Commack UFSD Middle School Reading Lists

We hope you are looking forward to a relaxing, rejuvenating, enjoyable summer! We hope too that, over the course of the summer, your children, our students, will engage in activities that invite their intellectual curiosity and sustain their interest in learning. Toward that end and to satisfy the mandates of the NYS Learning Standards, the Commack schools have developed a summer reading program requiring common readings for all students in grades 5 through 8.

Below are listed the choices of readings for students in grades 6R, 6H, 7R and 8R. We require that your child select one of the books listed for his/her grade to read this summer. Your child’s reading language arts or English teacher will discuss each of the books in class to help your child choose the book that will be of most interest to him/her. The assigned reading for each incoming grade level is one of the following titles:

Catherine Called Birdy	Flying Solo	My Life in Dog Years
Chasing Vermeer	Indigo’s Star	Project Mulberry
Crispin:The Cross of Lead		Summer of the Swans
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

The Circuit:Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child	The Radioactive Boy Scout	Hoot
Downriver	Travel Team	My Brother Sam is Dead
Esperanza Rising	Hope Was Here	Woodsong
Face on the Milk Carton

Crossing the Wire	The Perilous Road	Taking Sides
Ender’s Game	Swimming to Antarctic: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer	Walk Two Moons
That Was Then, This Is Now	It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life	The Kid Who Invented the Popsicle

Your child will be given the book of her/his choice before the end of the school year. If, as is sometimes the case, your child finds that s/he does not like the book originally selected, s/he may substitute another book for the original any time during the summer, but you will have to obtain the new selection on your own.

In addition to the book, your child will receive a note-taking assignment for the selected book and a manila envelope containing a personal narrative that your child wrote this past year. All these materials (the book, the completed note-taking assignment, and the personal narrative) must be returned to your child’s new reading language arts or English teacher by Wednesday, September 10, 2008. We are asking parents to help their children keep all these materials together over the summer.

In our continuing efforts to encourage our students to become life-long readers, we encourage your child to read an additional book chosen from the other titles on his/her grade level or from a supplementary list of books found on the Commack School District website. We also suggest visiting the website www.readwritethink.org/beyondtheclassroom/summer for booklists, book review podcasts, and videos to help make the most of summer reading. As in the past, the staff in our local libraries and bookstores can offer you additional suggestions for books for our summer reading program.

If you have questions about the Middle School reading program requirements, please see the “Summer Reading” link on the Commack School District website, or call Mrs. Jennifer Richmond, Chairperson of the English Department, at 858-3541, before June 30. We wish you a safe, relaxing, and enjoyable summer vacation.