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Why is reading in Year 7 important?

Moving from primary school to secondary is a huge change for eleven-year-olds. It is also a pivotal moment in defining their reading habits. With the beginning of secondary school comes new distractions and motivating students to read can become challenging.

Fostering a love of reading has a huge impact on students’ progress and overall socio-economic success in life. The Reading Agency states that “children who read books often at age 10 and more than once a week at age 16 gain higher results in maths, vocabulary and spelling tests at age 16 than those who read less regularly.” Reading regularly also helps concentration levels, improves writing skills, and expands vocabulary.  

But it’s not just about providing students with the crucial ability to read in order to aid future

Would you like to write a story for our next series? We are currently open to submissions for further titles in our upcoming series WOW! Fiction. Titles in this new series will be thematically matched to titles in our best-selling non-fiction series WOW! Facts.

These will be low-level books for reluctant and struggling readers, with a reading age of 6.5–8 years (book bands white, lime and brown), an interest age of 7–14 years and a word count between 1600–2500 divided into a minimum of six chapters. All books will be edited and levelled by a literacy consultant, so even if you don’t have experience in writing for a specific reading age you can still submit!

No previous book deal is necessary but an engaging voice, relatable content and an excellent standard of written English is essential. Knowledge of children's literature is also key as you need to know good stories to write good stories!

If you are interested in writing for any of these titles, we are inviting

After laying the foundations of reading with phonics, nothing captures the attention of a newly independent reader more than the lure of a great book. Making sure the very best books make it into your pupils’ hands will not only benefit them, it will also make your job of inspiring young readers and boosting progress in reading much easier.

Making informed choices about the books you use in English lessons and fill your library shelves with will also help you to answer questions that might come up in your next Ofsted deep dive. Whilst the DfE Reading Framework emphasises the importance of ensuring children are given high-quality texts, there is little guidance on what a high-quality text looks like or how the calibre of a text can be recognised and measured. Being able to identify quality literature will ensure children are exposed to the very best, most current fiction, including titles that reflect modern society and represent more diverse authors, rather than relying on a stagnant

Is you brain scrambled trying to hatch ideas to keep your pupils reading over the Easter break? Look no further than these cracking challenges to involve families, eggcite children and encourage them to peck up a book over the school holiday.

Download these challenges and accompanying activity sheets for FREE! Print them off and pop them into book bags or email home. 

The invasion of Ukraine commenced in February 2022, and regrettably, it appears that this conflict is far from reaching a resolution anytime soon. The UK has welcomed almost 200,000 Ukrainian nationals^[1] so far and had offered school places to 20,500 children by the end of September 2022^[2]. Many of these children arrived with limited English and teachers and support staff were understandably looking for appropriate resources to ease their transition into school.

Here, at Badger Learning, we decided to publish a range of six dual language English–Ukrainian eBook PDFs and a simple phrasebook in June 2022 and to offer these for free. We have been taken aback by the response from schools and families with over 13,000 copies downloaded so far from all over the world including in Ukraine. Many of you contacted us to request more resources so we conducted a survey to find out what would be most useful and had an unprecedented number of responses. Of these, 74% requested printed books as well as eBooks, 99% were interested in more fiction titles and 91% more non-fiction. Of the fiction themes, Humour, Action & Adventure were the most widely requested with recurring characters and fantasy elements as the most popular choices.

This year we are excited to launch our very own Badger Book Awards, designed to encourage reading for pleasure and champion incredible books. We’ve shortlisted fifty titles from 2022, splitting them into the top 10 titles for Years 7 to 11. 

Each vote submitted gives you a chance to win £500 worth of books for your secondary school! The author of each winning category will also be given £500 worth of books to donate to a UK school of their choice.

VOTING ENDS SOON! 3Oth June 2023

“Over the last two decades, there has been a deepening recognition of the fundamental importance of improving reading standards on a child’s future academic achievement, wellbeing and success in life.” (The Reading Framework DfE, 2022)

Recent government guidance highlights the importance of children ‘keeping-up’ with reading progression, rather than having to ‘catch-up’. Schools must follow a Systematic Synthetic Phonics Programme (SSP) to ensure robust plans are in place to help children quickly master the foundations of phonics and then build upon these basic mechanics of reading towards fluency.

“Yet despite our best efforts, too many children fall behind in literacy…and the gap in literacy attainment grows substantially during Key Stage 2.”

(Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2 EEF, November 2021)

In fact, in 2019 (the

1 — We read everything! — so you don’t have to.

Trust our Badger book experts to find and stock only the very best books, saving you time and money and helping you easily source the resources you need and your pupils will love.

We have something for everyone — so, why not browse our full collection here.

2 — We’re here to help! — got a question, give us a call.

We’re a small and friendly team with heaps of knowledge and experience within children’s literature and a passion for education and reading.

No query is too big or too small, so get in touch today:

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Are you taking steps to help your pupils avoid the summer slide and instead hit the ground running when they start the new school year in September?

Help children retain all you’ve taught them and stay on track for a smooth transition into the next academic year with these top 5 resources to keep learning alive and prevent the summer brain drain:

As families across the UK welcome Ukrainian refugees into their homes in response to the unfolding humanitarian crisis, primary and secondary schools are now enrolling pupils from Ukraine into all year groups. Teachers will be looking for appropriate dual language books and resources to support children in learning English and integrating into school life in the UK.

We at Badger Learning have been thinking about what we can do to support children arriving from Ukraine and have decided to translate and publish a range of six dual language English–Ukrainian eBook PDFs for schools and families. We have consulted with our authors and commissioned professional translators to work on these books so we can offer them to schools and families to download free of charge. These are suitable for children in KS2 and KS3 (ages 8–14) and are ideal learning resources to support children in building fluency in reading in English.