CommonLit ❤’s Google Classroom
Classroom management just got easier thanks to the enhanced integrations between two of teachers’ favorite free classroom resources: CommonLit and Google Classroom.
CommonLit is a proud Premier Partner of Google for Education. Our partnership is founded on four major integrations:
- Google Single Sign On allows users to log in with Google.
- Classroom Users API integration allows us to import and update CommonLit classes using Google Classroom rosters.
- Classroom Share Buttons allow users to quickly post assignments to their Google Classroom stream.
- Classroom Coursework API integration allows CommonLit to export scores to students’ Google Classroom Coursework.
We want to give a big thanks to the 1 million+ teachers and students who used CommonLit this fall and made this partnership possible. Nearly half of our active users this semester have used Google Classroom to improve their CommonLit experience, leading to faster grading and more feedback returned to students.
If you haven’t connected with CommonLit using Google Classroom yet, we invite you to get started today — sign up here! Also, take a minute to read more about our exciting integrations below.
Import Classes & Students
To kick things off, import your classes and students with Google Classroom. To do this, go to your Manage Classes page and click “Create a New Class” followed by “Import Classes From Google Classroom.”
Then, select the Google account associated with your Google Classroom account. We’ll walk you through the rest of the steps with helpful prompts as you progress.
It takes a minute to get all those students from Google, so hold tight while we import them. When you refresh the page, you should see the count of students that we’ve imported so far.
If students join your Google Classroom classes later on, and you want those students to appear in your CommonLit class, just click on the sync button on your Manage Classes page. It appears to the right of your class name and looks like this:
Make sure to refresh the page after about a minute to see your updated roster.
Post Assignments & Export Scores
After you create an assignment, you have the option to post your assignment and scores, or just the assignment, to your Google Classroom stream.
Post Assignment and Scores to Google Classroom will create an assignment in your stream, update to show students’ assignment statuses, and export grades to Google Classroom.
Post Assignment to Google Classroom will create an assignment in your stream and update with students’ assignment statuses, but will not show your students their scores on CommonLit.
You’ll be given the opportunity to edit your post before sharing it, and we will be sure to include a link that sends your students directly from Google Classroom to their CommonLit assignment. These links vary by class.
You can also leave the share window and reopen it later from the Assignments page or the Assignment Dashboard by clicking the share button:
If you decide later on that you do want to export grades to your Google Classroom Coursework, you can change this setting from your Assignment Dashboard. We’ll prompt you to share the assignment on Google, if you haven’t already done so, to set up this exporting.
Have Students Connect
We’ve made it easy for students to get started with their first assignment in Google Classroom. To begin, they can click the assignment link in their Classwork, which will take them to a login page. Have them click Log in with Google and enter their Google login info.
The first time students log in with Google, they will be asked to set a backup CommonLit password and to connect to Google Classroom. Students must Connect to Google Classroom in order for our Coursework integration to work.
After they do this, we will take them to their assignment. If they skip connecting to Google, we will ask them to connect again before they can begin their Google Classroom assignment.
Which Google Classroom features do you like?
Since Google Classroom is always releasing new features, we plan to keep improving our integrations! Tell us which Google Classroom features you’d like to see CommonLit support in the comments below.
