Teaching – Night Zookeeper Blog

Winter Writing Prompts

The weather is getting colder, the days are getting shorter, and the smell of sugar cookies is in the air… it must be winter! To celebrate this wonderful season, we’ve put together a collection of creative writing prompts that will inspire your young authors. When the weather outside is frightful, there’s nothing better than curling up in a comfortable chair, enjoying a mug of hot chocolate, and writing something new. Whether your winter is snow-filled or sunny, here at Night […]

Caitlin Bahrey

How creative writing can provide vital support for children’s wellbeing in lockdown.

Studies have found that lockdown inspired a resurgence of children turning to creative writing, but also that this resurgence has provided a pivotal role in children’s wellbeing.

Caitlin Bahrey

World Book Day – Giveaway!

In honour of World Book Day on March 5th, we’re running a competition across our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. One lucky winner will receive a FREE set of all four Night Zookeeper books in the series.

Caitlin Bahrey

How to get your child interested in poetry.

Whether you’re interested in getting your child to read or write poetry, there are numerous benefits to introducing this form of writing to them. Poetry will be all around them, be it in famous children’s books they will encounter or simply through the songs they hear on the radio.

Caitlin Bahrey

Star Writing Winners – Publishing Opportunity!

We’re reprinting our first book “Night Zookeeper: The Giraffes of Whispering Wood”. We decided our reprint would be the perfect opportunity to feature some new writing from our Night Zookeeper Writers on platform! We set out a Star Writing Challenge…

Paul Hutson

New Features: Reading and Writing Support

We’re delighted to announce that we’ve launched some awesome new features to help children that are still developing their reading and writing skills. New writing prompts! Ask children to visit the WRITE button on their menu. We’ve added a whole series of writing prompts for children to work on! Each prompt comes complete with writing support. We provide children with help in structuring the beginning of their story. We also provide children with punctuation support throughout this process. Once children […]

Paul Hutson

We’re proud to partner with Times Tables Rock Stars!

We’re delighted to partner with Times Tables Rock Stars!

Caitlin Bahrey

Introducing: Interactive Challenges

We have an exciting new feature to share with you! We now have thousands of curriculum linked interactive challenges available on the Night Zookeeper platform! These challenges cover all required learning for ages 5-12+.

Sam Davidson

11 awesome ways nightzookeeper.com develops reading and writing skills!

Nightzookeeper.com was designed to inspire a love of reading and writing in children, while at the same time helping to develop their creative thinking skills, as well as genuinely improving the quality of their writing. Here are ten awesome ways nightzookeeper.com could do this for your child! 1. Creating A Magical Animal As a Night Zookeeper, one of your child’s most important tasks is create their own animals to live in the Night Zoo! This is the perfect chance for them […]

Caitlin Bahrey

Twenty Writing Prompts for 2020

2020 marks a lot of new beginnings, which might be difficult for children to understand. It marks the start of a new year but also, even a new decade! We thought it would be fun to serve up some fresh new writing prompts to help your children better understand what all the buzz about a new year is about. What better character to deliver these prompts, but Maji the Time Travelling Elephant? She knows a lot about new years!

Caitlin Bahrey

Tips on How to Raise a Creative Child

Whether your child is naturally creative, or not quite there yet, there are ways in which you can raise them to be the most creative version of themselves. By consciously providing them with the right influences, materials and environment, you can help their inner writer and artist blossom.

Caitlin Bahrey

Night Zookeeper – Year in Review

Happy New Year! 🎉 We’ve been working really hard all year and wanted to share all of the things we’ve been up to in 2019.

This has been full of magic and great memories. It has been such a transformative that rather than simply listing out all of our adventures, we are breaking with tradition, and have instead produced a beautiful infographic.

Caitlin Bahrey

Wonderful Winter Writing Prompts for Kids

Some of the wonderful winter writing prompts listed below are intended to inspire kids to engage with their imaginations, creating new magical animals, adventure stories, poems, persuasive essays, reports and short stories. Please feel free to change the type of writing you would like your child to do; the idea is to get them engaged and wanting to write about winter!

