News

As parents, we know reading is better for children than watching TV or playing online games, but are we all aware how much better and why schools place such an emphasis on getting kids reading?

With schools closed and normal life suspended for everyone we are all scrabbling around trying to think how best to support our children. Parents are taking on a new role as home educators, even though most of us have very limited experience in this and children and young people may additionally be scared, worried and frustrated.

There are a huge number of digital resources out there, and schools will be sharing links with families on what systems they are using to keep children learning their school subjects. However, there is also a hugely important additional way you can support children academically and emotionally and that is to encourage them to read.

Children who read for pleasure do better in school and in life than children who don’t. There are a number of academic

With the Covid-19 Pandemic impacting all aspects of our daily lives we would like to reassure our customers, suppliers, partners and employees, in the UK and around the world, that we are treating this with all seriousness; and we are monitoring the situation as it unfolds. We continue to align our response with guidance from Government and public health authorities and are taking business continuity measures to ensure that we are well prepared as the situation develops.

We are working to continue to serve our customers in these uncertain times – in sharing knowledge and suppling resources both for teachers who are planning for when children return to school, and for parents looking for books for home reading. We aim to ensure that schools and parents receive the same professionalism, care and service level that they have come to expect from us, whilst also looking after the health and wellbeing of our employees.

Badger Learning have been supporting teachers and inspiring

We appreciate that you will probably have much better things to do than read this right now. You'll be focussing on the immediate needs of your pupils and their families, as well as reeling from the changing situation as we all are.

Badger Learning have been supporting teachers and inspiring children for 30 years, and we truly hope to continue supporting you for many more. We whole-heartedly believe that reading is a vital life skill, and we know children that read for pleasure do better in life, have better mental health and bigger aspirations. The ability to escape into a different world full of magic and wonder is certainly one of the coping mechanisms we’re using right now, as well as reminding us that we are not alone.

When things do settle down a bit, and they will, we wanted to let you know we are still here. Our office staff are moving to home working and this will help to allow our warehouse team more space to spread out and use social distancing strategies. We

 “We need to live in a culture that values, respects, looks up to and idolizes women as much as men.” Emma Watson

Happy International Women’s Day! March the 8^th is a day for celebrating the many achievements of women across the globe. It is also a day to highlight issues that still need to be solved in order to accomplish equality. The #IWD2020 theme is #EachforEqual, calling for each of us to take control of our actions and be held accountable in a world where “we can actively choose to challenge stereotypes, fight bias, broaden perceptions, improve situations and celebrate women's achievements.”

2019 felt like a mixture of achievements and failures for women’s rights. Whilst Saudi Arabia granted women the right to drive without a male chaperone, Turkey announced the ‘marry-your-rapist’ law. In Finland women dominated the top political spots, including the youngest Prime Minister ever elected, yet the 2020 Sex and Power Index from the Fawcett

Climate conversations are never simple, with many people finding it hard to visualise a world of climate chaos or simply refusing to do so. That is why discussions through literature are so important – they bring the pandemonium to life and aid in envisaging a ravaged world, unlike anything we have seen before.

It feels like we are approaching the Golden Age of Young Adult ‘cli-fi’ (climate change fiction). Our worldwide news is constantly awash with ecological disasters and the beginning of 2020 has been no different with the devastating bush fires in Australia horrifying people all over the world. Although gaining popularity, very few ‘cli-fi’ novels actually deal directly with climate change but rather discuss the after-effects. Our No Planet B collection strives to raise awareness of the irreversible damage we are causing, a collection to shock but also to inspire – books that act as literary catalysts.

No Planet B contains various ecological dystopias,

FREE PHOTOCOPIABLE GUIDED READING NOTES, one for each year group from Year 1 to Year 6.

If you are looking for resources to send home with pupils these FREE guided reading teacher notes may be a great help. Although originally designed for teachers and teaching assistants, these photocopiable lesson plans are easy to follow and can be used by parents and pupils as a home-learning resource. Available to download now, the Enjoy Guided Reading range of teacher books has earned its reputation for providing quality lessons and positive learning outcomes. These free resources are just a few of our extensive range of individual guided reading lesson plans available to download for just £7.50 per resource. Children will need the original book, which is why our huge range of pick and mix resources is ideal to complement well-known books in home or school libraries.

Each resource includes:

• Chapter-by-chapter

You asked for more, so here you go! We are delighted to announce that six, brand new Papercuts books will be published in January 2020. Papercuts III builds on our award-winning Papercuts I and Papercuts II series of bone-chilling horror stories for students aged 13+. Once again, our talented authors and artists have created six eye-catching and engaging books that will be sure to grab, and hold, the attention of even the most reluctant teenage reader. Each story is packed with horror and elements of the supernatural and, for the first time ever, two of the titles are sci-fi horrors set in space!

Each book contains four full-page images interspersed throughout the text, helping readers to visualise the story, whilst retaining the appearance of a teenage novel. As with our other Papercuts titles, the books in Papercuts III have a reading age of 8–9 and a manageable word count of 5000­–6000. A dyslexia-friendly font and design is used, with bite-sized chunks of text and line

As the doors of the Business Design Centre (London) closed on the 11th October, the event organisers at the TES Special Educational Needs Show brought an end to yet another incredibly successful exhibition. For many of the visitors this year, the show flew past far too quickly and left us all looking forward to next year’s event already! Here at Badger Learning we had the honour of exhibiting at this year’s event and now we are here to bring you the after show report on all things good at TES SEN 2014!

This September marks the switch in the national curriculum for our school children and with it comes a whole new approach and attitude towards teaching the youth of today. The national curriculum contains the overall targets and programmes of study for all subjects and at all stages; aside from key stage 4 sciences. This programme of study will follow after a public consultation on the initial draft agenda.

Badger Learning is extremely pleased to announce we are once again present on multiple occasions within this year’s What Kids Are Reading report, compiled by Accelerated Reader – Renaissance Learning. The annual report is in its sixth year and is assembled using reading data from 2,106 schools and over 420,000 British students. These school children have read and been quizzed on over 6.5million books, amounting to over 77 billion words in total. All of us here at Badger Learning are extremely proud to have our own publications amongst this impressive list of titles.