We recently added some new DocsPlus planning and writing frame resources to LearningGrids in our History subject area.

We know resources that help students organise ideas and structure writing are not just needed in the subject of English. Literacy – the ability to read, write, speak and listen to communicate and make sense of the world – is a strand that runs through all curriculum areas and topics. 

Writing frames and planners are equally important in subjects such as Science, Geography, and History. They can help students record the findings of a scientific investigation or geography fieldwork study or structure a historical analysis.

Additionally, we wanted to offer teachers planners and frames that work across a range of different topics. Our new resources are designed with exactly this in mind. They are content-free and provide a framework only, so they can be easily adapted to suit your focus topic.

So, whether you’re looking for timelines to plot key events and their impact, exploring the importance and contribution of a world civilisation, or structuring an analysis of a historical source, these new History resources on LearningGrids provide a supportive toolkit for helping students develop ideas, arguments, and explanations in History.

This blog post will cover:

• The importance of planners and frames in supporting students’ thinking and writing
  
  
• The subject-specific importance of resources like these in History
  
  
• An overview of the range of DocsPlus resources in the Historical Enquiry category on LearningGrids
  
  
• A closer look at some of the resources and how these might be used within a specific context

DocsPlus writing frames and planners

Writing frames can offer vital support for all learners, including:

• Helping them build familiarity with form and language that is relevant to a particular curriculum context. This means students can understand the process of writing and gradually build up their own use of language to write independently in future tasks.
  
  
• Supporting working memory. Writing frames give learners a structure that allows them to focus on their analysis. 
  
  
• Increasing the opportunity for students to succeed in writing, which in turn gives them the confidence to put their own ideas into words.
  

Why planners and writing frames matter in History

Writing frames and planners can be really useful in History because they scaffold the process of transforming historical knowledge into structured, analytical writing.

They provide support for organising ideas into ‘making a case’ so that students think about elements such as causation, argument, and analysis. Essentially, they help students progress from simple description or listing of historical facts to thinking and writing like a historian.

Planning is such an important part of the writing process. The more time spent planning, the better students can focus on shaping their writing. Using tools like WorkSpace to help gather and organise thoughts before writing provides a fantastic starting point. Once students have collated and organised their ideas, writing frames provide a framework and structure for writing.

Planning structures and writing frameworks can significantly reduce the cognitive load on working memory. This allows students to focus on constructing what they want to say, rather than managing the structural demands of writing.

Additionally:

• The structures prompt students to select relevant information that demonstrates their understanding – rather than just writing everything they know.
  
  
• Writing frames introduce students to subject-specific language and styles, such as writing a balanced essay or analysing a source.
  
  
• The planners and frames break tasks into small, manageable steps – providing sentence starters, paragraph structures, or keywords.
  
  
• For students who struggle with literacy or anxiety about the blank page, frames provide a way in for engaging in subject-specific writing tasks that would otherwise be daunting.

DocsPlus resources in Historical Enquiry

There is a range of writing frames and planners available on LearningGrids. Some are standalone resources, such as the Key Events WorkSpace or the PEEL Sentence Starters Wordbar.

Others work as a set of linked WorkSpaces and Wordbars. For example, the Cause & Consequence Planner (WorkSpace) is linked with the Cause and Consequence writing frame and words set (Wordbars).

The Historical Enquiry DocsPlus resources include:

Resource name	Resource type
Timeline 1	WorkSpace
Timeline 2	WorkSpace
Cause & Consequence Planner	WorkSpace
Cause & Consequence Frame	Wordbar
Cause & Consequence Words	Wordbar
Source Analysis Planner	WorkSpace
Source Analysis Frame	Wordbar
Source Analysis Words	Wordbar
Then and Now Comparison Planner	WorkSpace
Then and Now Comparison Frame	Wordbar
Significant Individual Biography Planner	WorkSpace
Significant Individual Biography Frame	Wordbar
Key Events	WorkSpace
Significant Historical Event Planner	WorkSpace
Historical Contextualization Stems	WorkSpace
Civilisation Profile Planner	WorkSpace
Civilisation Profile Words	Wordbar
PEEL Sentence Starters – History	Wordbar
Historical Argument Planner	WorkSpace

Using the resources within a specific context

Let’s take a look at how some of the resources might be used within a specific History topic.

Civilisation Profile – Mughal Empire

As part of a study into the Mughal Empire of India, we can use the Civilisation Profile Planner to organise ideas about key components such as the geography, religion, and social structure.

Once complete, we can then use the Civilisation Profile Words to start crafting the writing under each of the key paragraph headings. Additionally, students might send their planner (as a diagram or as text) to the Document as a starting point for their writing.

Source Analysis – Treaty of Versailles political cartoon

We often get students to analyse political posters or cartoons as part of their learning in History.

For example, students could be asked to examine a political cartoon while studying World War One. The Source Analysis Planner is a great tool for this type of deep dive. It directs students to think about its content, message, context, origin, purpose, and impact on audiences. This helps them compartmentalise their analysis before writing a cohesive historical essay.

As before, they can send their completed planner to the Document as a diagram or text as a starting point for the writing. They can also use the Source Analysis Frame with paragraph headings and sentence stems to support a structured piece of written analysis about the source. Students can also use the Source Analysis Words with key vocabulary to guide and support their analytical writing.