Caitlin Bahrey

9 Fun Ways to Practice English Writing

When writing feels like a task and a challenge, often event the idea of it can cause reluctant writers to shy away. We’ve found that making writing fun is often the key to making writing stick. If you have a reluctant writer, or perhaps are just looking for fun new ways to engage your child with writing, keep reading! We’ve compiled a list of nine fun ways to practice English writing with your children. Many of these are alternative ways to get children to have fun (and be comfortable) with the idea of writing.

Caitlin Bahrey

The International Writing Cup 2019 – Top 10 Winners!

Throughout November, children were challenged to write a report, a story and a poem for The International Writing Cup – 2019! The 10 winners will be sent a Night Zookeeper T-Shirt.

Caitlin Bahrey

Night Zookeeper’s List of 7 Great Word Games for Kids

We’ve compiled a list of fun word games for improving literacy, language skills and enthusiasm for writing.

Caitlin Bahrey

Star Writing: Invent A New Location – Top 10 Submissions

We recently set a really exciting Star Writing Challenge. To celebrate the launch of the brand new Night Zoo map, we challenged our young writers to invent a new location for the Night Zoo. To take part, they needed to create a new map location, draw a picture of it and write a short story set in this area of the zoo. This new location will then be added to the brand new Night Zoo map.

Caitlin Bahrey

10 ways to encourage your child to want to write.

Let’s face it. Some children are natural born storytellers with creativity and imagination spilling from their fingers. For them, exploring creative writing is just the beginning of a beautiful journey. However, for some children, getting them to want to write is a tedious and stressful task. While writing might not come naturally to every child, this does not mean that your child can’t eventually learn to really love creative writing! This blog explores how to encourage your child to want […]

Caitlin Bahrey

Fall/Autumn Writing Prompts – 2019

These prompts are designed to spark creativity and imagination within children. We encourage children to think about what they like about the season fall, but also ask them to create characters that would fit within a ‘fall environment’. Other writing ideas encourage the child to write about a memory they have about fall or an opinion they might have about it.

Caitlin Bahrey

Four Reasons to Encourage Your Kids to Love Creative Writing

Explore reasons to encourage your kids to love creative writing. The skills gained from creative writing ultimately contribute to language mastery. Increase their creativity, imagination, self-esteem and confidence today!

Sam Davidson

Thanks to Colt Technology Services, students around UK are improving their writing with nightzookeeper.com

In September 2018 Colt Technology Services partnered with Night Zookeeper to sponsor annual licenses to the nightzookeeper.com platform so that classrooms all across the UK could benefit from our literacy program. The impact has been immense with more students than ever in the UK being able to access the Night Zookeeper literacy platform, which is proven to improve the reading and writing skills of primary-age children. Schools who have enrolled in the program through Colt Technology Services sponsorship have: Given […]

Paul Hutson

The Night Zookeeper US School Tour!

Starting in September 2019, we will be embarking on an exciting US Tour, aiming to visit as many schools as possible in three months!!! We would love to kickstart writing in your school this year by providing FREE creative writing workshops using nightzookeeper.com! The workshop will involve: A special story-telling workshop with a member of the Night Zookeeper team Unique activities and experiences designed to get your most reluctant learners engaged in creative writing We’ll also include: A special training […]

Josh Davidson

Creativity Matters

Night Zookeeper is the basis for a literacy platform that inspires children to draw, write and think creatively. Our belief is that too much of the content children consume, leaves little or no room for their own imagination and that in homes and schools, creativity is falling further and further down the list of priorities. We designed Night Zookeeper to remedy this, by enabling teachers and parents to deliver curriculum-based skills in a way that also engages children creatively. Night […]

