#night zookeeper

[nightzooteacher]

We’ve moved!

We are excited to announce the launch of our brand new Night Zookeeper blog!

You can visit the new blog through this link.

The new style makes it even easier to search for relevant content, whether that is resources for teaching, articles about EdTech, tips for parents, general news and updates or writing from guest bloggers. You can even check out our Tweets if you are not already following us on @nightzookeeper. We hope you enjoy it! Why not check out these articles from the new blog...

Read: 10 Tips for using Tech in the classroom

Read: Comprehension Lesson for Chapter One: The Giraffes of Whispering Wood

Read: How to keep students excited to write all year long

[nightzooteacher]

Night Zookeeper after World Creative Writing Month

There is no doubt that World Creative Writing Month is a highlight on the Night Zoo calendar, and we love that the competition brings many new classrooms to the site each March.

But the fun doesn’t end in March - we plan exciting activities throughout the entire year to help make teaching easier and learning magical...

April: Star Writing special: have your short story published!

In April we will give one student the opportunity to have their 500 word story featured in the second Night Zookeeper book, The Fire Desert!

May: The Night Zoo Mayoral Elections

Students will learn about persuasive writing, politics and more in this fun event that will capture the imagination of your whole school. Children love inventing their own mayoral candidate for the Night Zoo, writing a manifesto and voting in a global election.

July: Orblympics

We have developed a writing tournament, which challenges students to take part in a range of activities throughout the month.

September: September of Skills

We will be providing a series of online lessons and offline resources based around popular writing skills to master, such as punctuation,using pronouns and adverbials.

October: Halloween

We’ve created a range of spooky Halloween lessons to get students excited about writing at this time of year, and there will be thematic challenges with some great prizes!

November: The International Writing Cup

Your class can compete to be the number 1 writing team in the world. Students are challenged to write their best reports, stories, poems etc throughout the month in order to find their way into the International Writing Cup final! 

Christmas resources and activities

We will provide you with themed Christmas activities in the lead up to the holiday season. We will also give students additional challenges to get them excited to carry on writing at home during the holidays.

 December: Teacher of the Year Award 2018

As the year comes to an end, we ask students to nominate their favourite teacher by writing a short explanation of why they deserve to be crowned Night Zookeeper Teacher of the Year. It is a fantastic opportunity for teachers to read exactly how much they mean to their students. Last year’s Teacher of the Year was also thrilled to receive an iPad Mini and a class set of books!

If you would like to continue using Night Zookeeper after World Creative Writing Month, please drop an email to Olivia at [email protected], and she will help you upgrade your account.

[nightzooteacher]

Night Zookeeper named as one of the EdTech50 2018!

We are delighted to have been chosen as one of the EdTech50, out of 600 overall applications. The EdTech50 awards recognise products and projects that demonstrate impactful and effective use of Edtech in the UK.

The EdTech50 is also a celebration of individuals who have played a key role in developing this area of work. Night Zookeeper Paul was nominated, and went along to the reception event by Jisc and EdTeck UK at the House of Lords last week.

Education technology is one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK, making up 4% of all digital companies (according to the government’s Digital Strategy, February 2017). Businesses in the UK have become world leaders in creating new technology for educational purposes. We are proud to be a part of this cohort, and currently provide innovative education solutions to schools in over 30 countries.

Congratulations to Paul and to everyone else named on the list!

Night Zookeeper Olivia

[nightzooteacher]

1,000 World Story Competition results!

In January, we challenged students to write a 1,000 word story for a very special Star Writing challenge. Every student who had their 1,000 word story published on nightzookeeper.com would be a winner, earning themselves a brand new pack of Night Zookeeper cards!

With over 800 entrants, exactly 300 students had their stories published. We were blown away by the standard of writing, with some students as young as 2nd grade completing the challenge! This also means that in January alone, well over 300,000 words were published on Night Zookeeper thanks to the competition.

We are currently busy packing up cards to send out to schools all over the world! Whilst all entrants did amazingly well, three schools deserve a special mention for the amount of students they have who managed to complete the challenge...

St. Mary Magdalen Catholic School, USA: 35 stories

Harrow International School, Beijing: 31 stories

Ozark Middle School, USA: 28 stories

Thank so much to all who took part!

Our new Star Writing challenge involves writing a rhyming poem about school. You can find out more here: http://www.nightzookeeper.com/edu/star-writing

[nightzooteacher]

World Creative Writing Month is back!

We are excited to be hosting the fourth annual World Creative Writing Month March 1st to 23rd and this year the competition is set to be bigger and better than ever. Read on to find out more and discover what’s new for 2018...

What is World Creative Writing Month?

World Creative Writing Month is a global writing competition that invites classrooms from around the world to write as many stories as they can from March 1st to 23rd.

The competition is completely free to enter. Last year schools from 30 different countries joined forces to write over 6 million words on Night Zookeeper. The winning class from St Colman’s BNS in Ireland collectively wrote over 430,000 words!

All writing written by students on nightzookeeper.com and published by you on the site during the competition counts towards your final score. Your students can watch your team’s progress on the leader board and check the collective global word count on the ticker.

Download the Teacher Manual for more detailed information and offline resources for your class: https://www.dropbox.com/s/aiz3mjk2ppha8oc/wcwm18-manual.pdf?dl=0

How to take part

New teachers simply need to register for an account

Teachers who have already subscribed to Night Zookeeper are automatically entered in the competition, so do not need to register

If you have used Night Zookeeper in the past and would like to get involved in the competition, please email [email protected]

How is this year’s competition different?

For the first time, we are launching an exciting calendar of mini-challenges during the competition! These challenges will help motivate and reward your students for individual pieces of writing and also help develop skills in particular areas. The mini-challenges will be announced at the end of February, so stay tuned!