Hopefully, this has given you an insight into how you can use the new frames and planners with your class.

You can find a similar selection of topic-adaptable frames and planners for Science and Geography. There are also general, less subject-specific resources (such as discussion/explanation frames and planners) in the English section.

If you have any questions about these or any of our LearningGrids resources, please email our Customer Experience team via training@cricksoft.com or book a free customer care meeting to explore them in more detail.

Introduction

The Clicker Friends series on LearningGrids was designed to provide engaging educational content to support young learners. Each story in the Clicker Friends collection is carefully crafted to encourage reading, writing, and discussion, making it an invaluable resource for teachers and learners alike. You can find the series in the Story Corner section on the LearningGrids website.

Recently, we have undertaken a comprehensive update of the Clicker Friends series to ensure consistency and maximise the learning potential of every story. These updates introduce a cohesive set of resources and activities for each tale, allowing children to explore, respond, and create with confidence. Whether it’s reading a book, building sentences, or engaging in interactive tasks, Clicker Friends provides a rich and supportive environment for literacy development.

In this blog, we’ll explore the refreshed Clicker Friends series and how you can use it to inspire and motivate your learners.

Clicker Friends

Our Clicker Friends collection is based around eight friends and their everyday activities. The characters are:

Billy	Freddie	Lizzie	Maisie
Mary	Robbie	Sally	Tommy

The stories are based on themes of seasonal activities (Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving) or everyday activities that most young children can relate to (going to the park, playing in the playground, going to the seaside).

The first Clicker Friends story was published almost 15 years ago.

Earlier stories were created on older versions of Clicker. This meant that some of the stories had different supporting activities.

We have now ensured that all the stories have the same resources available to support children’s learning. This helps users feel confident and familiar with the stories, as they know what to expect.

There are currently 10 stories in Story Corner/Clicker Friends:

• A Day at the Zoo
  
  
• Christmas Time
  
  
• A Day at School
  
  
• A Day at the Beach
  
  
• The Show
  
  
• At the Playground
  
  
• A Trip to the Park
  
  
• The Halloween Party
  
  
• The Easter Egg Hunt
  
  
• The Toy Shop

The outline of resources to support each story now looks like this:

Read a Book

A Day at the Zoo simple present tense verb 'likes' – always the same verb but a different noun (animal)	Christmas Time simple present tense different verbs each time	A Day at School continuous present tense ‘is reading’, ‘is writing’ etc.

A Day at the Beach simple past tense ‘paddled’, ‘collected’	The Show simple past tense ‘sold’, ‘juggled’

After this, we add some very small steps of progression in the complexity of the sentences – for example, adding simple prepositions or conjunctions.

At the Playground prepositions in each sentence: 'down the slide’, ‘up the net’, ‘across the bridge’	A Trip to the Park introducing conjunction 'and': ‘Mary and Billy rode their bikes’

In the next stories, there is another small step of progression in that we have two sentences on each page. We wanted to emphasise new elements that were being introduced (e.g. adjective/preposition/pronouns).

The Halloween Party 2 sentences – simple past tense + adjective in 2nd sentence ‘Billy carved a pumpkin. The pumpkin was big.’	The Easter Egg Hunt 2 sentences – simple past tense + preposition in 1st sentence and adjective (colour) in 2nd sentence ‘Tommy found an egg behind the shed. The egg was green.’	The Toy Shop present tense – the same verbs throughout 'is buying/wants', but a different noun (toy) and verb (to fly, to make), and introducing pronouns (he/she)

Sentence Set

Based on text from the book, we offer a simple sentence building activity with a pop-up (View & Remember) model users can access by clicking the button.

This model allows children to:

• look,
  
  
• cover (hide the model),
  
  
• write
  
  
• and check (open the model to check against their writing – and check by hearing their sentence read back when they add a full stop).

Of course, teachers can also easily change the sentence model offered to provide adapted levels of support:

• None - no model is provided.
  
  
• View & Copy - the model is always visible.
  
  
• Listen - the model is spoken when    is clicked.
  

Connect Set

Again, based on text from the book, this activity asks children to write by selecting from clusters of words. Whilst there is some progression (depending on the text), we have deliberately kept these very simple.

Sometimes, we give a starter and a choice of endings:

Sometimes, we offer a starter, a choice of middles and an ending.

Some of these will focus on choosing the correct verb:

Some will focus on choosing the correct preposition:

In the Toy Shop story, we ask the children to create two sentences by selecting the appropriate beginnings, middles and endings:

Talk Set

A Talk About Set using pictures from the book. This is an open-ended activity, so children can approach it at their own level.

They might choose to retell the story they read, or focus on particular aspects such as adjectives, verbs or prepositions.

Matching Set

This is a picture matching activity with a listening focus. A simple sentence from the story is offered as a sound target. The child then chooses the matching story picture from the selection.

Make a Book

This activity offers a front cover with a picture and an empty text box for children to add their name as the author. Within the book itself, there is just a single page. Providing just one page means that children can add as many (or as few) pages as they like rather than having a predetermined set number of pages to fill.

