Required Summer Reading for Middle School
Northland Christian School
Summer 2024
As an English Department, we believe that reading is such an important activity to engage in
during the summer months for enrichment and educational purposes. We have created
reading lists for each middle school grade by selecting novels that we believe will be
engaging, entertaining, and enlightening for students.
We ask that each student select one novel to read from their upcoming grade level. We
also require students to annotate their novel using the guide. The summer reading book is
for pleasure, but annotations turn books into reading with a purpose and will help students
gather information for a project which will be assigned when we return to school in the fall.
Middle School Annotation Guide
Q: What is annotating a book?
A: Annotating a book is making notes by writing in your book while reading. This allows
you to interact with the book and form opinions or ask questions as you read. If you do
not want to physically mark in your book, post-it notes are a great alternative.
Annotation Guide:
Using these ideas to annotate as you read will help you with your summer reading
project which will be completed in class when you return to school in August.
· Highlight new characters when they appear and write adjectives to describe
them in the margins.
· Highlight and annotate when a setting changes in the book. What do you
notice about the physical settings in the book?
· Circle words you are unfamiliar with and look them up or use context
clues to discover the meaning.
· Mark important quotes that stand out to you or create meaning for the
novel. · Write a summary statement at the end of each chapter.
· Make several annotations per chapter.
