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 you’re going to teach this year. 

It’s no surprise that ELA teachers spend significant time each week tracking down or building the instructional materials they need. In fact, a 2020 RAND survey found that 43% of ELA teachers routinely combine multiple curricula themselves, and another 20% primarily teach from self-created materials. That’s the highest combined rate of any subject area. Before you commit another year to that patchwork, ask yourself: how well is this working?

Consider this an invitation to run a quick self-audit before the year gets moving, using four practical criteria we’ll walk through here: rigor, engagement, differentiation, and assessment support. 

1. Rigor: Are students reading grade-level texts?

Students learn best when they’re given access to complete, grade-level texts, with the right support to reach them. TNTP’s widely cited 2018 study, The Opportunity Myth, found that students who started the year behind but still worked on grade-level assignments roughly half the time closed the achievement gap with their peers by seven months within a single school year.

If your materials don’t fully check this box yet, you’re not alone: A 2022 EdReports survey found only about one in five high school teachers reported using a standards-aligned ELA curriculum weekly, and a 2021 RAND analysis found only about one in seven teachers worked in a coherent instructional system (one where curriculum, assessment, and professional learning were aligned).

As you look at your current materials, ask:

• Are the core texts leveled using complexity measures, not just gut instinct? 
• Do lessons build knowledge over time, or does each text stand alone?
• Is the text worthy of students’ time and attention (the same bar EdReports uses in its own independent reviews)?

2. Engagement: Will students actually want to read this?

Rigor and engagement aren’t in conflict with each other; the best lessons have both. Students lean into texts that feel relevant to their lives, spark genuine curiosity, or connect to something happening in the world around them.

When you’re vetting a lesson or unit, look for:

• Opportunities for lively discussion, not just individual worksheet time
• A mix of voices and perspectives that reflect your students back to them
• Topics and questions that would make you want to keep reading

3. Differentiation: Can every student access this text?

Good differentiation adds support around a grade-level text—chunking, vocabulary previews, guided questions—instead of replacing it with an easier one. The goal is always for students to reach the same rigorous grade-level text and task, just with different scaffolds along the way, removed gradually as students build independence. 

A few questions worth asking of your current materials:

• Do supports change the task, or do they lower the text itself?
• Is there a plan for removing scaffolds over time, or are they baked in permanently?
• Can you adjust pacing and support without rewriting the whole lesson?

4. Assessment support: Do you know if it’s working?

The best instructional materials should tell you, in real time, whether students are getting it. That means built-in checks for understanding, not just one culminating unit test. This way you can catch confusion while there’s still plenty of time to fix it.  

Look for:

• Frequent, low-stakes checks for comprehension throughout a lesson, not only at the end
• Data you can use to determine who needs more support
• A clear connection between what you’re assessing and what you actually taught

Running the check on your own materials

You might’ve gone through that list and found a few gaps, and that’s okay. The point of this checklist is to help you spot early where you might want to supplement or lean on outside support this year. 

It’s worth noting: the CommonLit 360 ELA curriculum was designed with these four criteria in mind from the start. A national study of 277,626 students in the 2024-2025 school year found that middle and high schoolers who worked through CommonLit 360 units in depth saw significantly higher reading growth than students with little or no usage. An earlier study of 531 schools found students in CommonLit classrooms gained two to six additional months of learning. Both studies met ESSA Level 3 (“Promising Evidence”) standards.

Next steps

If this checklist surfaced a gap or two, you don’t have to fill it from scratch. Sign up for free access to CommonLit and explore thousands of ELA lessons starting now—all leveled, engaging, and built with differentiation and assessment in place.