The activity book page has an empty picture cell, and children can add a story picture from the picture bank:

There is also an empty text box where children can write independently or use the supporting Word Banks to help them write:

All of the Make a Book resources offer vocabulary support in the pop-up Word Banks. The first tab has the story character names. The next tabs are determined by the complexity and content of the story text. For example, there might be (as in the Halloween Party example below) tabs with Verbs, Adjectives and Nouns to support children in building text to accompany the pictures (e.g. Billy/carved/a big/pumpkin):

Word Bank

The Word Banks provide key vocabulary for writing about the story. They have two topic grids under the headings: Characters and Story Words. For example:

Clicker Board

The aim of our Clicker Boards is to get children thinking about very basic sentence components. Each board features a picture from the story as the stimulus. Children are asked to think of key components to create a sentence. First, they think about Who? (the ‘naming part’ or main subject(s) of the sentence). Then, they think about Doing what? (the ‘telling part’ that gives more information about what is happening).

This is designed as an open-ended activity, so children may choose to construct simple or more complex sentences about the pictures. They are not restricted to the text they have read in the story.

So, for the picture below, this looks like:

Who?	Doing what?
Lizzie and Freddie	flew a kite
The children	played
Freddie	ran on the grass

The Board also has a sentence cell to allow children to write (or use the Voice Note to record) the complete sentence (e.g. Lizzie and Freddie flew a kite.).

For all of our Clicker Friends stories, see the Clicker Friends section in Story Corner on LearningGrids, or simply search for Clicker Friends.

We have a whole host of equally engaging stories to explore in our Story Corner category – from Traditional Stories and Fables & World Stories to Myths & Legends. You can also find stories by award-winning children’s author and illustrator, Pete Williamson in our Daisy & Friends section. There is even a range of Decodable Stories for children who are learning to read through phonics.

If you have any questions about these or any of our LearningGrids resources, please email our Customer Experience team via training@cricksoft.com, or book in a free customer care meeting to explore them in more detail.

We recently announced that Clicker users can now access a library of almost 10,000 Widgit Symbols at no extra cost.

This means that you can use Widgit Symbols alongside our already extensive Crick Picture Library of almost 5,000 images.

In our previous blog on the topic, we covered how you can add the symbols into different areas of Clicker such as the Predictor and different types of writing grids

This time, we are diving into the different ways you can adapt LearningGrids resources with Widgit Symbols, and how doing so can improve understanding for your learners.

Adapting LearningGrids resources with Widgit Symbols

You can add Widgit Symbols into any of our existing resources using the Picturize tool. To Picturize the entire set, navigate to ‘Edit Mode’ and select the ‘Add Picture(s)’ button, then select the Widgit Symbol library and check or uncheck the option to ignore high frequency words as required. To add symbols to a cell, simply select the cell you want to add an image to.

Widgit Symbols in:

Sentence Sets

Many of the Sentence Sets on LearningGrids work well with symbols. A great place to start is with the Sentence Patterns resources, as they contain simple, repeated sentence structures. You might want to focus your symbol support on the repeated structures, such as I like/can/am/went/like to. Or you can focus on the element of the sentence pattern that changes, such as the noun, verb, or adjective. Try it with I Like to – Sentence Patterns.

Sentence Sets that focus on adjectives work nicely too, as in the Opposites Sentences Sentence Set:

You can also use symbols to support more complex sentence writing, such as the Above, Behind, Under Sentence Set, and instruction writing, such as our Boiling an Egg set.

Connect Sets

Some of our Connect Sets already contain images, such as the ‘I Went - Sentence Patterns’ set seen below. You can opt to keep or replace the existing Crick Picture Library images when you Picturize these resources. You might want to use Widgit Symbols in both the main picture cell and the component word cells for consistency.

Alternatively, you can create a ‘next step’ challenge by keeping the photorealistic Crick Picture Library image in the main picture cell and using Widgit Symbols in the component word cells so that learners can practise matching the symbol to the concept.

Generally, the simpler Connect Sets work best with Picturize, as in the examples below, where the symbol-supported word cells contain a word or simple phrase:

• I Like – Sentence Patterns
  
  
• Minibeasts
  
  
• City and Country Lists
  
  
• 3-D Shape Hunt

Word Banks

Word Banks are some of the easiest and quickest resources to adapt using Picturize.

The ‘Quick Words’ sets are a great place to start, as the focus is on keywords. Be mindful of words that can have multiple meanings, as this means they will also have multiple associated symbols. For example: bark – verb/noun, mole – skin/animal, poach – eggs/hunting. Make sure that the image chosen is correct for the context!

It’s easy to change the image to the correct contextual symbol if needed. Simply select the cell in Edit View and use the picture icon to choose the appropriate symbol.

There is a wide range of possibilities for Word Banks with Picturize – it can be used for lower-level, simple vocabulary from Nursery Rhymes and stories, up to subject-specific topics for top primary.

(top tip: Don’t forget you can apply ‘Maximise Height’ to the cells in the grid to optimise the display size of the symbols.)

Word Banks with symbols are also great for supporting:

1. Storytelling: As in these Quick Words resources for Jack and the Beanstalk and Goldilocks.

2. Instructions: As in these Quick Words resources for Brushing Your Teeth and Making Gingerbread Biscuits.

3. Higher level topics: See the Seasons of an Apple Tree, The Solar System, Biomes and Rivers Quick Words Word Banks for some good examples of this.

