Night Zookeeper for
Pupil Premium

Targeting Reading and Writing

Are you looking for an effective way of spending your Pupil Premium budget this academic year? If you are looking to target reading and writing attainment across Key Stage 2, then Night Zookeeper can have a real impact on teaching and learning at your school.

What impact does Night Zookeeper have?

Since creating Night Zookeeper we have been dedicated to inspiring children to improve their reading, writing and drawing skills. Students raise their English attainment with Night Zookeeper through the use of our activities linked to the National Curriculum.

When considering the impact Night Zookeeper can have as a result of Pupil Premium funding, we focussed on the following areas:

• Tracking student progress
  Teachers can prove the impact that Night Zookeeper has on their student’s levels using our new curriculum tracking tool. Each piece of writing that students produce can be assessed easily with a full list of curriculum objectives just one click away. This means that teachers will be able to see at a glance, which areas students are secure in and those areas that they need more work in. Reports can be published and student writing can be exported into PDF printable format.
• Student feedback
  Teachers are able to reward students for great work at the click of a button. Students are notified when they have achieved a curriculum objective, so they have a clear picture of where they are in the National Curriculum and know what they still need to work on.
• Inspiring young writers
  Since our launch in October 2014 we have seen students write a total of 220,000 words about the world of the Night Zoo. Students are also able to view work by young writers around the world. They can assess what they are doing well and consider how to improve their own writing. Students then compete to write the best stories to be featured in our daily showcase.
• Extending the school day
  We know that 34% of children use nightzookeeper.com in the evening, which equates to over 24,000 hours of students practicing their reading, writing and drawing outside of school time. They are also spending their weekends creating characters and writing stories about them. The in-game educational activities naturally extend the school day by their engaging nature and the desire children have to progress further in the game.
• Inspiring young readers
  We have a structured reading scheme that runs throughout the Night Zookeeper game. Students unlock chapters of a story book and illustrate each page as they work their way through the levels on the game. So far we have seen students unlock and read over 11,000 chapters of our story. This has had a great impact on the reading age of each student, which you can see from John Bishop’s case study.
• Homework
  Night Zookeeper includes weekly PDF resources, which teachers can use as additional pieces of homework to extend the school day and enrich the curriculum. These activities are all linked to the new National Curriculum for England and Wales.
• Collaborative learning
  Students work together in teams to get their Union to the top of the leader board by writing more stories and creating more characters. This sense of competition develops teamwork skills and provides a further incentive for students to produce their best work.
• Arts participation
  Our numerous drawing tasks within the game all help to raise the level of drawing and sketching. Students are also exposed to inspirational artwork from others within the community and aspire to raise their own drawing levels. To illustrate this point, since Oct 2014 we have seen students produce over 52,000 drawings for the game.

How can you track the impact of a Night Zookeeper project?

As mentioned in the table above, we have built tools to help you assess every piece of writing that children produce on nightzookeeper.com and map it to the National Curriculum objectives. Therefore, you can easily compare a piece of writing a child submitted at the start of the school year with one they create towards the end. You are also able to see at a glance, which objectives your students are secure with and which they still need to work towards. This enables you to personalise your feedback and target weaknesses in your
student’s writing.