Consuming education digitally can impact students’ learning abilities a lot. Several platforms are helping the educational sector in this case. One such platform is CommonLit.
It is an educational platform that helps teachers and students enhance their reading and literacy skills by providing a wide range of reading exercise passages that they can use to learn.
Are you considering using Commonlit for yourself or your students and want to know how it actually works? You’re at the right blog. In this guide, I will provide information about what kind of platform it is and how it works.
What You Should Know About CommonLit?
CommonLit is an online educational platform that helps children from grades 3 to 12 enhance their reading and evaluating skills. It provides a wide range of texts that are specially designed in levels for each grade to make children learn gradually.
Michelle Brown started this non-profit educational organization back in 2014 after he quit her old teaching job to do something new for the students in need. The odds were against her. Even her family and friends. But her commitment to making the learning procedure smooth and better prevailed.
Since then, the platform has been helping millions of children learn reading and evaluating by providing them with creative reading material that includes different poems, articles, short stories, etc.
How Does CommonLit Work?
Here is mentioned how CommonLit work:
Let’s begin.
1 – High-Quality Reading Content:
To understand the working mechanism of CommonLit, it is important to understand what kind of content it provides. The reading content is the main thing people use it for. It provides different types of reading material that is written by some of the most renowned authors.
The material includes reading text along with visual media that enhances the learning process. Take a look at the following image to have an idea of what kind of content you and your students (if you have one) can expect from it.
As you can observe, it has many different types of content designed for different grade levels. Below each of these learning texts, you can find information about:
- The grade level it is designed for
- What type of content it is e.g., poem, short story, etc.?
2 – Access Your Required Content by Browsing Through Categories:
Once you have observed and navigated the platform, it allows you to pick your required material through categories. There are hundreds of reading passages available. This can make finding the right one for you even more difficult.
CommonLit tackled this barrier by dividing the reading passages into different categories.
Although there are featured passages shown in the feed, you can browse through categories and find the most relevant one for you.
The above image clearly explains how you can browse through the passages in different categories. Not only that. You can also directly search for a specific reading material by searching for the author’s name, title, or any relevant keyword.
3 – In-Passage Facilities:
Once you select the passage you want your student to read, CommonLit provides various actions you can take on that specific passage to make the assessment process even more smooth.
You can see these facilities in the red box in the image above. Here’s the information about these facilities:
- Annotation tool that helps you check student’s annotations.
- Assessment questions, which allow you to ask and prepare questions to ask your students about the passage
- You can directly assign the passage for reading to your required students
- Download, share, or add the passage to your favorite list.
- You can find related text, media, information about students, and teacher guides from within each of these passages.
4 – International Reading Content:
CommonLit is not limited to English learning only. It also keeps in mind the requirements of International students along with the importance of learning other languages for native English speakers.
That is the reason why you can find reading passages in multiple languages on this platform. Not only foreign languages, it also covers foreign culture in its stories and poems.
If you and your students are eager to practice speaking multiple languages and want to learn about different cultures, CommonLit can be helpful for it.
These 4 points clearly explain the working procedure of CommonLit.
How to Login to CommonLit?
Understanding how to get started with CommonLit is necessary. There are two ways you can do it.
For students:
If you are a student, you can follow these instructions:
- Open the homepage of the CommonLit official website, https://www.commonlit.org/en.
- Here, you have to click on the option indicated in the image below.
- Now, click on the “Sign up” button.
- Click on the “I am a Student” option.
- Now, you will have to enter the class code given to you by your tutor.
- Doing this will get you started with Commonlit.
For Teachers:
The procedure is the same for teachers as well. They have to click on the “I am an Educator option” for start.
Now, the process of account creation will begin.
- First of all, provide your role in the workplace.
- After that, input the ZIP code.
- After this, follow further instructions until the account has been created.
In this way, you can get started with CommonLit.
How CommonLit is Contributing to the Educational Sector?
The CommonLit platform has become a major factor in the educational sector. Here’s how it’s contributing:
- It is helping students increase their reading abilities. With its engaging reading material, students are learning a lot faster.
- Students are learning how to comprehend passages. It helps them improve their critical thinking.
- It’s a cheap and convenient way of consuming education.
- Commonlit works on data-driven analysis. It means the students will get assistance in their weak areas of study.
- It’s a freemium platform, which means people can benefit from it for free. However, if they want to enjoy exclusive features, they can try out the premium one.
Pricing Plans of CommonLit
You can choose the Commonlit plans accordingly:
- School Essentials: $2,500
- School Essentials PRO: $3,850
- School Essentials PRO Plus: $6,500
Summary Lines:
A non-profit educational platform CommonLit has been helping students and teachers to streamline the process of improving reading skills. Developed by a passionate teacher named Michelle Brown, the tool provides various learning passages of different levels for students of grades 3 to 12.
The details we have provided above provide a thorough description of the type of educational platform CommonLit is. I have also mentioned how you can get started with it (both as a student and as a tutor).
FAQs:
What is the main purpose of the CommonLit platform?
The main purpose of CommonLit is to provide a central platform of education for people. It aims to modernize the way people consume learning material.
Can I use this platform as a parent?
Definitely, Commonlit has a specific section designed for parents. It gives access to different features that help them assess their children.
Can I use the services of this platform for my school?
Yes. You can use CommonLit services for your school, too. You will have to register your institute on this platform, and then you can start using its services.
Does the CommonLit assessment matter?
Yes, CommonLit assessments test comprehension and help teachers customize the curriculum.