Picture Words

We have a selection of Word Banks called Picture Words, which make use of images from the Crick Picture Library. You may want to adapt some of these with Widgit Symbols.

Here’s an example of an existing resource (Woodland Picture Words) which uses images from the Crick Picture Library – and how it compares to a version with Widgit Symbols. You could even offer these ‘Picture Words’ Word Banks with alternate tabs of photorealistic (i.e. Crick Picture Library) images and symbols.

Clicker Boards

Most of the Clicker Boards we create contain lots of ‘content-free’ cells for tasks such as mind mapping.

However, you can still add Widgit Symbols to Clicker Boards to add additional signposting for the cells that do contain text.

For example, you can add Widgit Symbols to the headings in the Shades of Meaning - Adjectives board so that learners have a clear understanding of concepts like ‘big’ or ‘good’ before they try to come up with more intense synonyms for them.

You can also add symbols to the prompts in Clicker Boards, such as Molly Mouse, My Favourite Player, and Synonyms and Antonyms, to ensure that your learners know exactly what they need to add into the empty cells as they complete the activity.

Talk Sets and Matching Sets

Adding symbols to Talk Sets and Matching Sets is a great way to help learners make the connection between the concept and the sound of the word.

To do so, you will need to remove the existing images from the set and replace them with Widgit Symbols. A good tip for doing this quickly is to open a related Word Bank that has already been Picturized with symbols. Whilst creating a Talk or Matching Set and adding in the symbols, use the ‘In Open Clicker Sets’ option to select the symbols that appear in the related Word Bank.

Sets with simple vocabulary work best, such as the Talk Sets  I Can – Sentence Patterns and Jack and the Beanstalk – Key Words.

LearningGrids ‘family’ of symbols-adapted resources

Finally, here’s an example of a complete ‘family’ of resources based on the story The Wind and the Sun, which have been adapted with Widgit Symbols. This gives you an idea of the kinds of linked resources your pupils could be using with the extra layer of signposting and support offered by symbols.

Have a look through thousands of existing resources on LearningGrids to explore the ways this exciting Clicker and Widgit Symbols collaboration can open up new levels of engagement and understanding for your learners.

If you need any assistance updating to the latest versions of Clicker, contact our technical support team. If you have any questions about the new tools and features, we’ve introduced, you can book a meeting with your Partnership Consultant.

Bridging the gap between Reception and Year 1 is an ongoing challenge in many schools. Transitioning from the ethos and learning style of a Reception classroom into the curriculum demands of Year 1, without putting too much pressure on the children, can be difficult.

The EYFS - Y1 transition period can take time and patience (from both Reception staff and Y1 staff!) and how you approach this transition will vary depending on the needs of your children and the routines of your classrooms. Whether you have continuous provision embedded across both EYFS and Y1, or a more formal learning structure – moving year groups can be daunting for your pupils!

To help ease the transition, I have put together the tips below to share some of the ways that Clicker and the ever-expanding bank of resources on LearningGrids can be used to help pupils adjust to their new school life.

Reduce pupil anxiety by helping them to picture the classroom

One of the reasons that the transition can be unsettling for pupils is that they don’t know what to expect.

A simple way to help this is to give pupils activities that help them imagine a typical day in class.

The Pam’s School – Read a Book is an excellent place to start. In this Clicker Book, pupils can read simple sentences about a girl called Pam and her school, supported by matching images. This resource is a great base to create an age-appropriate visual guide for pupils on what to look out for at their school.

To make the resource your own:

• First swap out the existing images for photos of key areas and staff in your school.
  
  
• Then edit the text to help your pupils learn any names of people, objects and places they will need.

(Top tip: Make sure staff names or school-specific terminology are read back to your pupils correctly - add the correct pronunciation and spelling to the Word Pool.)

Collaborate with former Year 1s

New pupils will have lots of questions about what to expect from their Year 1 journey. So who better to answer them than those who have already gone through it?

Create interactive activities to share between the year groups. I would recommend using either a Talk Set or a Clicker Board with added Voice Notes.

Your new Year 1s can brainstorm all the questions they have into a Talk Set or Clicker Board. Then, pass this over to the former Year 1 class to record their answers.

This helps ease new pupils’ worries and is a good way to review the previous Year 1's learning and check how well they understood it.

Adapt for EAL pupils

For EAL pupils, and particularly new arrivals, the new year comes with the added challenge of learning a lot of new vocabulary. To help, there are a number of school-specific activities in the New To English section of LearningGrids. You can learn more about using Clicker to support EAL pupils by reading EAL learning support with Clicker.

Use visual timetables to help pupils adjust to their new routine

The new routine will probably be the biggest adjustment for your Year 1s.

At the start of the school year, they will have just come back from six weeks of holiday, and for many children their last experience of school would have followed a free form learning through play approach that allowed them to explore and discover at their own pace. Now there might be the expectation that they have to sit down for longer periods in more formally-structured lessons.

Regardless of what your daily routine looks like, visual timetables are a great tool. They help pupils remember routines and remove the stress of not knowing what comes next (and reduce the number of times you have to explain that it’s not lunchtime yet!)

