How are CommonLit 360 texts selected?

Strong text selection is the linchpin to all CommonLit 360 units. The texts form the foundation of rich content and deep inquiry. CommonLit's selected texts are worthy of students’ time and attention, meet grade-level complexity requirements, and share valuable information and perspectives aligned to a unit’s essential questions, themes, and topics.

Through text selection, CommonLit seeks to ensure that students’ identities and life experiences are reflected in the works they read and that they have opportunities to explore content, identities, and perspectives beyond those already familiar to them. Across the curriculum, over 50% of the texts feature authors or protagonists of color. A text list for each unit is available in each Unit Guide.

CommonLit also carefully considers text complexity when selecting 360 texts. One of the central tenets behind the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is that texts should be appropriately complex and should become increasingly complex throughout a student’s academic experience. CommonLit’s curation specialists use both quantitative and qualitative measures of text complexity to determine whether a particular text is appropriately complex.

For quantitative measurement, our team uses the Lexile Text Measurement System as an initial metric to determine grade-level band, according to Common Core-aligned Lexile “stretch” ranges, defined by “the demand of text that students should be reading to be college and career ready by the end of Grade 12” (CCSO, 2012).

For qualitative measures of text complexity, the team refers to the complexity rubric for informational and literary texts from the State Collaboratives on Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS). This tool helps us analyze a text’s complexity based on text structure, language features, purpose/meaning, and background knowledge demands. Together, these data points allow us to make a determination about whether a particular text is appropriate to meet grade-level expectations.

For additional guidance and information about specific texts, please refer to the CommonLit 360: Text Complexity Guidance.

To learn more about the CommonLit 360 Curriculum, view the full Scope & Sequence here. Have more questions? Reach out to help@commonlit.org.