Academics » Summer Reading

Summer Reading

NEST+m is a community of readers. Each summer, our students receive grade-specific reading assignments. Please see the information below for Lower, Middle and Upper Grades summer reading assignments. All books have been carefully chosen by our ELA teachers.

Before starting your assignment, please read the important information below:

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. Readers have only to [look] through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. 
 
[A book] can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. 
 
Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books… 
 
[We] need books that will help them understand the multicultural nature of the world they live in, and their place as a member of just one group, as well as their connections to all other humans.” 
 

“Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” (1990)

UPPER GRADES 9-12

Please see our Summer 2025 Reading Assignments:

 

  • Grade 9: The Nickel Boys*  by Colson Whitehead SEE ASSIGNMENT
  • Grade 10: To Kill A Mockingbird* by Harper Lee SEE ASSIGNMENT
  • Grade 11: The Things They Carried* by Tim O'Brien SEE ASSIGNMENT
  • Grade 12: How to Read Literature Like A Professor*  by T.C. Foster SEE ASSIGNMENT

Books with * are available on the SORA app. Students can log in using their DOE @nycstudents.net 

student accounts. 

Summer reading assignments are due during the first week of ELA class. 

MIDDLE GRADES 6-8

 

Please see our Summer 2025 Reading Assignments:

 

Summer reading assignments are due during the first week of ELA class. 

Books with * are available on the SORA app. Students can log in using their DOE @nycstudents.net student accounts. 

LOWER GRADES K-5

Please see our Summer 2025 Reading Assignments:

 

Grade 1: Choose one book from the following list and VIEW the ASSIGNMENT, due September 22

 

Grade 2: Choose one book from the following list and VIEW the ASSIGNMENT due September 22

:

 

Grade 3: Choose one book from the following list and VIEW the ASSIGNMENT | ADDITIONAL SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES for rising 3rd Grade students

 

 

Grade 4: Choose one book from the following list and VIEW the ASSIGNMENT

 

 

Grade 5: Choose one book from the following list and VIEW the ASSIGNMENT

 

 

Summer reading assignments are due during the first week of ELA class. 

Books with * are available on the SORA app. Students can log in using their DOE @nycstudents.net student accounts.