To start making visual timetables for your class, search for 'visual timetable' on LearningGrids and select the option that works best for your classroom needs, including:

• The Now and Next – Make a Book: You can use this to create a simple timetable for the whole day. Pupils can have it on hand and independently flip through to the portion of the day they’re curious about.
  
  
• The Visual Schedule: This can be used to display all the activities on one page, or even just the current and next activity if you find that your pupils get distracted by thinking too far ahead.
  
  
• The Now, Next, Then Connect Set: This lets pupils practise forming sentences with the key words and phrases from the timetable. So it helps to embed the routine in their memory whilst giving them an opportunity to practise early sentence structure.
  
  

Start building independence

Getting your new Year 1s to attempt their tasks independently can be a challenge. Many young children seek adult reassurance for anything they find tricky as the idea of working things out for themselves is peculiar and new.

The Stuck List  is a great resource to remind your pupils to try their work before asking for help. You can fill in the spaces ahead of time so pupils can have the list on hand as an easy reference or use it as the starting point for an activity where the class comes together to brainstorm things they can do before raising their hand.   

Add prompts such as ‘check the board’ or ‘read the task’ to remind pupils to refer to instructions, ‘ask your friends’ to encourage knowledge sharing between peers, or 'try even if you're not sure' to reassure them that being stuck is a normal part of learning. 

Keep track of how your pupils are handling the changes

The well-being of your pupils is just as important as their academic success, and they will be feeling all sorts of new emotions as they transition into a new classroom/year group. Setting aside some time to allow your pupils to work through these feelings will play a big role in how they experience their new normal. Resources like the Daily Feelings Connect Set allow pupils to clearly communicate their feelings with the help of easy-to-understand visual prompts.

You can assign the Daily Feelings set - or any other suitable resource from the Feelings and Action section of LearningGrids - as often as needed. This helps you monitor how your class is coping with the transition into the next phase of learning. It also makes it easier to spot pupils who might need extra support.

Find out more about how Clicker can be used to support young learners

• Early reading support with Clicker
• Using technology in your continuous provision: Clicker
• Clicker and Phonics webinar
• Supporting writing in Early Years

And for helpful advice on how to customise LearningGrids resources for your class visit Clicker tutorials - step-by-step videos for Clicker users.

Adaptive teaching has become a key focus in classrooms, aimed at making learning more inclusive and accessible to all pupils. This approach enables teachers to tailor their instructions to diverse learning needs without lowering expectations.   

Implementing adaptive strategies can be difficult, especially when trying to balance the diverse needs of pupils with the constraints of time and resources. With Clicker, teachers can overcome common barriers to adaptive teaching and create an inclusive learning environment where every pupil can thrive. 

Our three-level Clicker Books and writing grids are designed to support pupils of all abilities. This means everyone can access the same topic content in a way that suits their reading and writing needs.

The resources are designed to work hand-in-hand, providing a consistent and inclusive approach to learning that encourages pupils to engage with reading and writing across the curriculum.

Three-level books for adaptive teaching and reading support

Clicker’s three-level books are a fantastic new resource for reading support in the classroom. Each book is available in three distinct reading levels, ensuring every pupil - whether emergent, struggling, or fluent readers - can dive into the same topic content.

The three levels are:

Read It Yourself 📖

Content: One simple sentence per page, designed for pupils who are just starting to read independently. The focus is on decoding and basic comprehension. 

Support: On each page children are encouraged to attempt reading the sentence for themselves. However, the words can be read aloud by clicking on them, or a speaker button can be added to offer maximum scaffolding.

Purpose: This level is ideal for emergent readers who need support with word recognition but are encouraged to engage independently. 

Read in Steps 📘

Content: Multiple simple sentences on a page. This version is ideal for children who need more support to break down information. 

Support: ‘Bite-sized’ chunks of information in short sentences so children access small pieces of information one bit at a time. Text-to-speech feedback is available throughout.

Purpose: The focus here is on breaking down complex ideas into manageable parts, allowing children to access information at their own pace.

Read a Book 📙

Content: This level offers the most complex text, with longer, in-depth explanations and more challenging vocabulary. So, this book type is perfect for children who are confident readers.

Support: A speaker button is offered to develop reading fluency in longer pieces of text. Children can also click on individual words to hear more complex words read aloud.

Purpose: At this stage, pupils work with more ambitious content, requiring a deeper understanding of the subject matter and the ability to express their ideas through written responses. 

While the text complexity changes across levels, the topic content stays the same. This means pupils can explore the same subjects together, no matter their reading ability, encouraging inclusion and shared learning experiences.

Clicker writing grids for adaptive teaching writing support

Clicker’s writing grids have always been a staple for supporting writing development, and a customer favourite.

They offer three levels of support that align perfectly with their Clicker Book counterpart:

• Sentence Sets 🖊️: Pupils recreate exact sentences from the books, reinforcing reading and writing connections. These align with Read It Yourself Clicker Books.
  
  
• Connect Sets ✍️: Pupils match sentence fragments (beginnings, middles and endings) to build their own sentences, combining structure with creativity. Connect Sets match our Read in Steps Clicker Books.
  
  
• Word Banks 📝: Topic-specific vocabulary banks that help more independent writers express their understanding using key words from the books. Word Banks are organised in tabs to provide access alphabetically or through topic areas. They accompany our Read a Book Clicker Books.