What is Night Zookeeper?

The competition takes place on nightzookeeper.com, which inspires and engages children, using creativity to nurture a love of writing. It is proven to raise the attainment levels of all students as they complete fun, interactive lessons from across the curriculum.

When teachers register on nightzookeeper.com, they can create their own digital lessons to send to their students. They do this using our online editor, which includes interactive modules for drawing, writing and quiz activities. Importantly, these lessons can be adapted to teach any subject, theme or topic and are linked to every curriculum around the world.

Once lessons are completed by students, their work is automatically sent back to their teacher for assessment. This means that all student progress is saved, and can be monitored and used to inform future lesson planning. And of course, their words count towards their team’s total!

Therefore, everything your students produce on the website will count towards their success during the competition starting March 1st 2018.

Sign up and get writing now: https://www.nightzookeeper.com/world-creative-writing-month

Learn more about the competition here.

[nightzooteacher]

Welcome back, Southern Hemisphere teachers

We hope that you had a fantastic summer break and are returning to school well rested and ready to take on the term ahead!

We’ve created a special Night Zookeeper ‘Back to School’ lesson for your students. In it, they will reflect on their summer and set themselves three academic goals for 2018. Click here for the lesson.

You may also be interested in our calendar of events, to see the resources and activities we’re providing throughout 2018...

A Year with Night Zookeeper

February: Literacy Month with Skype in the Classroom

We have partnered up with Skype in the Classroom to celebrate Literacy Month during February, to deliver special Skype lessons to classrooms globally. Find out more and access a special Writing Sparks offline resource here. 

March: World Creative Writing Month 2018

Classrooms from all around the world will be competing to produce their best writing in March, with some fantastic prizes up for grabs. This year, we are making the competition even more exciting by releasing special challenges or rewards on certain days throughout the month! Check out WCWM 2017 here 

May: The Night Zoo Mayoral Elections

Learn about persuasive writing, politics and more in this fun event that will capture the imagination of your whole school. Children love inventing their own mayoral candidate for the Night Zoo. They will write manifestos and vote in a global election!

July: Orblympics

We have developed a writing decathlon, which challenges students to take part in a range of challenges throughout the month.

September: September of Skills

We will be providing a series of lessons and offline resources based around popular writing skills to master, such as punctuation and using pronouns and adverbials.

October: Halloween

Join us for Halloween and access a range of spooky lessons to get students excited about writing at this time of year!

November: The International Writing Cup

Your class can compete to be the number 1 writing team in the world. They will aim to write their best reports, stories, poems etc throughout this month in order to find their way into the International Writing Cup final.

December: Special Christmas resources and activities

We will provide you with Night Zookeeper themed Christmas activities in the lead up to the holiday season. We will also give students additional challenges to keep them writing at home during the holidays.

If you need any help at all in preparing your Night Zookeeper account for this upcoming school year, then please email me on [email protected]

If you’re not already a member of the Night Zookeeper community, but you like the sound of the above, then you can sign up at nightzookeeper.com.

Very best wishes,

Night Zookeeper Paul

[nightzooteacher]

New Features for 2017/2018

We've been very busy this summer, creating lots of new features for you to use with your class during this new school year! 

Firstly, we're about to launch a brand new writing inspiration tool called 'Writing Sparks'. This feature generates random creative writing prompts for your students. All you need to do is select a writing type and a time period, then the tool will provide inspiration as the basis for short writing assignments. We believe this tool will be perfect to supplement the fun creative writing challenges on nightzookeeper.com, whilst being great for group writing activities when students arrive at school in the morning. 

Writing Performance Data Secondly, we're implementing a system to automatically analyse student writing and provide you with performance data. This will specifically give you results in the following areas:

1. Spelling accuracy - analysis of all words written whilst using the website. 2. Vocabulary size - number of unique words used by a student. 3.  Grammar score - an analysis of the sentence structure and punctuation of students whilst they are using the website. 4. Quiz scores - this will analyse the total number of quiz questions that students have completed through lesson hive and give them an overall score. Our hope is that this data will inform your teaching and help you to better understand where the learning gaps are in your class. If your students use nightzookeeper.com regularly, we'll then be able to provide you with more accurate data throughout the year and within an end of year report.  

Brand new writing tool Alongside the 'Writing Sparks' feature and data analysis system, we've built a brand new writing tool. This will provide inspiration within an editable planning tool, which students and teachers can customise completely. This should be live everywhere on the website within the next four weeks. 

A New School Year If you're getting ready to begin a new school year, then here's a helpful video that will ensure that you have your Night Zookeeper account set up and ready to go! 

If you need any help at all in preparing your Night Zookeeper account for this upcoming school year, then please email me on [email protected]

If you’re not already a member of the Night Zookeeper community, but you like the sound of the above, then you can sign up at nightzookeeper.com. 

Very best wishes,

Night Zookeeper Paul

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[nightzooteacher]

New Feature Launches!

Lesson Hive is a brand new resource library for teacher created lesson plans and digital classroom activities.

Alongside teachers, we have created interactive lessons on a variety of subjects and topics, and you can easily customize and send them to your students.

This video explains all in 60 seconds

The lessons can be completed in school or set as homework, as part of a flipped learning strategy.

All of the work produce during a lesson is automatically saved in your own teacher account. Once there, you can assess it, leave comments, publish it to a free blog and share it with parents.

Please feel free to browse our catalogue of lessons. If we don’t have what you are looking for, please do let us know and we’ll aim to create it for you as soon as possible.

Register on nightzookeeper.com now to give it a try! 

If you’re an existing Night Zoo Teacher, then you can visit Lesson Hive here

Contact [email protected] if you have any questions about this new feature and special offer!