We Reviewed Dozens Of The Best 8th Grade Apps So You Don’t Have To. Here Are Our Top Picks.
Top Apps for 8th Grade
8th grade is a transitional time for most students. They are the top dogs in middle school, but will soon trade that for being the youngest and lowest in the high school pecking order. Now is the time to help them make sure their skills are up to the challenge of the transition. It’s also a great time to help them learn to be independent thinkers and discover how to make the most of their educational opportunities by honing basic skills.
Our reviewed and recommended apps for 8th grade offer a review of middle school science concepts, inspire kids to start writing, quiz them on verbs, nouns and adjectives, work on foundational concepts in Algebra, and provide a homework planner to help them stay better organized. There’s also a nice review of challenging skills in math and science that we threw in for good measure.
5 Dice: Order of Operations
Price: Free
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
8th graders are making the jump from arithmetic to more abstract and challenging math courses, including algebra, geometry, and more. They really need a firm foundation in computation to be successful. There are some things that simply cannot be taught using calculators!
Calculators are wonderfully accurate, but if students don’t understand how to set problems up correctly, the calculator is only as good as the information fed into it. This app helps students improve their understanding of computation and how it works.
5 Dice: Order of Operations offers individual or multi-player practice with order of operations problems at five different levels of complexity. Students are given five numbers and an endless array of operation and parentheses signs—allowing them to apply order of operations concepts to create equations that match the given target number.
Playground Physics
Price: Free
Physics can be one of the tougher branches of science to learn for middle schoolers, but this app makes it accessible by keeping it up-close and personal. Kids will explore the physics of motion involved in familiar playground equipment and games. By using video and other graphing and calculation tools, they can see the laws of motion in action. It’s a great way to make physics more hands-on and help them gain firsthand knowledge.
The app is free on the App Store and offers a wealth of physics experiences, experiments, and more. It’s aligned to national science standards and perfect for classroom or home use.
iTooch 8th Grade Language Arts
Price: $8.49
iTooch is a leader in digital learning and offers a wealth of subject-specific practice to students of all ages. Check out their apps—but particularly their language arts selection. Kids will cover all the basics of language arts, from sentence structure and parts of speech to reading and comprehension. Developers have “gamified” the learning so kids will be motivated to continue.
The app includes nearly 1600 exercises, all keyed to Common Core Standards. Features include font size adjustment, 49 chapters, and illustrations.
Quizlet
Price: Free with in-app purchases
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Quizlet is more than just a study tool! There are literally thousands of quizzes that others have created, and students can create their own question sets to use privately or share. Nearly anything that can be put into question-answer format or pieces of paired information can be uploaded and turned into flashcards with the touch of a button.
Quizlet is free to download and use. There are paid in-app features that may be of special interest to teachers or parents, which cost $35.99 to unlock. These allow teachers or parents to do things like perform record keeping and create more interesting quizzes.
Khan Academy
Price: Free
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Khan Academy offers thousands of video lessons and practice questions on just about any subject or topic that a student might need to review. Users can look up specific concepts or take sequences of lessons that amount to supplemental teaching, reviews, and even entire courses about whatever they want to learn. It’s very user friendly and can also be set up to send performance records to teachers or parents.
Best of all, it’s free to access this wealth of learning opportunities. And it doesn’t matter if a student is working on their grade level, needs enrichment or more challenging coursework, or is struggling and needs review and reinforcement of more basic concepts. In any case, Khan Academy has got it covered.
8th Grade Science – BeGenius
Price: Free
8th Grade Science is a fabulous resource to help your middle schooler get ahead in science, study for the big tests, or learn just for the sake of it. The app offers free step-by-step science notes on all the topics that are covered in the 8th grade. Kids can use them to explore ahead of their curriculum, brush up for tests, or follow along with a class unit.
Students who participate in Science Olympiad and homeschooled students will also really benefit from this app. It’s a great way to keep science knowledge fresh!
8th Grade Reading Challenge
Price: $1.99 on iOS App Store and Free on Google Play
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
Just 8-12 minutes of practice daily, and kids will be reading and answering comprehension questions like a pro. Stories are written with middle schoolers in mind and correlate to grade level standards across the curriculum.
Like most academic skills, reading improves with practice. Kids will appreciate the bite-sized practice that this app offers. It’s great for kids on the go, too!
Grammaropolis
Price: $5.99
Grammaropolis is the perfect answer for kids who struggle with parts of speech (a big part of the 8th grade language arts curriculum). Using snazzy video shorts, fun animations, and some fabulous games, your kids will be able to tell their nouns from their adverbs in no time at all.
Grammaropolis offers the perfect combination of jazzy and informative. Kids will keep coming back for more!
Dic-Dic
Price: Free
Dic-Dic is an award-winning app that will help students practice dictation in any of four languages. It’s the perfect companion to those foreign language classes! There are three levels, all designed to help students practice spelling, sound-letter matching, and writing.
Dic-Dic can be used by younger students in their native language or by older students learning a second language. Look for practice in English, Spanish, Russian, and French.
My Study Life – School Planner
Price: Free
iOS App Store / Google Play Store
This cross-platform planner is great for helping young students organize all they need to keep track of for academic success. Students can track homework, notes, revision requests from teachers, and much more. The system works on phones, tablets, and computers, allowing easy access from whichever device is handy.
Kids can manage their schedules for classes, store assignments and returned tests in the cloud, and generally keep track of everything they need to monitor in one easy app. It’s great for building the organizational habits they will need in high school, college, and adult life.