How do I access the 360 Curriculum and assign a lesson?
In this article, we will cover:
- How to access the 360 Curriculum
- Which lessons students can complete digitally
- How to assign a digital lesson
- How to assign an On Paper lesson
How to access the 360 Curriculum
To view a 360 Unit and lessons, either click the CommonLit 360 Curriculum tile on the Home page or click 360 Curriculum (the shooting star) in the menu on the left. From there, select a grade level using the drop-down at the top of the page.
When viewing the Grade Level page for 9th or 10th grade, you will also see the option to toggle between the more recently released Edition 2.0 or Edition 1.0. CommonLit will remember the 360 edition you’re using, so you don’t have to switch back and forth.
After selecting a grade level, select a unit by clicking a tile to view the Unit page. This page contains four sections:
- About this Unit: this section includes the Unit Narrative, Essential Question, Culminating Task, Length, Edition (1.0 or 2.0), and the Focus Skills & Standards. Additionally, you will see the Professional Development module for that unit. Access to all Professional Development modules is available with CommonLit School Essentials subscriptions.
- Skills and Standards: this section includes the specific focus skills and standards covered in the unit.
- Unit Lessons and Materials: this section includes all of the lessons in the unit, including Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, Grammar, Discussion, and Related Media Lessons. Click a lesson tile or the Explore Assignment link to view related materials and assign the lesson.
- Additional Materials: this section contains supplemental texts and lessons, resources to support independent reading, and additional writing options for the unit.
Each section is linked at the top of the page and collapsible for easy navigation. To return to the top of the page, click the arrow button in the lower right corner.
📄 You can download the Unit Guide by clicking Unit Resources in the top right corner and choosing Unit Guide.
Which lessons students can complete digitally
Reading Lessons, Vocabulary Quizzes, and many Writing Lessons are available as digital lessons that students can complete directly on CommonLit. They can also be printed out and assigned on paper as needed (see: How to assign On Paper lessons)
For lessons that can be completed digitally, the Lesson page has three tabs:
- Student Preview, which allows you to view the lesson as students will see it on CommonLit
- Lesson Materials, which contains printable teacher and student copies of the assignment as well as other materials like slide decks
- Answer Key, which displays correct multiple choice answers and sample short response answers for assessment questions.
All other lesson types, including Vocabulary Activity Sets, Grammar and Usage Activities, Grammar and Usage Quizzes, Discussion Lessons, Related Media Exploration Lessons, and Culminating Tasks cannot be completed on CommonLit. For these lessons, the Lesson page will only have a single tab, Lesson Materials, which will contain the printable materials needed for the lesson.
To learn more about printing 360 Lessons, please see this article: Can I print CommonLit 360 lessons?
How to assign digital lessons
To assign a lesson to be completed digitally, click a lesson tile or the Explore Assignment link. Currently there is no way to assign an entire Unit at once, so 360 lessons must be assigned one at time.
Click the Assign this Lesson button in the upper right to open the Create an Assignment view.
Required assignment settings
In order to assign the lesson, you will need to:
- Choose Digitally under "How will students complete this assignment?"
- Select the class(es) you'd like to assign the lesson to
- Set the and start and due dates (Note: students can submit assignments after the due date has passed.)
While not required, you can also set a specific start time or due time, though students will be able to complete assignments after the due date or time. Please note that to select separate start and due date/times for different classes, lessons will have to be assigned separately or assigned to all and then later edited from the Assignment Dashboard.
Once you have filled in the required settings, you can click the Assign button at the bottom of the Create an Assignment window to complete assigning the lesson. However, if you would like to adjust the settings for Reading Modalities, Instructional In-Text Questions, Assessment Questions to assign, and the lesson directions, see: Lesson configuration options.
Lesson configuration options
When assigning a lesson digitally, you have additional options to configure the lesson as desired:
- Reading Modalities: For digital Reading Lessons, you can choose whether to enable Reading Modalities. Reading Modalities include in-text prompts to read parts of a lesson as a whole class, with a partner, or independently. Thus, these modalities represent the different ways students can learn the content within a lesson. To learn more about Reading Modalities, please see this article: What is a reading modality?
- Instructional In-Text Questions: You can choose whether or not to require students answer Instructional In-Text Questions for Reading Lessons. In CommonLit 360 Reading Lessons, Guided Reading Mode is replaced with Instructional In-Text Questions that have more variety than only multiple-choice questions. These are the embedded Turn and Talk, Think and Share, Write, and Find Evidence questions in 360 Reading Lessons. Requiring answers to Instructional In-Text Questions will chunk and blur the text beneath them. To learn more about Instructional In-text Questions, please see this article: Where are the Guided Reading Mode questions in 360 lessons?
- Assessment questions: You can choose whether to assign all assessment questions, which includes short response questions, or only multiple choice questions, which is recommended for classes that will complete the short response questions through an alternative method.
- Customize directions: You can customize the the Lesson Overview on a digital Reading or Writing Lesson. The Lesson Overview is the first thing a student sees when beginning this type of lesson. This is a good place to add class-specific instructions or directives. You can edit the directions by clicking Customize directions at the bottom of the Create an assignment view. This will open the Lesson Overview, where you can edit, add, or delete instructions you would like your students to see when they begin the lesson.
Once you've adjusted any of the optional settings, click the Assign button at the bottom of the Create an Assignment window to complete assigning the lesson.
How to assign On Paper lessons
To assign an on paper lesson that students will complete off CommonLit, click a lesson tile or the Explore Assignment link. Currently there is no way to assign an entire Unit at once, so 360 lessons must be assigned one at time.
Click the Assign this Lesson button in the upper right, which will display the Create an Assignment view. From here, choose which class(es) to assign to and set the due date/time. Click the Assign button at the bottom of the Create an Assignment window to complete assigning the lesson.
Once the assignment has been created, materials can be downloaded by clicking the Download All Lesson Materials button. This will download all lesson materials as PDFs in a ZIP file.