Reading In Sixth Grade (Part 2 of 4)

In reality though, I wasn’t doing too well in the math class I was
in. But I was doing okay in my reading class. The first half of the year I pulled my weight, I did all my reading assignments, completed the workbook pages, and even did the optional self-help quizzes. But I didn’t realize what great things awaited me in the second half of the year.
I started out by doing a lot of right things. I got on Mrs. Crompton’s good side by giving her a Christmas present. It wasn’t much, just a simple four line poem I had written the year before. I had printed about a hundred copies of it on my grandpa’s printing press, when I got the printing merit badge, but it was enough to touch Mrs. Crompton. After that she paid more attention to me. She called me “The Author.”
I was also one of the first to finish the sixth grade lessons. I finished the reading book, the workbook, and another textbook way ahead of schedule. There were about two months before school let out for the summer. Mrs. Crompton had a series of books that were supposed to be for seventh grade. She told the students who finished early that they could start on the seventh grade level. For me, a sixth grader, the very idea of doing something a seventh grader could do was very appealing.