With tears in her eyes, a teacher I had just met hugged me after I introduced her to CommonLit at a...

Everything You Need to Present CommonLit

Impress everyone with this Ready-to-go Presentation on CommonLit Do you love CommonLit and have plans to share it with fellow educators? If so, you’re in luck! We’...

CommonLit's Reports Turn Data into Action

Dive deeper with student performance data Looking to more closely analyze students’ strengths and weaknesses? We’ve added new features to the Student Performance page to help you improve instruction....

Teach Young Readers Metacognition Skills

In this guest teacher post, Debra Rook describes how to help students chunk complex texts as they read. No More One and Done On our first official day of class,...

Help Your Students ACE Reading Assessments

In this guest teacher post, Tammy Anfang describes a writing framework to improve student learning. Making the Invisible Process of Reading and Responding Visible About ten years ago when I...

10 Texts to Integrate STEM and Literacy

Encouraging science literacy in all classes I’ll admit that while I was a strong student in most areas, I had a very uneven interest in my subjects; I was...

4 Creative Ways to Use Nonfiction Text Sets

Learn how to engage your students with nonfiction Text sets are groups of reading passages that share a common topic. Currently, we have over 60 of these sets of texts...

Unit Plans for Targeted Literacy Instruction

Everything you need to get started with CommonLit’s Units When I taught 7th Grade English, I spent hours looking for the perfect texts to weave into my units. I...

Meaningful Discussions with Nonfiction Texts

In this guest teacher post, Sarah Cooper describes how to motivate students to take ownership of their learning. Participation has always been one of the most difficult things to assess...

Action! 5 Ways Videos Can Energize Your Lessons

How to use videos before, during, and after readings When I first started teaching, I worked really hard to create lessons that taught students a clear skill. However, I quickly...

16 Lesson Ideas for CommonLit Texts

In this post, teacher Leah Dekle shares ideas for using CommonLit texts. When I started teaching, I felt pretty isolated because I was the only 9th grade social studies teacher...