>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, DC.
>> Michelle.
[ Applause ]
>> Michelle Brown: So, my first
job was teaching seventh grade
reading at a high poverty
school in rural Mississippi.
I walked into this
classroom on day one
with no teaching
materials, not even books
and I spent the next two years
scrambling to build a curriculum
for students that in a single
classroom had reading aptitudes
spanning seven different
grade levels.
I worked so hard because
I knew what was at stake.
How well a kid reads
in eighth grade is one
of the single best predictors
we have of life outcomes.
It's a predictor of high
school and college graduation
and even lifetime earnings.
So, my name is Michelle
Brown and I started CommonLit
because I believe that we can
change the game for students
in low-income schools by giving
teachers the tools they need
to teach reading and
writing at a high level.
CommonLit is a free
online reading program
that helps students
develop advanced reading
and writing skills.
Today we're serving over 2.7
million teachers and students
in over 38 US schools and we're
in a high growth period gaining
20,000 new registered users
per day.
We're specifically focused
on reaching students
in low-income schools that are
often the last to get access
to cutting-edge technology
and quality reading materials.
So, why are so many
people signing up?
Well at CommonLit.org
teachers can go online
and create a free account and
browse our leveled library
of hundreds high interest
and engaging authentic texts
and lessons all prepared
by master teachers.
These are news articles, poems,
short stories, historical
documents.
Students interact
with digital texts,
they learn new vocabulary words,
they have high-level discussions
with their classmates, and
they complete a standards align
comprehension quiz.
Our data reports help
teachers determine
which students need extra
and personalized support.
So, the reason our content
is so high-quality is
that we have leveraged the
work of our content partners,
Smithsonian institutions and
even archives from the Library
of Congress, like the
Veterans History Project
so that students can actually
read great authentic literature.
And we get these texts
because we are a nonprofit.
This is why we are committed
to keeping CommonLit 100% free
for teachers and
students forever.
So, we're spreading
rapidly right now,
primarily through teacher
to teacher word-of-mouth
and a bootstrap marketing
budget.
And today in Mississippi,
the state of Mississippi
where I used to teach over
700 schools rely on CommonLit.
Now I want to tell you
about one of those stops.
In Mrs. Green's class, seventh
grade class, in Desoto County,
Mississippi students
are working in pairs
to read complex informational
texts.
And Mrs. Green has noticed
that CommonLit has increased
student achievement in reading
and also student's
motivation to read.
We also know from our first
full year of implementation
and from our third-party
evaluator is
that when students use CommonLit
more frequently they tend
to have better reading
gains over time.
So, where do we go from here?
We know that schools
and classrooms are
such important institutions for
developing civic engagement.
And so, but we also
know that students,
many students today struggle to
access the complex information
and primary and secondary
sources.
So, our core competency is
digitizing these primary
and secondary sources and using
technology like text-to-speech,
guided reading mode,
translation into 13 languages,
and read-aloud technology
to help struggling readers
access the information
in primary and secondary
sources.
And so, over the next two years
we'll be digitizing this content
so that students not
only in reading class,
but also in history class can
access these wonderful texts.
So, the great thing about tech
is that it's super-scalable
and we can deliver this solution
for about 25 cents per kid,
that's the cost of buying
each child one pencil.
And if we keep growing
at the rate
that we're growing
today we'll be on track
to serve 20 million students
by 2020, that's about half
of all public school
children in America.
So, CommonLit is the tool I
wish I had when I was a teacher
in that classroom
in Mississippi.
It delivers the kind of learning
experiences I would want
for my own child.
We are so humbled to be part
of the literacy best practice
awards with all of you
and I would love to
talk to many of you
about forming a partnership,
especially those of you
who are working internationally
because we've started
to see our tool getting picked
up all around the world.
Thank you so much, here's
my contact information,
I hope to connect with you.
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at LOC.gov.