CommonLit, a digital library for reading comprehension

Description: CommonLit is a free digital library that offers over 2000 literary reading passages, such as poems, short stories, or informational texts in English and Spanish. Texts are organised by topics or units and can be filtered. When picking a text, users can visualise different tools, including related media such as videos, pre-reading worksheets and other resources, paired texts according to topics, answer keys, and a parent guide. Students can also use several functionalities, such as the read-aloud option, a translation tool that currently translates texts into 27 languages, or highlighting. On CommonLit, teachers can grade assignments, track students' performance, and provide feedback. CommonLit is fully integrated into Google Classroom. It is free to use and does require signing up for an account to access all its features. CommonLit was created by Michelle Brown.

Evaluation: CommonLit is a valuable and useful reading tool for teachers and students of English and Spanish. It helps teachers find suitable passages for their students, easily organise their reading lessons, test their reading comprehension abilities, and track their progress. CommonLit offers different additional tools that can support classes and facilitate communication between teachers and students. All in all, it is a practical and time-saving tool for educators since it offers pre-made lesson plans and assessments.

Cost: Free with registration for teachers (with an email from an educational institution) and students (without an account but with a class code).

Respect for privacy Privacy evaluations indicate how a tool handles personal data collection, storage, and sharing, including GDPR compliance and security measures, among others. The ICT-REV team provides them for informational purposes, reflecting our best understanding at the time of review, but assumes no legal responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of these evaluations and encourages users to conduct their own assessments: Medium. CommonLit collects user information of several kinds and cookies for operational purposes, including marketing, of which users can opt out. It then shares some of this data with third parties, mainly for operational purposes. CommonLit does not allow third-party advertising. It permits users to opt out of sharing certain information, among others. User data is processed in the United States, and retained for a maximum of 90 days. CommonLit mentions employing industry standards in terms of security and data, but it does not elaborate much how. In it, it reminds teachers and educators that parental consent is required before asking students to create an account. For users based in the EEA, it complies with the GDPR. See more here.

Type Of Interaction: Individual work,

Skills: Reading,

Content: Website/other users supply,

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