Gary Player, legendary South African golfer when asked why he was so lucky to chip so many balls straight into the hole answered, “It’s funny, the more I practice, the luckier I get”.

Much has been made of the assertion that to reach the top in any sport or activity a person needs to put in 10 000 hours of practice.

I am not suggesting that students need to spend 10 000 hours on Reading Plus (although it would be preferable to games or social media…..) however, we analysed our latest whole school data and there are interesting lessons to be learnt.

Reading Plus is one of the digital tools we use to deepen and strengthen our students’ reading and comprehension skills.The data shows the correlation between the number of sessions students completed on Reading Plus and the level gains the same students made. The magical figure is only 100 sessions (just over two sessions a week). Students who complete this minimum number show significant level gains and interestingly those who complete 200 sessions (just over four sessions a week) double their rate of progress.

So parents, please encourage your children to use Reading Plus at home. Some sessions can be done at school but as you can see valuable progress can continue any time, anywhere in keeping with our learning philosophy.

As holidays approach this is even more important as many students lose ground during this time – Reading Plus helps our students to get ahead and if we work as a team our students can improve even quicker.

Growing greatness/kia mana ake