What is CommonLit 360?
CommonLit 360 is a free, comprehensive ELA curriculum for grades 6 - 12, complete with everything students need to become expert readers, writers, and thinkers. Throughout the year, students engage with high quality texts that open the doors for meaningful class discussion and reflection. Each unit includes a variety of lesson types, such as reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, discussion, and media exploration lessons, that can be completed as a mix of digital and on-paper assignments.
CommonLit 360 was developed over the course of several years through pilots in 50 middle and high schools. Countless iterations of the materials were made based on extensive stakeholder feedback, including over 300 hours of classroom observations and data collected from over 5,000 teacher and student surveys. Teachers consistently speak about how CommonLit is easy-to-use and engaging for students.
The CommonLit 360 curriculum is both horizontally and vertically aligned. 360 units fully address the breadth and depth of the English Language Arts content standards for their respective grade levels, and each unit builds on learning from the units before. As students move through the year’s instruction, they will find that unit content, tasks, and skills increase in complexity. Standards are fully assessed through aligned formative assessments and end-of-unit culminating tasks.
Furthermore, the curriculum is designed to move students through increasingly rigorous texts and tasks as they progress to the next grade. The units for a grade level build on learning from the previous grade. For example, in 6th grade, students begin to learn the writing, speaking and listening skills needed for making an academic presentation. They further develop these skills with presentations in each of the following grades, as targeted lessons teach them more nuanced and persuasive approaches. Utilizing backwards design and meticulous vertical alignment, CommonLit 360 gives teachers the tools they need to ensure that students will be college and career ready at the end of 12th grade.
To learn more about the CommonLit 360 units for each grade, see the CommonLit Scope & Sequence.