Paul Hutson

Night Zookeeper & Tagtiv8 Workshops and CPD Sessions

I’m delighted to announce that Night Zookeeper have partnered with Tagtiv8 to deliver amazing Literacy workshops in schools! What happens at the events? The events are incredibly interactive, creative and active! Take a look at some of the photos below to see what children will get up to throughout the day! Children get active and begin developing ideas. They collect letters to build words during a fun game of tagtiv8! They use these letters to create names of new magical […]

Paul Hutson

Colt Technology Sponsors Night Zookeeper Class Subscriptions

We’re very excited to announce that we are able to offer 140 schools the chance to use Night Zookeeper for the year, free of charge. This fantastic opportunity has been made possible by sponsorship from COLT Technology Services, who provide network and voice services to Europe, North America and Asia. We hope that this will enable more children to develop a love for learning and develop their literacy skills, especially those for whom it may not have been possible before. […]

Sam Davidson

New Class Blogs, Upload Writing Feature, and New League Table

We’re excited to tell you about a new features that have just been added to nightzookeeper.com! Students and teachers can now upload writing and pictures to nightzookeeper.com. From the ‘create’ button at the top of the menu, students just need to press ‘upload’ and either take a picture of their writing, or add the picture via the photo gallery, or a file if using a computer. Teachers can now also add pictures of writing easily by clicking on the student, […]

Sam Davidson

Night Zookeeper are attending BETT 2019. Come see us at stand F75!

We’re excited to be attending Bett 2019 at the ExCel London from January 23rd to 26th! Come visit our stand to get a special free trial of our website nightzookeeper.com, an educational platform that is proven to raise the writing attainment of primary school students. You’ll also hear about how your students can take part in our new animated series with Sky Kids! Finally, we’ll be giving away free Story-telling card games for teachers who post a picture of our stand on Twitter […]

Sam Davidson

UK school children given unique chance to create animated characters for TV series

The team here at Night Zookeeper is delighted to be giving primary school children across the UK a unique opportunity to use a new (and free!) website to create characters for a soon-to-launch animated TV series in a world first. Of course, Night Zookeeper is already well-known to school children aged seven and above as an award-winning digital platform that encourages literacy and writing, but soon it’ll also be an animated series on Sky Kids! Since making the initial announcement […]

Sam Davidson

Keep students writing all year on nightzookeeper.com!

We make sure students are able to easily join in with a variety of engaging writing challenges, competitions and resources throughout the year. If you are interested in gamified learning, edtech, creative writing and inspiring confidence and a love of reading in your primary-aged students, check out our calendar of events below. January: Story Relay Classes across the world work together to write an original Night Zookeeper story over the course of the month! March: World Creative Writing Month Each […]

Emma

How a Primary School Teacher Made Homework Fun

We’re extremely lucky to work with some of the most amazing teachers in the world, as the Night Zookeeper community continues to grow every day! Thanks to the generous sponsorship from Colt Technology, we have been able to work with a new network of schools who perhaps would have been unable to introduce their students to the wonderful world of the Night Zoo. It can be very frustrating as a teacher with a lack of resources available, however, this week […]

Emma

How An Elementary School Teacher Got Students Excited About Writing

We’re extremely lucky to work with some of the most amazing teachers in the world, as the Night Zookeeper community continues to grow every day! It’s part and parcel of teaching to share ideas and discuss what has worked well and what hasn’t – therefore we thought why not share the stories of some of our incredible Night Zookeeper teachers. This week, our Night Zookeeper Teacher in the spotlight is Matt Peebles. Matt is a fourth-grade teacher based in Illinois […]

Emma

Our Top Tips for Editing and Revising Work

Editing and making improvements in writing is a key focus within Literacy teaching at the moment. It is one of the most important stages of the writing process, however, it is also the trickiest to do well. Children can find it very difficult to revise and edit their writing. This is often for a number of reasons: One could be that they have worked hard on their piece of writing: a story or report for example, and are very proud […]

