Insights CommonLit’s Free Resources and Affordable Support Packages are Designed to Help Student Reading Growth Skyrocket

CommonLit is committed to providing schools access to an ever-expanding library of texts to ensure students engage in high-quality, rigorous, and research-based reading lessons. Our affordable support packages are designed to help support schools without breaking the budget.

CommonLit is an education nonprofit with a mission to unlock the potential of every child through reading. However, we know that schools often have restrictive budgets and they need to save money whenever possible. While some ELA resources are expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars or more, CommonLit provides many free resources as well as packages that are extremely affordable for schools and districts.

CommonLit's full digital literacy program consists of three key elements: our library lessons and curriculum, our assessments, and our professional development resources. While CommonLit’s library and 360 ELA curriculum are free, our affordable support packages help schools elevate their instruction with CommonLit.

Our three benchmark assessments can be administered in the beginning, middle, and end of the year to track student progress and growth. In addition, we also offer formative assessments for each CommonLit 360 unit with our School Essentials PRO Plus package. Our packages also include various options for professional development, including on-demand modules and customized training. Our paid packages also include integrations with Canvas, Clever, and ClassLink, as well as priority customer support.

What resources will always be free

CommonLit will never charge teachers for our lessons or curriculum. Inequity in education is an issue everywhere, and we want to ensure that all students have access to high-quality, research-backed curriculum and instruction that will allow them to meet grade level standards.

Our 3,000+ library lessons are complex, skills-aligned, and come with everything teachers need to roll out engaging lessons in their classrooms. Our library includes texts from a diverse range of authors like Shel Silverstein, Elizabeth Acevedo, Lucy Tan, and Maya Angelou. Each lesson comes with quizzes and lesson planning resources that save teachers time. Teachers also have free access to our library of over 800 Spanish texts on CommonLit Español. Our library is constantly growing and expanding to meet student and teacher needs, with new library lessons added each week.

CommonLit is designed to support all learners with free accessibility tools. Reading lessons come with text-to-speech and translation tools that are easy to use. Teachers can also assign Guided Reading Mode questions that help students track the main ideas of the story as they read.

The CommonLit 360 ELA curriculum will always be free as well. CommonLit 360 includes reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, multimedia, and speaking and listening lessons for grades 6-12. Our curriculum is free and includes everything teachers need, from slide decks to hand outs to teacher copies to word walls and more. This ensures that students everywhere have access to a high-quality, research-backed curriculum to help them grow and excel.

Moreover, CommonLit provides an annual Free Reading Assessment so teachers can get a pulse on student reading levels at the start of the year. If teachers want to track growth over the course of the year, our benchmark assessments can be purchased.

Next Steps

CommonLit is dedicated to ensuring the success of students everywhere by providing free and affordable resources for schools.

If you are a teacher new to CommonLit, you can create an account here. We’d also recommend attending our free, instructional webinars.

If you are an administrator looking to leverage CommonLit’s ELA curriculum and digital library in your school or district, we offer very affordable support packages. Please reach out to our partnerships team to learn more.