8th grade is traditionally the last year of middle school for students. Before these students set sail for high school there is one last push at the reading skills and teachers work to get them prepared for the next level. As with most curriculums, the 8th grade reading curriculum spirals around previous skills and builds new avenues in other directions. By this stage students should be able to determine the main idea of a work with relative ease, we do start to encourage students to compare and contrast between a series of works much more. Students begin to work more on citing evidence in a body of text to support their arguments and explore dialogue or the impact of events in a story. This is also the level where we expect students to begin to validate the sources that they are depending on. At this point we expect students to have a good handle on figurative language and expect them to read between the lines. This comes in handy when students move on to the traditional literature that is explored in high school.

If you scroll down the page, you will find reading passages and question sets that test you at an 8th grade reading level. Students at this point, should have very good reference and research skills. This is why you will find a number of nonfiction works in here. Students towards the end of their middle school careers are about to infer thoughts and work off of context clues. We highlight the use of those specific skills in this section. Towards the end of the middle school experience we include the introduction of novel based reading. This series of worksheets below has a few sheets that complement well known novels.