The instructional materials for CommonLit 360 6-8 meet the expectations of alignment, building knowledge, and usability.

The materials include anchor texts that are well-crafted, content-rich, and rich in language and academic vocabulary. The tasks, questions, and assignments are connected to the texts students read and require students to collect textual evidence. Units are grouped around topics/themes to grow students’ knowledge over the course of the school year. Throughout the program, there are culminating tasks and research opportunities that require students to expand and show their knowledge and understanding of the topics/themes in each unit. Instructional time is spent on questions, tasks, and assessments that are aligned to grade-level standards, and by the end of the academic year, most standards are addressed. The implementation schedules align with the core learning and can reasonably be completed in the time allotted. 

There is sufficient support provided for teachers to implement the program with fidelity. The materials provide comprehensive teacher guidance and correlation information to the ELA standards. In addition, the materials include explanations of the instructional approaches and include and reference research-based strategies. While the materials include include some strategies, supports, and resources for diverse learners to work with grade-level content, guidance is general and lesson-specific guidance is lacking.

The visual design of the materials supports learning and is easy to navigate, as the student materials mimic the teacher materials.