These writing activities mirror the content of the three-level books, ensuring a seamless transition from reading to writing. As a result, pupils feel more confident as they move between reading and writing tasks, reinforcing their understanding and skills.

How Clicker’s reading and writing resources work together

The magic of Clicker’s resources lies in how they complement each other. To begin, pupils can read about a topic at a level that suits them. Then they can move on to writing activities that reinforce what they’ve learned. As a result, pupils are supported in both reading comprehension and writing skills which helps them engage more deeply with the curriculum.

Clicker’s flexibility also makes it a powerful tool for adaptive teaching. Whether a pupil needs additional scaffolding or is ready for more independent tasks, Clicker enables teachers to tailor reading and writing activities to suit individual learning needs.

For example, a pupil might read about the Shang Dynasty at their reading level, then use a matching writing grid to create sentences, connect ideas, or write independently using topic-specific vocabulary.

This method keeps learning cohesive and accessible, no matter where a pupil is on their learning journey.

What are the benefits of using Clicker’s three-level books and writing grids? 

• Inclusive curriculum 🫶: By offering different levels of content on the same topic, Clicker ensures that every pupil, no matter their reading level, can engage with the subject matter and demonstrate understanding. 
  

• Scaffolded support 🏗️: The books provide scaffolds - from simple sentences to complex vocabulary - that progressively build pupils' skills, ensuring that no one is left behind. 
  
  
• Flexibility in teaching 🔀: Teachers can use the books to support adaptive teaching, modifying the pace, support, and materials to meet the diverse needs of their class. This approach aligns perfectly with the goal of personalised learning - tailoring instruction to the individual needs of each learner. 

Extra activities to reinforce curriculum learning

Beyond reading and writing resources, Clicker offers a range of interactive activities for children to respond to the text and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding:

• Talk Sets 🔊: Pupils can discuss topics and share ideas aloud, building speaking and listening skills.
  
  
• Clicker Board 🎨: Learners can manipulate and link any combination of words, pictures and sounds as they summarise the text.
  
  
• Make a Book 📕: Pupils create their own books based on what they’ve learned, encouraging creativity, understanding and re-telling.

These activities provide varied ways for pupils to interact with content. Consequently, learning is more dynamic, enjoyable and inclusive as pupils choose how to show their understanding.

Find out more about Clicker's inclusive learning resources

🔍 The science of reading and Clicker's decodable books

🧮 Using Clicker for maths: A comprehensive guide for teachers

📹 On-demand webinars: Free recordings of our fantastic webinars. Explore how Clicker can support a variety of learners, needs and settings.

WorkSpace in DocsPlus is a brilliant tool for helping students get ready to write by organising their ideas first. Whether they're on an iPad, Chromebook, or desktop, they can easily create mind maps, charts, and visual planners with text, pictures, or voice recordings. By giving students a clear way to plan, WorkSpace builds their independence and boosts their confidence, helping them tackle writing tasks across the secondary curriculum.

Below, we explore the powerful capabilities of WorkSpace through three focused themes: topic-specific planning across the curriculum, planning for non-fiction writing, and its transformative support for English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners.

Topic-specific planning and organising ideas across the curriculum

LearningGrids is packed with over 350 WorkSpace planning resources, giving students hands-on tools to build essential skills across a range of subjects. Students can add words, phrases, images and voice recordings to capture thoughts and record initial ideas before writin

In the examples below, see how WorkSpace can help students to:

• Outline key events or plots
• Plan creative writing content
• Drill deeper into sub-topics/sub-branches
• Plan comparisons, debates or for/against essays

Mind maps for planning writing content

Here, WorkSpace offers students a place to gather notes to outline the development of the Women's Suffrage Movement or to plan writing about the significance of key events in Macbeth.

Mind maps can also be used as a stimulus for creative writing, for example by collecting words and phrases to describe a scene in a particular setting or to develop a character by considering their attributes and characteristics.

Mind maps can of course be more complex and include sub-topics or sub-branches to really drill down into ideas. For example, students might be collecting information for writing about the habitat, plants and animals of the Great Barrier Reef, or considering immediate and long-term effects of the Black Death on medieval society.

Complex mind maps like these encourage students to not just make notes but to begin organising ideas – helping with the structure of the writing when that stage of the task begins. For example, students might consider the social, economic, environmental and political impacts of a tropical storm, or outline for/against arguments in a debate about the use of nuclear power.

WorkSpace can be sent to a DocsPlus document as a diagram or an essay outline, so students really have a solid foundation from which to begin their writing. A WorkSpace can even be transformed into a Wordbar for useful vocabulary support at the writing stage.

Tables and charts for organising and comparing content

A WorkSpace can also be presented as a table or chart for organising and comparing – a claim to the throne in History, properties and behaviours of metals and nonmetals in Science, or even comparing countries in Geography.

A WorkSpace can even be used for making notes about images – for example, adding notes about major parts of the human brain, or analysing a historical artefact under key headings.

Planning non-fiction writing tasks

Getting students to write confidently within a range of non-fiction genres is no easy task. But our set of WorkSpace planners for DocsPlus on LearningGrids could be just what you’re looking for if you have students starting out or struggling with writing non-fiction text types. The planners are designed to help students organise what they want to say, within a framework that is adapted to the specific writing genre.

