How to use this checklist
Grade 8 is the year arithmetic turns into algebra for good, and gaps left here follow students into high school. Go through the list below and rate yourself on each item: can teach it, can do it, can sort of do it, cannot do it. Spend your study time only on the bottom two categories.
Numbers and exponents
This unit is about writing very large and very small numbers efficiently and about numbers that cannot be written as fractions.
- Laws of exponents including zero and negative exponents.
- Scientific notation, and multiplying or dividing numbers written in it.
- Square roots and cube roots, including estimating between whole numbers.
- Rational versus irrational numbers, and placing them on a number line.
Linear equations and functions
The heart of the year. Mastery means moving comfortably between an equation, a table, a graph and a word description of the same relationship.
- Solving multi-step equations, including variables on both sides.
- Equations with no solution or infinitely many solutions, and why.
- Slope as rate of change, and finding it from two points.
- Graphing in slope-intercept form and interpreting the intercept in context.
- Systems of two linear equations solved by graphing and by substitution.
- Deciding whether a relation is a function, and reading function notation.
Geometry
Grade 8 geometry moves from measuring shapes to reasoning about them.
- Angle relationships with parallel lines and a transversal.
- Triangle angle sum and exterior angle results.
- Transformations: translations, reflections, rotations and dilations, and what each preserves.
- Congruence and similarity described through sequences of transformations.
- The Pythagorean theorem, its converse, and distance between two points.
- Volume of cylinders, cones and spheres.
Statistics and probability
The data unit is short but frequently tested, and it rewards careful reading more than calculation.
- Scatter plots, clustering, outliers and describing association.
- Fitting a straight line by eye and interpreting its slope in context.
- Two-way tables and relative frequency.
What to do with your weak items
Pick one weak item, not five. Ask for a worked explanation, redo the example from a blank page, then solve five fresh questions on the same idea before moving on. A single topic properly closed in an evening is worth more than an hour of mixed revision that touches everything and fixes nothing.