Sam Davidson

Sky Kids confirms 10 episodes of Night Zookeeper for 2019

Sky Kids commissions ‘Night Zookeeper’ to nurture the next generation of story tellers and support classroom creativity Sky Kids has commissioned 10 episodes of animated series Night Zookeeper for 2019. Night Zookeeper, created by Wonky Star, is a UK-based children’s brand, which has grown organically over the last six years from a primary teaching resource. Their website, nightzookeeper.com, is used in thousands of schools across the world to inspire children to invent their own magical animals, and then write stories […]

Emma

5 Reasons Why Blogging is Important in your Classroom.

How many times have you visited another school and felt completely inspired and excited to try new things out in your own classroom? Would you believe us if we said that you could have that feeling of rejuvenation without even leaving your desk? This is the power of blogging. Creating a blog is a chance to widen your teaching space and push your reach beyond the classroom door. It is a great way of sharing students’ work and develop skills […]

Sam Davidson

Follow our Night Zookeeper Ambassadors

Our community of Night Zookeeper teachers are some of the most awesome people around! Follow some of our official Night Zookeeper Teacher Ambassadors below to see how they are using Night Zookeeper and developing a love of writing in their class. Feel free to ask them questions about how to make the most of the website with your students! Melisa Hayes, 2nd Grade Teacher @hayes_melisa Amy Murch, 4th Grade Teacher @TeamMurch4 Melissa Henderson, 2nd Grade Teacher @giftedgem Alex Ennis, 6th Grade Teacher @Mrs_Ennis_OMS Sara, […]

Paul Hutson

Live Writing Lessons with Night Zookeeper

We’ve launched an exciting new initiative, which enables teachers to book live writing lessons with the Night Zookeeper via video chat. An experienced Night Zookeeper educator is ready and waiting to connect with your class via Google Hangouts, Skype, or any other live video software that you use in school. How does it work? Once you’ve booked an appropriate date and time, you will then be connected to the member of the Night Zookeeper team that will deliver your session. […]

Emma

Night Zookeeper Series – Be the Creator!

Do your students love Night Zookeeper? Are you looking for new opportunities to stretch their creativity? Would your students love to be part of a hit SKY animated TV show? If so, then we’ve got an amazing opportunity for you this year! We’re in the process of creating a new animated Night Zookeeper series alongside Sky Kids and we want your students to be a part of it! The video below shows you an example of how students can have their […]

Sam Davidson

How we gamifed reading records! ‘Reading Light’ on nightzookeeper.com

We’ve created a feature this summer to gamify the process of keeping a reading record. We think this will have a huge impact on student motivation levels as they are rewarded in their Night Zoo account for the amount of reading they are doing ‘offline’. Here are just a few reasons why we’re so excited about the impact of Reading Light: Increased motivation We have seen through early testing of Reading Light that it can inspire students to read more […]

Sam Davidson

Short Writing Challenges!

With the launch of nightzookeeper.com 2.0 we added our newest feature, short writing challenges, which are perfect for independent learning. These new writing challenges are all focused on helping to improve the spelling, grammar and vocabulary of students. They are all automatically assessed by our smart algorithm, so you don’t have to moderate any of the writing that students produce. You can simply check in on their performance on your dashboard results table. As students grow their Night Zoo they […]

Sam Davidson

A Unique Educational Project: Global Readers Theater!

We are very excited about a new project that will be starting September 3rd, organised by Sean Forde, a Technology Teacher at Chadwick International School in Korea. Utilising Flipgrid, classes from around the world will take part in the creation of a specially produced Night Zookeeper theater performance! The finished product will be a Night Zookeeper play, where the actors and scenes are recorded from all over the world. We have prepared some special Night Zookeeper masks for students to wear […]

Sam Davidson

Top 3 Gamification ideas for the classroom

Gamification is becoming a more and more popular way for teachers to engage and teach students in areas where they may sometimes struggle. Although gamification of the classroom doesn’t neccesarily need tablets, computers etc, this article discusses 3 different websites/apps that use gamification as a tool to engage students and how they can be used in class. We talked to elementary school teacher Sheri Capper about her top 3 gamification ideas to improve literacy skills. (As a Night Zookeeper super […]

