How can I use CommonLit texts in my lessons?

CommonLit is designed to be a flexible resource that can support a variety of instructional purposes. Many teachers use different features based on what they hope to accomplish with their students while reading a text. 

We offer pre-packaged units that allow you to teacher our lessons in a scope and sequence. Our newest units have skills focus for each lesson.

You can also edit our annotation task or change the assessment options to help fit a reading passage into your existing lesson plans or units. For example, you can assign only annotations and short answer questions when working on a writing unit, or assign only Guided Reading Mode when working on comprehension or background knowledge. 

In order to help you make your instructional choices, we have developed a Purpose Guide that shows all of the different purposes you could bring to a literary or informational text, as well as the CommonLit tools that best support each purpose. This guide also includes 16 sample lessons that model how to bring different purposes to the texts “Home” by Gwendolyn Brooks and “Alexander Hamilton” by Jessica McBirney. If you would like to plan your own lessons in our CommonLit lesson planning template, you can download your own copy here.