Exploring CommonLit

Transcript:

CommonLit is a great tool for ELA or social studies teachers. It's filled with hundreds of leveled texts that can be printed out or assigned online. CommonLit reaches grades 3 through 12 and can be translated into 27 different languages.

Classes can be assigned on the site in order to assign stories and supplementals to the reading. When assigning text you have the ability to turn on a guided reading mode.

So I can click my class,and then I can turn on guided reading mode to add scaffolding questions while the students read the text. This mode could be assigned to the whole class or to individuals so I can pick one student, and only assign him the multiple choice questions. The texts are displayed in an organized way and you can even use the search bar to type in a keyword and find texts related to your search. There are several different filters to change or add if you don't have a specific keyword or title to search. Each text comes with assessment questions that can also be either printed or assigned online just like the original text. Again, when assigning these texts can be assigned individually, to one or more individuals, or I can assign it to my whole class.

Being able to assign stories individually is great for classrooms that want to look for differentiated assignments or leveled text for their students. Another great feature of CommonLit on the student side, is being able to turn on the read aloud. As a special educator working in a general education classroom this is so important for my students that require read aloud in their IEPs.

One final tool to add, is that CommonLit allows students to annotate right on the digital text. Students can work and teachers can see their work in real time and comment back. So students can highlight, and they can comment next to what they would like to annotate and then the teacher can come in and read their annotations.