What types of questions are included in a 360 Reading Lesson?

CommonLit 360 Reading Lessons include a variety of question types to help students engage with complex texts. In this article, we'll cover the the three main types of questions students will encounter in a 360 Reading Lesson:

1. During Reading Questions
2. Independent Practice Questions
3. Discussion Questions

During Reading Questions

During Reading Questions (also referred to as instructional in-text questions) are text-dependent questions that build students' comprehension and help them practice focus skills. These questions are embedded throughout the text for students to answer and respond to as they read.

If you have used a library text, these questions function similarly to Guided Reading Mode Questions. They are always enabled and visible to students on digital lessons, but you can choose to require students answer the questions when assigning the lesson. If answers are required, any text past a given question will be blurred, and students will have to answer the question to unblur the next portion of the text.

Additionally, unlike Guided Reading Mode, Instructional In-Text Questions are not multiple-choice questions. Instead, there are a variety of question types students may encounter as they read:

• Write/Practice Open Response
  • These questions ask students to write a full response to an open-ended question about the text.
  • Students mark these as done. Sometimes, these include exemplary responses after they mark questions as done. This is by design as these are practice questions and checks for understanding.
• Find Evidence
  • These questions ask students to highlight specific pieces of evidence that support a specific statement. They push students to support their answer with text evidence.
  • Teachers can currently see these highlights on the Assignment Report.
• Turn & Talk
  • These questions prompt students to collaborate and talk through a specific question about a text with a partner. These allow students to learn from others.
• Think & Share
  • These questions prompt students to contemplate a question independently about the text and prepare to share out their thoughts on the question with the class.
  • These questions are quick and should take about 30 seconds of class time.
• Poll Question
  • These questions ask students to express their opinions via a poll and ask them to prepare to defend that opinion to the class.
  • CommonLit does not currently share poll results with students, though teachers can share their Assignment Report screen while hiding student names to share results with the class.

For more information on how to adjust these assignment settings, please see this FAQ: How do I access the 360 Curriculum and assign a lesson?

Independent Practice Questions

Independent Practice questions are skill-aligned questions that formatively assess whether students understood the key ideas in the passage and can articulate a deeper analysis. A student's overall score on the lesson is calculated based on how they perform on these questions.

Independent Practice questions include both multiple-choice and short-answer questions. While the multiple-choice questions are scored automatically by CommonLit, you will need to grade the short-answer question(s), if assigned, in order for their overall score to be calculated.

For more information on how to adjust which questions students answer (all questions or multiple-choice only), please see this FAQ: How do I access the 360 Curriculum and assign a lesson?

Discussion Questions

360 Reading Lessons also include open-ended discussion questions that encourage students make connections and to apply ideas within a text to their own lives and other texts or concepts they’ve studied. The questions are designed for student-led discussions about the text. CommonLit provides discussion sentence starters to help students frame their thoughts and ideas. Depending on the lesson, these questions may come before or after the Independent Practice portion of the lesson.

At this time, discussion questions cannot be disabled on a digital 360 Reading Lesson. However, students can submit their assignment with our without writing a response to these questions.