Once the ideas have been added – you might even want to use Voice Notes so students can record key ideas and prompts – the next stage in the process can begin.

Supporting EAL students to plan and write independently

The challenges faced by students learning English as an additional language are multi-layered. They are not only learning English, but also learning curriculum subjects through English. 

Very often, a student’s technological skills are more advanced than their second language skills. So, providing them with supportive tools such as DocsPlus can really help them to develop their English skills. I wanted to explore some ideas for using the WorkSpace tool in DocsPlus to facilitate an important aspect of an English language learner’s journey. 

The Bell Foundation is a charity which aims to enable EAL learners to overcome disadvantage through language education. It identifies Five Principles of EAL pedagogy – the first of which is recognising multilingualism (a learner’s ability to listen, speak, read and/or write in one or more languages) as an asset. 

So why is multilingualism so important? 

• Multilingualism is a valuable resource! Students can draw on their ability to listen, speak, read or write in one or more languages to support their acquisition of English and also their learning of curriculum subject content. 
  
• A student’s home language is an important part of their identity.  
  
• For EAL learners to feel confident and have positive self-esteem, they need to feel proud of their bilingual skills and heritage. 

Visual plans to help EAL students plan and write independently

Using visuals is a great way to support understanding of content. We can use images such as diagrams or photos in a WorkSpace resource to reinforce the concept we are teaching. For example, we might be considering animal life cycles – we can add an image to represent the stages of the life cycle with callouts and labels to add information. By including Voice Notes with each label cell, the student could record what they want to say before writing. Additionally, we might want to duplicate the WorkSpace so that the student can record and add notes in their first language to support their learning.

Another way to do this might be to use a labelled diagram with callout labels to add the corresponding text in the student’s home language.

You could also use a Frayer Model idea (a graphical organiser for word analysis and vocabulary building) to explore and contextualise subject-specific vocabulary. It’s a great way of allowing a student time to think and process new vocabulary and learning. 

In summary, the benefits of using a student’s first language alongside English include: 

• It supports an EAL student’s language learning – literacy skills in their first language are transferable and will support their acquisition of an additional language. 
  
• It also supports language learning of their peers – encouraging other students in the class to learn the student’s home language is equally beneficial to their learning. 
  
• It promotes inclusion, empathy and self-esteem – the student feels included and valued, and his/her peers are able to appreciate some of the difficulties the EAL student may be facing. 

That's why WorkSpace is your inclusive planning tool for secondary writing...

Incorporating WorkSpace into your classroom provides a powerful way to support diverse learning needs and enhance student confidence. Whether it's helping students organise their ideas with tools on LearningGrids, guiding them through structured planning for non-fiction writing, or supporting EAL learners with visual and contextual aids, WorkSpace offers flexible resources for a variety of tasks. With its easy-to-use features, WorkSpace not only boosts student independence but also makes learning more accessible and engaging. By utilising WorkSpace, you can empower all learners to plan, organise, and write with confidence across the curriculum.

• Supporting struggling readers to access their secondary education
  
  
• Subject-specific vocabulary for struggling readers and writers

Clicker enables children of all abilities to significantly develop their reading and writing skills (and confidence). As such, it is widely used to provide EAL learning support in the classroom. You can use Clicker to teach children to understand, speak, read and write in English, and enable them to participate in lessons with their peers.

For EAL pupils, having the right learning support can instantly make it accessible - and enjoyable! With activities easy to tailor to pupils’ needs, Clicker is a great tool to support the acquisition of the English language.

How does Clicker offer EAL language support?

• Speech feedback – the latest British English speech engines provide pupils with a clear pronunciation model and helps them to make connections between the way words look and sound. Also, the highlight of the text as it reads, tracking from left to right is extremely important for children new to English.
  
• Picture support – the Crick Picture Library contains over 4000 engaging pictures, enabling you to provide your pupils with graphical support as they work. You can add your own photos and images to create activities based on each child’s own interests and experiences.
  
• Talk Sets – using Talk sets is a perfect way to practise speaking skills. For example, add pictures from a familiar environment and let the pupil record his or her voice for each item.
  
• Sentence building – create sentence building activities – and individualise with levels of support – in seconds! Use the Guided Order functionality to really reinforce left-to-right directionality.
  
• Free resources – our LearningGrids site has hundreds of ready-made free resources for Clicker users, making curriculum content accessible and therefore highly supportive and appropriate for English language learners. These include Clicker Books to engage learners, Matching Sets to support emergent readers, Talk Sets to develop speaking and listening skills, and Sentence Sets and Connect Sets to support the first steps in writing.

Enabling EAL learners to access the curriculum

Clicker resources are available on LearningGrids for a range of subject areas (e.g. Science, Maths, Geography, History). Because of the additional support provided by Clicker, all of these resources could be considered useful for English language learners accessing the curriculum. However, I’ve highlighted a few key areas below as starting points.

Use Clicker's EAL learning support to help new arrivals with language aquisition

New to English (At School / House / Street / Supermarket / Shopping Centre)

The main focus of the ‘New to English’ activities is to offer learning support to EAL learners with little or no English (i.e. new arrivals) essential vocabulary. Start them in their new environment with inclusive resources that feature active listening, speaking, reading and writing in English.