Sam Davidson

8 creative ideas to keep children’s minds exercised over the summer

Summer is the perfect time for children to explore, go on adventures, and relax away from school. However the holidays are long and children can often forget many of the things they have learned over the course of the year. Though not advocating children to sit down and study, many education experts recommend that exercising the brain lightly over the summer will mean children are much more ready to push on when they get back to school. Children often write […]

Sam Davidson

25 creative writing prompts for kids to get imaginations flowing!

We love creative writing at Night Zookeeper. In fact, we love it so much we made an entire website to inspire children to produce creative writing! But sometimes a teacher just needs some exciting prompts to get their student’s imaginations flowing and writing. That’s why we have made this list of 25 creative writing prompts that will get your children inspired and writing in no time! Please check out the list below and try them with your students! You find […]

Sam Davidson

Can gamification improve writing?

Yes of course! You might expect us to say that, as the creators of nightzookeeper.com, a website that uses elements of gamification to inspire and motivate children to write. However, we realise that there needs to be a good balance as too much gamification can distort the goals of writing and take the emphasis away from the excitement of writing itself, and cause the student to become focused on the reward, rather than the content. It’s important that gamification isn’t […]

Sam Davidson

Here’s a great project to teach citizenship to kids

On nightzookeeper.com, we are always looking for new ways to make writing fun for kids. That’s why throughout the school year we run lots of fun competitions to get students to practise all kinds of writing as well as to help them learn about different subjects. Every May we run the “Night Zoo Mayoral Election”, which challenges students to create their own Night Zoo Mayor character, alongside their manifesto for the Night Zoo. This helps students to practise persuasive writing, […]

Sam Davidson

A school in Norfolk is dramatically improving writing skills. Here’s how:

Langham Primary School has been using the digital writing website nightzookeeper.com, for the past three years, with some amazing results. “22% of the students made a year’s worth of progress in just one term. One child made incredible progress during that term – 6 points!” Emma Cotton, Class 3 teacher, gives her feedback on the impact of using nightzookeeper.com in the classroom. “I had heard about Night Zookeeper at the Norfolk ICT Conference a few years ago and thought it […]

Sam Davidson

Five E-safety Tips for Teachers

Having created a digital writing platform that makes writing fun for kids, but crucially, uses the internet to connect their work with classes around the world, we understand the importance of e-safety for students at school. Using the internet can connect your class around the world, grow the audience for your student’s work, and help your students to develop into global-minded citizens but it is an area where students should also take care. Below we have listed our top five […]

Paul Hutson

Getting Started on Night Zookeeper

Welcome to the wonderful world of Night Zookeeper. This blog post has been written to help you get to grips with nightzookeeper.com and give you support throughout your 14-day trial. The perfect 14-day trial! Day 1: Download and print your student invitations (15 mins) These are emailed to your inbox upon registering. You can also download them from your class account page within your settings. They provide very clear instructions to help students get registered on the website, which they […]

Josh Davidson

Josh visits Harvest School in Bangalore

It was another hot day in Bangalore and I had awoken early, after flying in from a short trip to Kerala the evening before. I was with my wife Ishani, and together we made our way across the city from my in-law’s house to Harvest International School. Thankfully we were going in the opposite direction of most of the cars and the roads became smaller and windier as we made our way to the outskirts of the city. The school that […]

Paul Hutson

10 Tips for using Tech in the classroom

I’ve been working on nightzookeeper.com for over five years now and I have visited hundreds of primary and elementary schools during that period, to work with teachers in a variety of settings. This experience has given me an insight into lots of different approaches schools have taken when adopting technology in their schools and classrooms. These five approaches tend to be the most popular, in no particular order: A desktop computer room which is booked on an hourly basis Interactive […]

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