We started this note Wednesday evening after a banner day for Jon. Such peaks generally don’t run much past the day they happen in, but this time, the momentum just kept going:

From Wednesday:
Jon’s just bombing ahead in his reading/writing: Today his teacher phoned us in an incredible high state of excitement over his latest sample of creative writing (this story was totally unprompted; the only thing the teacher told Jon was that in book titles each word is capitalized):

My Favorit Book

My favorit book is Dr Soous The Sneaches . I love The Sneaches story because they have stars . Those stars were not so big . They were small . My gramma reads it to me because she bot it for me .
Jon

Wow. No copy typing – this was straight into the computer from his head. She had reminded Jon before they began that titles and names required capitals, and a couple of times he made a query such as:
J: “Does The Sneeches have capitals?
T: “Is it a title?”
J: “Yes, so it has capitals.”

She did give him a couple of other prompts, such as “Tell me about the stars”

Another impressive thing was that Jon was extremely insistent that he write the story. He had a choice of “free time” (playtime on computer) or “creative writing” and he actually chose writing over free time.

Earlier, while he was reading with his teacher, a call had come in and she told Jon she had to go to the office for a minute and she’d be right back to continue reading, leaving him alone with book while the EAs in the room were working with other kids. A few minutes later when Tami returned, Jon was appropriately ahead in the book, reading aloud, having just continued with his task. One of the EAs confirmed that he was reading it, not cheating or skipping.

And Jon showed several other social and developmental flourishes today to boot. His teacher tells us that he’s pretty much fufilled his year’s lesson plan, so for the next five months, it’s gravy. And she had planned a tough course to start with.

Well, Thursday, Jon did it again. Another creative writing story at a similar length about his favourite game. His newly displayed talents had turned a few heads in the school too – he read his story to both the principal and the vice-principal, and it looks like this will change certain curriculum issues for next year.

My Favorite Game

My favorite game is Arthers First Grade . I play it when I have some free time at home . On the computer at home I first do some tiping . In the game I do letters with DW.

Jon

Come Friday, 10 minutes before lunch, Jon announced that he wanted to go to the computer. They all thought he wanted to play a silly game that he had played earlier, but he announced that he wanted to do some creative writing and would not be swayed. Tami offered to give him a title, but he already had one in mind “Hop, Skip and Jump”. When she pointed out that was the name of his reading primer, he replied “It’s the title of my story”. He continued his writing ten minutes into the lunchbreak, at which point Tami – who had been negotiating and pleading – physically pulled him away from the computer on his fifth sentence, Jon yelling, “But I’m not finished! I’m not finished!” as he clawed at the receding computer. Tami said they could finish after lunch, but Jon pointed out it was Video Day. Tami reassured him that they would start the video late so he could finish his story. And suddenly he was as happy as a clam: “OK, we’ll finish it later. It’s time for lunch. It’s pizza day!”

For this story there was only one direct prompt, “What did the little red hen do?”. He remembered that all titles have capitals. He remembered that periods immediately follow words, with no spaces in between.

Hop Skip and Jump

I love doing some reading. I like reading Come Out Puppy. I like reading Help Find The Bear. My favorite story is The Little Red Hen. The little red hen took the wheat to the mill. She made the bred and she ate it all up all by herself.

Jon

You never know when this is going to happen, when the little gold nuggets will suddenly pan out of the silt. Three days in a row is even harder to believe, and that is even more precious. He’s starting to show his own vigorous and creative spark; not just something by rote that we trained him to do. This is a pure chunk of Jon that he developed, all by himself. And it leaves us breathless.