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Anatomy of a CommonLit 360 Unit: Everything Teachers Get for Free

A guided tour of what’s inside every free CommonLit 360 unit, from the Unit Guide to the Culminating Task, and where to start when you open one. Maybe you...

10 Free Short Stories for Middle School Students (and What to Teach With Each)

A roundup of 10 free CommonLit short stories for grades 6-8, with what each one is best for teaching. A good short story can get a room of 12-...

5 Free Texts that Get Middle Schoolers Excited About Reading

Getting middle schoolers excited about reading can be hard, but it doesn't take a magic trick, just a text that feels like one they'd pick themselves....

5 Free Texts that Get High Schoolers Excited About Reading

You know the look. Chin on fist, one eye on the clock, someone asking if this will be on the test. Getting high schoolers excited about reading doesn't...

5 Free Texts that Get Elementary Students Excited About Reading

Five free CommonLit texts for third through fifth grade, from dogs with opinions about their owners to a shark with a bad reputation, plus what to teach with each one....

What to Know Before Piloting an ELA Curriculum

A demo can tell you a lot. But it can't tell you whether your eighth graders are still engaged in week four, whether your newest teacher can plan...

8 New Texts About AI, Social Media, and Algorithms for Secondary Classrooms

Your students already have opinions about this stuff. They know which app is dying, which one their parents don't understand, and exactly how long they spent on their...

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....

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

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

5 Text Lessons to Pair With Ghost by Jason Reynolds

Castle "Ghost" Cranshaw has a temper, a talent for running, and a father he doesn't talk about. Jason Reynolds spends the whole novel showing how those...

5 Text Lessons to Pair With The Odyssey

Odysseus spends ten years getting home from a war that also lasted ten years, which means the trip home took exactly as long as the reason he left. Along the...

5 Text Lessons to Pair With The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Ponyboy Curtis narrates his own coming-of-age story in real time, which means your students get his hindsight built right in. Handy, since the book covers a house fire,...

Make Your Novels Come Alive for Middle Schoolers with Book Pairings

Every fall, you pick the novels, order the class sets, and map out the reading schedule. You're ready to go. But the novel is only half the work....

Make Your Novels Come Alive for High Schoolers with Book Pairings

Every fall, you pick the novels, order the copies, and block out weeks of your syllabus for The Crucible or The Odyssey. You feel ready. Prepared, even. Then week three...

What to Look for in ELA Lessons: A Back-to-School Checklist for Secondary Classrooms

It’s another new school year, and your students are just getting acclimated. Somewhere in the stack of binders, printed packets, and Google Drive folders is the plan for how...

10 Inspiring Texts to Start the New School Year

Start the new year with these inspiring texts about education. For students, coming back from summer vacation means getting back into the swing of things with school routines, teachers, and...

CommonLit 360 Foundations: The Magic of the Teacher x Curriculum Partnership

Creating high-quality ELA curriculum materials takes a lot of time. At CommonLit, we believe teachers deserve a partner in this work, not a script or a pile of disconnected resources....