Summer Assignments 

Thomas W. Pyle Middle School 

6311 Wilson Lane

Bethesda, Maryland 20817

(240) 740-3500

June 2026 

Dear Incoming Student:

We look forward to seeing you in our classes next year! To help you maintain and strengthen your reading and writing skills, all students are required to complete a summer reading assignment. The ability to read is crucial to an individual’s success in school and life. 

Research shows that reading, like any skill, improves with practice and diminishes when not exercised -- even over short breaks. To support your continued growth, we expect every student to read over the summer and complete a related assignment, which will be collected and graded in the first days of school. This summer, you have multiple reading options to choose from. We hope this “choose your own adventure” format allows you to select books that reflect your interests and keep you engaged as a reader. After completing one of the below options, bring your completed work to your English class on the first days of school. Each teacher will grade them for completion and quality. 

Choose ONE of the following reading assignments::

• For the History Buff: Find out more about an area of history you have always wondered about. Select two books that focus on the same issue or time period. One should be fiction and the other non-fiction. Click here for a list of suggested pairings, but please do not limit yourself to this list. After you read, write a newspaper article using the organizer linked here.

• For the Growth Mindset Reader: Develop your resilience while completing summer reading! Select and read at least one resilience-themed book. Here is a list of options, but do not feel limited to this list.  As you read, track times that characters show resilience, or missed opportunities for resilience on this organizer. 

• For the Classics Book-Worm: Check a couple of classic pieces of literature off your bucket list. Select and read two classic books. Feel free to choose from this list of literary classics or talk to your parents or guardians about what they consider to be classics. Then, complete the Connections to Classics sheet about one of the books. 

• For the Movie Critic: Experience a truth that is almost universally acknowledged: the book is better than the movie! Select a book that has been made into a movie. You will need your parents’ approval to select an appropriate pair. Here is a list of possibilities, but please do not limit yourself to this list. After reading the book and watching the movie, complete this comparison guide.

Here are a couple of resources you may want to explore:

• The MCPS School Library Media Programs (SLMP) team has curated a list of free, online resources where students can access a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts.  These may be accessed at: https://bit.ly/MCPSTeenREAD

• You can find a book’s Lexile score on the website www.lexile.com 

All of the above links are also available on Pyle’s “Summer Studies” website. We look forward to seeing you next year. Enjoy your summer break!

Sincerely,

Pyle English Teachers