CommonLit in the News

Library Announces Winners of 2017 Literacy Awards

Library of Congress

September 1, 2017

The Literacy Awards honor organizations working to promote literacy and reading in the United States and worldwide. The awards recognize groups doing exemplary, innovative and replicable work, and they spotlight the need for the global community to unite in striving for universal literacy. “Literacy is the first line of defense against so many problems—unemployment, hunger, poor health—and gives people a foundation for a brighter future,” Hayden said.

Educators are always looking for ways to bring a lesson to life. Before re-writing your next lesson plan, check out these six, user-friendly digital resources that could appropriately challenge student mindset and inspire growth in your learners.

A Tech Startup by Teachers, for Teachers (and their students)

Free Enterprise Presented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

August 21, 2017

She thought to herself, “How do I share this? How do I make these resources available for all schools and teachers?” And the answer soon became clear: put it online. CommonLit has since connected with schools across the country, allowing teachers to have more, do more, and learn more.

Tool of the Month for Language Learners: CommonLit

American TESOL Institute

August 7, 2017

Welcome to a new series where we feature our favorite free web tools and apps for language learners and teachers. This month we are highlighting CommonLit, a website with free reading passages and progress tracking tools for grades 5-12.

How Tech Can Maximize Social Impact

Stanford Social Innovation Review

July 6, 2017

Have you heard about the tech entrepreneur who is signing up 50,000 users a week and is on track to reach 1 million faster than Facebook did? Learn from CommonLit's experience of hiring strong technical talent to launch a suite of new features that would better meet the needs of struggling readers.

AASL announces 2017 Best Websites for Teaching & Learning

Knowledge Quest: Journal of the American Association of School Librarians

June 27, 2017

[CommonLit] is considered the “best of the best” by AASL. Sites named as Best Websites for Teaching & Learning foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation and collaboration.

Many smart people discouraged me from starting a nonprofit. The established tech startup community seemed to view nonprofit corporations as outmoded and foolish. In retrospect, I'm glad I ignored these people and trusted my gut. In the end, my goal wasn’t to make money; it was to do good in the world.

Edtech nonprofit CommonLit announced recently the launch of a new free feature which allows teachers to browse its entire digital library by 50 commonly-taught book titles. The new “Browse by Book” tool helps teachers find reading passages to supplement book units.

CommonLit Introduces a New Book Pairing Feature

Free Technology for Teachers

May 4, 2017

This week CommonLit introduced a new feature that they call Book Pairings. Book Pairings provides teachers with a collection of short articles to supplement the books that their students are reading.

Up Your Reading Game with @commonlit

The Paperless Trail

March 27, 2017

Reading is fundamental. We know this, the challenge is finding resources to use to help teach fundamental skills to our students. We like a variety of resources/tools to use to help engage students. Some of them hit the mark, some of them miss, and some you wonder if they are worth the effort. Commonlit.org is one that certainly hits the mark.

The Classy Awards Finalists 2017

Classy.org

March 13, 2017

The Classy Awards exist to put a spotlight on the most remarkable changemakers of our generation. The Winners & Finalists recognized are addressing the incredibly complex and equally severe problems we face today. Their efforts span global poverty and hunger, disease, education, climate change, disaster response and preparedness, and health care accessibility.

CommonLit, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit founded by Michelle Brown and Sarah Mielbye, was one of the companies accepted into the 2016 class of AT&T's Aspire Accelerator..."I hope we can get to the point where it's no longer remarkable for a young woman to be in charge of a fast-growing tech company," says Brown.