As the school year comes to an end, students begin to think about all of the amazing things that summer brings. With camp, vacationing and relaxing there’s really no time to think about school, especially the next school year.

But as students stop keeping their brains active with activities like math, reading and writing, their brains begin to experience the “summer slide” – a term used to describe the loss of knowledge from the past school year over the summer. Feeling scared?

To avoid this, each grade is required to do some form of summer reading. Here are the assignments for all grades, which can also be found on the BMS library’s website along with letters from the teachers in each grade level.

Seventh Grade

Incoming seventh graders are required to read two books – one narrative text and one informational text that are connected by topic.

For example, the book “Pi in the Sky” by Wendy Mass is a narrative text set in outer space and is categorized under the topics of science fiction, universe and earth. If you are reading this book you can find an informational text about any of those three topics, such as a book about the solar system. A narrative text is a book that tells a story and is meant to entertain the reader using characters, setting and plot, whereas an informational text is nonfiction with the purpose of informing the reader about a specific topic.

Once you’ve read your books, a graphic organizer is required to be filled out and can be located on the BMS Library Media Center website.

Eighth Grade

Incoming eighth graders are required to read three books. The first is “The Outsiders” by S. E. Hinton, which incoming eighth graders read every year. BMS librarian Mrs. Kelly Zatorsky explained that we read it every year because “it’s a classic, engaging and narrative text” and introduces eighth graders to the first unit of the year. They must also read two additional texts, one narrative and one informational, which must be appropriately challenging. The required organizer for all three can be found on the BMS LMC website.

Ninth Grade

Incoming ninth graders are encouraged to read as much they can over the summer to avoid the “summer slide,” which according to the Staples High School summer reading guidelines, is “the tendency for students to lose some of the achievement gains they made the previous school year by not reading over the summer.”
Incoming ninth graders are required to read at least two book-length narrative texts and at least two book-length informational texts (basically anything that isn’t fiction). This assignment is the same for all ninth grade English levels. There will be an on-demand writing task at the beginning of the year.