CommonLit is a free service that helps teachers by providing thematic questions for a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction articles. The discussion questions on CommonLit aren’t your typical “how does the author use foreshadowing?” kind of questions. Rather the discussion questions deal with larger themes like “how do we define the roles of men and women?” and “why do people follow the crowd?”

This week CommonLit introduced a new feature that they call Book Pairings. Book Pairings provides teachers with a collection of short articles to supplement the books that their students are reading. The articles and accompanying questions are intended to help students draw connections between the books they’re reading and real life events and issues. For example, the pairing for Animal Farm include articles about herd behavior and the Russian Revolution.