How do I find texts?

The CommonLit Library is a great asset with thousands of short stories, news articles, poems, primary source documents, short plays, fiction excerpts, and nonfiction pieces for grades 3-12, so there's something for every student! The Library will help you plan for new, exciting units and expand your curriculum with quality resources.

There are many ways to browse the CommonLit Library. If you're just getting started, we recommend checking out the featured content in the Library.

If you want to find content that meets a particular need, you can use the filters at the top of the Library page. You have several options for how to browse: by grade, genre, standards, or content type (texts, Target Lessons, Supplemental Units, 360 Curriculum Units, or Collections). If you click "Show More Filters," you'll also have the option to further filter by Lexile, literary devices, themes, or languages (English or Spanish). You can also search for a specific title, author, book, or topic using the search bar.

Let's say you are trying to find the perfect text for your 9th grade short story unit on morality.

There are a few ways to do this. Once on the main Library page, you can use the filters in the Library to select "9th grade" under grade level, "Short Story" under genre, "morality" under themes, and come up with 11 results. 

Or you can combine search terms and the filters by typing "morality" in the search bar and filtering by "9th grade" and "Short Story." This method is especially useful when you don't know what topics are covered by CommonLit's text sets and themes.

Finally, you can just search "morality" and see what content types come up. You'll see texts, Target Lessons, text sets, themes, and Supplemental Units all related to your search.

Looking for a text that we don't seem to have? Feel free to contact us to make a recommendation!