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Michelle Brown

Michelle Brown

Bio: CEO of CommonLit

Featured Posts:

A teacher works on a CommonLit lesson with a group of students.

NEW: Study of CommonLit 360 Demonstrates Positive Gains on Student Reading Achievement and Teacher Practice

A new study in collaboration with Mathematica shows impressive student and teacher growth with the use of CommonLit 360! CommonLit 360 is our comprehensive ELA curriculum for grades 6-12. Each unit includes engaging and standards-aligned reading, writing, discussion, vocabulary, and multimedia lessons. An exciting new study, conducted with external collaborator

February 9, 2023 6 min read

Two teachers work on laptops.

CommonLit and Quill.org Team Up to Launch AIWritingCheck.org Site to Help Teachers Identify AI-Generated Writing

Quill.org and CommonLit.org launched AIWritingCheck.org, a free tool that allows educators to determine whether a text passage was created by humans or AI. Education technology nonprofits Quill.org and CommonLit.org have launched AIWritingCheck.org, which will empower teachers – and others concerned about the impact of ChatGPT’

January 25, 2023 3 min read

Middle school students and teacher discuss lesson around table.

NEW: Research Shows Accelerated Reading Comprehension Gains with CommonLit

Learn all about the benefits of implementing CommonLit’s evidence-based digital literacy program and benchmark assessments. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that students with higher usage of CommonLit’s digital program demonstrated significant academic growth. This growth is clear at higher levels of utilization, with positive effects among elementary,

August 16, 2022 3 min read

All Posts:

A teacher works on a CommonLit lesson with a group of students.

NEW: Study of CommonLit 360 Demonstrates Positive Gains on Student Reading Achievement and Teacher Practice

A new study in collaboration with Mathematica shows impressive student and teacher growth with the use of CommonLit 360! CommonLit 360 is our comprehensive ELA curriculum for grades 6-12. Each unit includes engaging and standards-aligned reading, writing, discussion, vocabulary, and multimedia lessons. An exciting new study, conducted with external collaborator

February 9, 2023 6 min read

Two teachers work on laptops.

CommonLit and Quill.org Team Up to Launch AIWritingCheck.org Site to Help Teachers Identify AI-Generated Writing

Quill.org and CommonLit.org launched AIWritingCheck.org, a free tool that allows educators to determine whether a text passage was created by humans or AI. Education technology nonprofits Quill.org and CommonLit.org have launched AIWritingCheck.org, which will empower teachers – and others concerned about the impact of ChatGPT’

January 25, 2023 3 min read

Middle school students and teacher discuss lesson around table.

NEW: Research Shows Accelerated Reading Comprehension Gains with CommonLit

Learn all about the benefits of implementing CommonLit’s evidence-based digital literacy program and benchmark assessments. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that students with higher usage of CommonLit’s digital program demonstrated significant academic growth. This growth is clear at higher levels of utilization, with positive effects among elementary,

August 16, 2022 3 min read

Announcing CommonLit 360 Edition 2.0

Announcing CommonLit 360 Edition 2.0

In the middle of 2021, CommonLit published six CommonLit 360 [https://www.commonlit.org/en/library/units?contentTypes=text&grade=6&initiatedFrom=library] (Edition 1.0 COVID-19 Emergency Release Version) units for grades 6-10. These units made remote learning easier for many teachers. We are grateful to our supporters who

July 28, 2022 2 min read

Lessons about Grief, Trauma, and Loss

Use these lessons to facilitate discussion and help students process complex emotions around tragic events. If you’ve dealt with grief in your own life, you know that it never really leaves you. For some children as well as adults, it can take years to process a traumatic event. These

May 31, 2022 4 min read

Two students look at a computer screen.

Introducing: The CLEAR Corpus, an open dataset to advance research

CommonLit collaborated with Georgia State University to create an dataset of almost 5,000 reading passages to support a wide range of research. About the CLEAR Corpus The CLEAR (CommonLit Ease of Readability) Corpus is an open dataset of almost 5,000 reading passage excerpts which have been curated for

December 6, 2021 3 min read

Student looks up at teacher.

