Grade 8 Reading: goals and how we get there

A grade 8 reading student at Learn To Be does three things:

1. Gets ready for high school reading.
2. Reads real books and articles about real things, every week.
3. Reads a little every day (at home!).

The goals

By the end of grade 8, a student:

• Reads at adult speed, 150 words per minute or better, with no effort, for long stretches.
• Reads literature, science writing, and primary sources. A primary source is writing from the time it describes, like a letter, a diary, or a speech.
• Learns the last of the words school uses, like analyze, evidence, and claim.

High school classes ask kids to read a lot, every night. A student who reads fast and easily can keep up.

We are building flashcard decks for letters, common words, and vocabulary. Until then, practice them by reading out loud.

Reading speed

Reading speed is how many words a student reads correctly in 1 minute, out loud.

To check it: pick a book at your student's level. Time them reading out loud for 1 minute. Count the words they read correctly. Check at the start of the year, and again every few weeks.

The grade 8 target is 150 or better, for long stretches. If your student is far below the target for their grade, find the grade they are ready for in this table and use that page.

The course

There is no grade 8 reading course. This year, the student reads real books and articles from the reading list below.

If your student guesses at words or reads slowly, start with the Early Reading Program first, no matter the grade. It has 1,745 lessons and teaches phonics: how to sound out words. There is no placement test. To find where to start, skim forward through the lessons until your student stumbles. Start there. Its Tutor Toolkit, a card on the course page, has guidance for tutors.

The reading list

True topics

Read books and articles about these topics, and talk about them together. This is also your student's science and history.

• The Decline of European Colonialism
• The Cold War
• The Civil Rights Movement
• The Vietnam War and Social Change
• The Middle East and Oil Politics
• The End of the Cold War
• Electricity and Magnetism
• Sound and Light Waves
• The Physics of Motion
• The Chemistry of Food

Novels to read

The student reads these, mostly on their own between sessions. Talk about each chapter together in your session.

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• Night by Elie Wiesel
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

A typical session

1. Warm-up read-aloud, about 10 minutes. The student re-reads something familiar out loud. This builds speed and confidence.
2. Real reading together. This is the main part of the session. Read a book or an article from the reading list together. If your student is on the Early Reading Program, do one or two of those lessons first.
3. Talk about it. Ask what happened, what the writer means, and what the student thinks.

Between sessions (at home)

Daily practice happens at home, not in your session. A little every day works better than a lot once a week.

Tell the parent:

"Every day, have your child sign in at learntobe.org and do any reading lessons on their account. Then have them read out loud to you for 10 minutes from a book they can read easily. This is the one thing that helps most."

Show the parent and the student how to sign in during your first session.

Other resources

• IXL. If your student has an IXL account through our pilot, its diagnostic shows the grade level your student works at in English language arts. Use it as an extra check, not instead of the reading list. See How should tutors use IXL?

Related

• All grade goals