Can I customize which questions my students can answer on Library Lessons?

There are several options to customize your CommonLit Library Lesson depending on which activities you want your students to complete. Please note: while CommonLit allows teachers to customize which types of questions students answer when completing a Library Lesson, CommonLit does not allow teachers to manually edit the content of a question.

Looking to customize a CommonLit 360 Reading Lesson? Check out: How can I customize a CommonLit 360 reading lesson?

Customize the annotation task

All CommonLit assignments are automatically enabled with annotation tools. Students can annotate by adding notes or highlights to any assignment. 

A pre-filled suggested Annotation Task is provided for most assignments, but you can customize the instructions when creating or editing the assignment.

Choose to enable or disable Guided Reading Mode

CommonLit texts have a first layer of basic comprehension questions known as Guided Reading Mode (GRM) questions. Guided Reading Mode chunks the text so students cannot read beyond their active section. The next section of text will remain blurred out until they correctly answer the GRM question for the part they have just read.

These basic comprehension questions help scaffold up towards more rigorous, standards-aligned Assessment Questions. Students will have as many tries as they need to answer Guided Reading Mode Questions correctly and they will not be penalized for missing questions. They receive immediate feedback on their comprehension by using these multiple-choice questions.

Guided Reading Mode is automatically enabled for Library Lessons. However, when creating or editing an assignment, teachers can disable or choose to enable GRM for specific students. To disable GRM, click the toggle button to the right of "Enable Guided Reading Mode" to read "NO." Or, to enable GRM for specific students, select "Individual Students" and use the drop down to select which students you want to complete these questions.

If you change your mind, forget to assign Guided Reading Mode, or want to remove it for a particular student, you can edit the assignment at any time.

Choose which final Assessment Option to assign

Every CommonLit Library Lesson comes with a set of standardized, rigorous final Assessment Questions. These can include multiple-choice and short-answer questions (most texts have both, but some only have one type).

Teachers can choose to assign all Assessment Questions (recommended), only multiple-choice questions, only short-answer questions, or no Assessment Questions when creating an assignment. 

It is not possible to edit this choice after creating an assignment, so choose carefully! CommonLit only allows you to assign a Library Lesson to a class once, so if you plan to work on multiple-choice one day and short-answer another day, choose to assign all Assessment Questions when you create the assignment.

Some sample lesson variations include:

• Assign only annotations
• Assign only annotations and Guided Reading Mode
• Assign annotations and all Assessment Questions
• Assign annotations and only multiple-choice Assessment Questions
• Assign annotations and only short-answer Assessment Questions
• Assign annotations, GRM, and all Assessment Questions
• Assign annotations, GRM, and only multiple-choice Assessment Questions
• Assign annotations, GRM, and only short-answer Assessment Questions
• Note: Discussion questions, paired text questions, and related media are not digitally assignable at this time.