How do I complete my assignment?

Why can't I read my assignment?

If part of your assignment is blurry so that you cannot read it, that means your teacher has turned on Guided Reading Mode for this assignment. This means that you have to answer a question before moving on to the next part of the text.

At the end of the section that is not blurred out, you will see an icon that says Q1 — if you click this, it will open a question in the Guiding Questions Panel for you to answer. Make sure you've read the text carefully before you answer the question. If you get it wrong, you will be allowed to answer again until you get it right. Once you get the right answer, the next part of the text will unlock and un-blur so that you can resume reading. You will continue to see questions throughout the text that you need to answer.

Your teacher will see how you answered on these questions, so think carefully about your answers.

How do I highlight or take notes on my assignment?

You can use the CommonLit Annotation Tool to highlight or add notes in the margin of any assignment.

Opening the Annotation Tool

Select any portion of the text with their cursor. It will pull up the annotation options. If you are using a touchscreen device, go to an assignment and use your finger to press and drag the cursor to select the text.

Highlighting

To highlight the selected text, hover over the highlighter icon and click on one of the six colors. If using a touchscreen device, simply tap on one of the six colors on the annotation tool.

To remove a highlight, select the highlighted text again and click Remove Highlight at the bottom of the list.

Adding a note

To add a note, select any portion of the text and click Annotate. Type your note into the text box and when finished, click or tap on Done. All annotations are automatically saved for the student and teachers can access their students' annotations from their Student Annotations page.

To edit or delete a note, click or tap on the three stacked dots on the right corner of the note. If using a touchscreen device, tap the box with the T and then click the three stacked dots.

How do I listen to the audio for an assignment?

To hear your text or assignment read aloud, click on the Read Aloud button in the top-right corner or your screen above the questions box (on mobile, it will be at the bottom, above the questions bar).

Once Read Aloud is opened, you can click play to hear the story, poem, or article read aloud from the beginning. If you pause, stop, or leave the page at any time, it will save your place. When you return and press play again, it will pick up read aloud where you left off.

You can also click the speaker icon next to any paragraph, line, or question in the questions panel to hear that particular section read aloud.

How do I translate my assignment into another language?

You can translate CommonLit texts into 41 languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, Dari, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, and Vietnamese.

From the text page, start by clicking the Translate button located above the questions box. The default language is Spanish. You can change the language from the drop down menu. Next, click the globe icon next to the text you want to translate:

Translate also works on mobile phones and tablets.