Grade 8 Summer Work

Middle School Summer Reading Overview

Middle School students must read several books over the summer—one required book and a set number of titles as assigned by the grade level, some number of which must come from the summer reading lists.

Some children will also enjoy listening to audiobooks, which we encourage. We hope you and your children find this list of suggested titles a helpful resource in selecting books to enjoy over the summer.

Along with the reading requirement, we provide instructions from next year’s humanities teachers (English and history) explaining the summer reading and writing assignments for your child’s grade level.

Please review the instructions with your children so that they understand what the expectations are for the summer. Written reflection on literature is a regular exercise in Middle School, and these responses will give each child practice in this type of work. They will also provide next year’s teachers, who will collect responses at the beginning of the year, with valuable insight into your child as a reader and writer. Please feel free to talk with your children about each writing exercise before they begin it, but remember that the writing process should be left up to them. Students who have not completed the required reading and writing assignments by September will be asked to complete the work when they return to school.

Middle School Math Review

Summer math assignments provide a way for students to engage in the practice of skills over the summer so that we begin the school year without spending as much time reviewing previously taught content.

All of the summer math work will take place online using the website IXL. We have found that this platform provides students with the most flexibility along with a strong sequence of skills for review.

Students must log in to the St. Patrick's-specific IXL site at www.ixl.com/signin/sstpatsdcorg using their school-based usernames.

For planning purposes, you can think of your child working on IXL about twice a week over the course of several weeks in the summer. Of course, there will be times when this schedule does not make sense for your family, but our hope is that the review will take place over the entire summer rather than during the last few days before we return to school. IXL sessions should be approximately 20 minutes in length and students should make it a habit to use scratch paper when necessary in order to build their computational skills. 

Students should strive to have an IXL “smart score” of 80 on each of these topics when they return to school in the fall. Students are free to explore further in IXL. However, our curriculum is not an exact match with IXL skill listings, so there may be skills in the grade-level assignments that were not taught in the year we just completed or that will not be taught in the year ahead.