CommonLit 360: A Free Curriculum with Affordable Wraparound Services

Wraparound services include professional development, school and districtwide data reports, and benchmark assessments I am so excited to share that after three years of work, CommonLit has published its brand new curriculum, CommonLit 360! It’s a free curriculum — the first of its kind available on an interactive digital platform.

September 21, 2021 3 min read

Students working on their assignments together on a desk.

CommonLit 360 is a Knowledge-Building Curriculum. Kids will Love these Unit Topics.

A run-down of the knowledge forward approach within the CommonLit 360 Curriculum for grades 6–10 I’ll never forget the moment in my teaching career when the lightbulb went off about the importance of teaching knowledge-rich units. It was my first year teaching, and I was struggling to engage

September 8, 2021 5 min read

Introducing the CommonLit 360 Curriculum

It’s free. It’s easy to use. It’s fully digital. CommonLit 360 (Edition 1.0 COVID-19 Emergency Release Version) is a one-of-a-kind comprehensive curriculum for English Language Arts. When I was a first year English teacher in 2009, I used to feel a sense of panic every Sunday

May 20, 2021 5 min read

A teacher and two students sitting at a table. The teacher is pointing at a computer and smiling.

How CommonLit 360 Can Help Address "Learning Loss"

CommonLit 360 is a comprehensive ELA curriculum for grades 6-12 that accelerates reading comprehension for struggling readers. Educators everywhere are thinking about how to maximize instructional time now that students are back in school. What’s the best approach to remediate in ELA instruction, particularly for students who were already

May 11, 2021 7 min read

A student sitting at a table and looking at a CommonLit lesson on her computer.

The CommonLit and Georgia State University Readability Prize Project

Our Commitment to Research At CommonLit, we believe that it is our responsibility to add to the learning and education research fields, and involve stakeholders like teachers and students directly in this process whenever possible. Internally, our cross-disciplinary Cognitive Science Reading Group [https://blog.commonlit.org/putting-cognitive-science-research-to-practice-part-i-5446c961690c] translates cutting edge

April 14, 2021 3 min read

A table with a computer open to a CommonLit lesson, printed graphic organizers, a pencil cup, and colorful markers.

Putting Cognitive Science Research to Practice

Earlier this year, we were discussing ways that we might incorporate machine learning and AI into CommonLit’s digital features. During the discussion, one of our engineers said something that made me think: Every time that we make an update to our data model, we are implicitly defining a CommonLit

October 28, 2020 6 min read

Teachers: We Hope These Distance Learning Units Can Help

Teachers: We Hope These Distance Learning Units Can Help

We are here for you — our team developed units with high-interest texts, vocabulary activities, and writing lessons for any virtual learning model CommonLit’s Distance Learning Units were specifically designed to help teachers deal with extended school closures, virtual, synchronous, asynchronous, hybrid learning — and everything in between. These are shorter

September 16, 2020 6 min read

A student sitting at a table, looking at a computer screen, and smiling.

Resources to Support Teleschool Plans: COVID-19

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The CommonLit team is here to help schools that are coping with closures related to COVID-19. In this blog post, we highlight strategies for using CommonLit digitally with students. CommonLit is 100% free for teachers, students, and parents. Check out our recent blog posts about digital features to support

March 9, 2020 3 min read

Students raise their hands during a CommonLit lesson

CommonLit's 360 Curriculum: Culturally-Responsive Materials

Our framework for creating culturally-responsive materials I. Our Mission CommonLit is a nonprofit organization. Our mission is to ensure that all students graduate high school with the reading, writing, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication skills they need to succeed in life. One of the ways that we approach this mission

March 3, 2020 4 min read

A Big Announcement: CommonLit is building a full-course curriculum. Here's why.

A Big Announcement: CommonLit is building a full-course curriculum. Here's why.

