27/01/2026
There’s research that shows children learn four times faster when they’re genuinely interested in the content compared to when they’re not... Four times faster!
I’ve always known engagement matters but seeing this research really reinforced why we spend time creating personalised content for our children rather than just using generic worksheets or textbooks.
Lovely Lottie is currently obsessed with P.Louise. So we created a comprehension specifically about P. Louise. More work for me? Yes, definitely. Could I have just used something off the shelf and saved myself time? Of course... but that’s not what we’re about... and the difference it made was huge.
Lottie flew through that comprehension. She was fully engaged, reading carefully, thinking deeply about the questions, discussing the content with genuine enthusiasm. We covered all the same skills - inference, retrieval, vocabulary work, explaining her answers - but she barely noticed she was doing “work” because she was so interested in what she was reading.
This is something we do constantly. We write word problems about children’s favourite football teams. Create comprehensions about hobbies or interests. Use names of pets or friends in maths questions. Build spelling lists around words children actually want to learn because they’re relevant to their lives right now.
When I was teaching in school, I simply didn’t have time to do this for every child in a class of 30 but in our small groups we absolutely can tailor everything to what makes each individual child tick.
The impact on engagement and progress is honestly incredible. Children learn so much faster when they care about what we’re working on.
Is writing a comprehension about a makeup YouTuber slightly mad? Probably... but it worked and Lottie absolutely nailed it. That’s four times faster learning right there.💙