text: The second point to examine is the level of difficulty. Students know what kind of work they can handle. From personal experience, it wasn't very fun to sit at the beach and attempt to complete the first page in a packet of AP Chemistry problems, but it was perfectly necessary and extremely helpful. The questions required knowledge from past teachings and a small amount of inference and research, and I completed the assignment in just a few hours. I had to read out of a textbook to understand new concepts, but the work itself was fairly simple. It's these kinds of summer assignments that students would be able to effectively compose, because they do in fact want a healthy challenge, just not an impossible feat. The difficulty levels should vaguely coincide with whatever class the work is preparing students for, without giving them the feeling that they are already back in school.