Grandson: Predicting Events

We are reading him The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Once again, he is demonstrating skill beyond his years. He asked me if the farmers would defeat the fox. I said “the book is called The Fantastic Mr. Fox, not The Fantastic Farmer Bunce , so the fox will probably win.” Two days later he repeated the exact same sentence to his grandmother.

This is a First Grade standard in California that he is already grasping: “Confirm predictions about what will happen next in a text by identifying key words.”

More astounding to me was when he asked her to read the last page of the book first. When I was only a little older than he is now, it was my common practice, when reading a novel, to read the last page so I wouldn’t be concerned about who lived, who died, who won, and who lost.