CommonLit is excited to announce that it is developing a full-year OER curriculum for ELA. In this blog post, CommonLit’s Founder & CEO explains why CommonLit has made this investment, and shares early results. To sign up to learn more about the curriculum, click here [https://docs.google.com/forms/

March 3, 2020 4 min read

Profesora habla son sus estudiantes.

El uso de CommonLit está vinculado a un mayor rendimiento de los estudiantes

Contratamos un equipo para medir la efectividad de CommonLit. Estamos encantados de compartir la historia de nuestro impacto. La misión sin fines de lucro de CommonLit es crear el mejor programa de lectura, uno probado para ayudar a estudiantes a aprender, completamente gratuito para maestros y estudiantes. Esta misión ha

November 8, 2019 4 min read

Students raise their hands as they answer questions during a CommonLit lesson.

Usage of CommonLit Linked to Greater Student Gains

We hired an external research team to measure CommonLit’s effectiveness. We are thrilled to share the story of our impact. CommonLit’s nonprofit mission is to build the best reading program — one proven to help students learn — and to make it completely free for teachers and students online. This

October 9, 2019 4 min read

Mujer presentando un grafíco de negocios a sus compañeros.

Por qué CommonLit siempre será un recurso gratuito para docentes y estudiantes

Lo escuchamos a cada rato: “¡Esta plataforma es buenísima! Pero, ¿cómo es gratuita?” CommonLit es, y siempre será, un recurso 100% gratuito para docentes y estudiantes. Punto. Esto es fundamental para nuestra misión sin ánimo de lucro. Antes de explicar cómo mantenemos este recurso completamente gratuito, es importante entender el

May 29, 2019 3 min read

Un mujer y un hombre sentados.

El diseño instruccional detrás del programa de lectura viral de CommonLit

6 de las mejores prácticas que ofrecen nuestras herramientas y recursos La frase “mejores prácticas” se usa mucho en educación, particularmente cuando se trata de alfabetización. Entonces, ¿cómo sabemos qué prácticas realmente funcionarán para nuestros estudiantes? En CommonLit, creemos que las “mejores prácticas” han demostrado su eficacia en múltiples estudios

April 12, 2019 4 min read

Opportunity to Pilot CommonLit's New Intervention for Struggling Readers

Opportunity to Pilot CommonLit's New Intervention for Struggling Readers

CommonLit is a nonprofit that operates a high-quality free online library of over 1,500 CCSS-aligned English Language Arts texts and lessons. Currently, over 9 million teachers and students use the free resources at commonlit.org. As CommonLit has grown, we have learned that there is a real need in

March 6, 2019 3 min read

Three teachers laugh around a table.

Why CommonLit Will Always Be Free for Teachers and Students

We hear it all the time: “This product is great! But wait… how is it free?” We’ve had many teachers ask “What’s the catch? Surely this is a limited trial?” I’m here to set the story straight. CommonLit is, and will always be, 100% free for teachers

November 12, 2018 4 min read

CommonLit's CEO, Michelle, gives a presentation to employees.

How To Make Sure Your Company Culture Doesn't Break You

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This post was originally published in Forbes [https://www.forbes.com/sites/fastforward/2018/06/20/how-to-make-sure-your-company-culture-doesnt-break-you/#25e2468b6ae0] on June 20, 2018. I have always been skeptical of corporate culture. When I hear the word, what comes to mind is those cheesy inspirational signs from

June 20, 2018 3 min read

Celebrate Women with These 10 Reading Passages

Celebrate Women with These 10 Reading Passages

Women trailblazers, authors, poets, and characters that will inspire your classroom In fifth grade, I dressed up as Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and delivered a book report about her life, her harrowing flight, and ultimate death at sea. Then and now, I

March 3, 2018 5 min read

CommonLit's CEO and CSO smile in an office.

The Instructional Design Behind CommonLit's Viral Reading Program

6 of the best practices that inform our tools & resources The phrase “best practices” gets thrown around a lot in education, particularly when it comes to teaching literacy. So how do we know which practices will truly work for our students? At CommonLit, we believe that the very best “best

January 11, 2018 4 min read