The Project
Welcome to the Night Zookeeper project. On this page you will be able to learn more about how the project can benefit your class and be incorporated into your medium term planning. The project is heavily immersed in the national curriculum for Literacy with cross curricular links to Art and ICT. As you have seen on the main teacher’s page, the Night Zookeeper project can be delivered in a number of different ways. It is up to you how you incorporate this flexible unit of work into your planning.
Key Stage 1
Full cross curricular unit: This unit of work includes aspects of Art, ICT and Literacy. The children are able to immerse themselves in the world of the Night Zookeeper for two weeks of study. This includes a full week of literacy planning, one ICT lesson and one Art lesson for Key Stage 1 users. It can be easily incorporated into the following units:
- FS 2 – Fiction, Fantasy and reality
- Year 1 – Narrative, Unit 4A Fantasy stories
- Year 2 – Narrative, Unit 4 Extended stories
Key Stage 2
Full cross curricular unit: This unit of work includes aspects of Art, ICT and Literacy. The children are able to immerse themselves in the world of the Night Zookeeper for two weeks of study. This includes a full two weeks of literacy planning, two lessons of ICT and one Art lesson for Key Stage 2 users. It can be easily incorporated into the following units:
- Year 3 – Narrative, Unit 3 Adventure and mystery
- Year 4 – Narrative, Unit 2A Stories set in imaginary worlds
- Year 5 – Narrative, Unit 1B stories by children’s authors
- Year 6 – Narrative, Unit 1B Fiction genre; Narrative, Unit 2 extending narratives, quests.
The Night Zookeeper’s strength as a literacy unit lies in its seamless ties to ICT. The national curriculum states that pupils should be given opportunities to apply and develop their ICT capability through the use of ICT tools to support their learning in all subjects. Throughout this unit of study children will be able to exchange and share information, both directly and through electronic media.
Full list of plans and resources
One day cross curricular project
This project requires the teacher to collapse the curriculum for one day enabling children to become fully immersed and excited by the world of the Night Zookeeper. This one day project includes plans for six periods and resources to accompany each lesson. This day can be incredibly flexible as the teacher can adapt planning to suit the needs of the students in their class. These plans suit all ages and year groups within the Primary School setting as all children will find motivation and excitement in creating their own fictional animal to be placed in the Night Zoo.