These activities aid the development of vocabulary, sentence structure, and functional English. They develop in small incremental steps to help the learner to become ready to communicate in English and to develop the skills necessary to access the curriculum. Children benefit from the supportive framework of Clicker – they can listen to words and sentences, record their own voices, write labels and sentences. They can work at their own pace and build up their skills and confidence in a secure and non-threatening environment.

Support EAL pupils in the classroom with text-to-speech to model language

The real speech used in the Explore / Label / Talk / Matching activities offers a clear language model and children can record simple words and phrases themselves – as many times as they like. An opportunity for practising English, but equally for inclusivity of the child’s first language – they can record names of the objects in their own language, so their English-speaking classmates can be new language learners too!

For each topic (School / House / Street / Supermarket / Shopping Centre), children explore a range of different focus areas to learn associated key vocabulary. Each focus area generally introduces 10 key words, and through the Clicker activities:

The activities offer EAL pupils MULTI-SENSORY learning support – oral, aural, visual – and children are encouraged to ACTIVELY participate in the activities. The combination of spoken, written, visual and picture support gives learners the opportunity to engage in meaningful activities matched to their level of English language development. This multi-level approach through Clicker offers lots of ‘ways in’ for children learning in different ways, so reinforcing the chances of retention.

Widen EAL learners' vocabulary

Within the English category on LearningGrids, there are some really helpful and engaging resources to support early EAL pupils in the classroom – you might want to start off with developing phonics skills and phonological awareness in Sounds & Letters and Alphabet Animals. Or you may be looking at reinforcing and widening children’s vocabulary repertoire – and there are some great resources focusing on this in Vocabulary.

In Grammar, take a look at the Sentence Grammar learning area – there are some really nice resources which help children to practise early sentence writing skills within clearly structured guidelines.

See the Sentence Block activities – e.g. Simple Sentences – Sentence Blocks / Animal Actions – Sentence Blocks – which make use of Guided Order and cell colours to provide a supportive framework for building early sentences.

It’s worth noting that if you search for all Sentence Sets on LearningGrids, any of the Curriculum-linked activities can be adapted to work with Guided Order by simply adjusting the settings in Edit View. You can tailor ALL resources to suit the needs and support requirements of different pupils.

The Colourful Semantics resources are also great for reinforcing the key elements of sentence construction. We also have a really useful webinar that explains how to use Clicker with Colourful Semantics and picture support.

Wellbeing resources with EAL learning support

Of course, many EAL children come from countries where there is conflict have experienced trauma. With this in mind, there are some great resources in English/About Me to support children’s wellbeing and emotional learning in the classroom:

Look particularly in the Feelings & Actions learning area. The Daily Feelings Chart provides a nice opportunity for children to express feelings simply using emoji images. They can also use the Connect Set for a simple writing version of the same type of activity:

The Clicker Book When I Feel Worried is also nice for sharing with children – and it includes clear pictures to support comprehension.

As children become more confident with language, there is an abundance of resources on LearningGrids for EAL learning support - including children’s wellbeing and mindset such as Positive Self-Talk and A Mindful Walk.

How can Clicker support my EAL pupils' learning further?

These are just a few examples of how Clicker – together with our range of ready-made resources – supports EAL pupils in the classroom. Visit LearningGrids for hundreds of other ideas.

Find out more about using Clicker to enable an inclusive classroom for English Language Learners:

• Watch our informative webinar: Empowering EAL learners in the primary classroom

We recently published some Clicker LearningGrids resources aimed at facilitating self-registration, so here’s a spotlight and overview of how and why you might want to use these in your own settings. 

Self-registration is a process where children take an active role in registering themselves in class at the beginning of each day or session. Instead of teachers calling out names or completing this task themselves, the children take an active role by choosing their names or pictures and displaying them in a designated area. It streamlines this daily process – so it saves teachers’ time – but it also offers many educational and developmental advantages. 

It fosters independence, decision making and communication skills – by allowing children to choose and display their names or pictures, they develop a sense of independence and responsibility. It also provides an opportunity for interactions with teachers and peers, encouraging children to practise their communication and social skills. These skills, in turn, help to build children’s self-confidence. 

Our Class Attendance Clicker Board can be used to create a record of who is in class today. Find a picture/name cell and move it to the right-hand side of the Board to show which children are here today. Of course, the idea is that you add pictures/names of the children in your class. When everyone has checked in, take the opportunity for some maths practice: count up the total number and use the microphone button to record how many children are in class today. 

Alternatively, our Class Attendance Connect Set enables children to write about who is in class. Once again, cells in this resource can be edited to include pictures/names of the children in your class.

Finally, there’s a Make a Book resource in which children add names and pictures from the banks provided (which you can personalise with your own pictures/names).  

Self-registration can also be used to support children’s emotional development. By including emotion symbols, children can express how they are feeling at the start of the day. Or see School Day Report for a Connect Set which includes a simple frame to write about feelings at the end of the day. 

For these and other resources based on school, feelings and many more topics, see LearningGrids.

British Science Week celebrates its 30th anniversary this year and takes place in March. The theme this year is ‘Time’. So here’s a quick dive into some of our Clicker resources on LearningGrids which might fit the bill if you are participating in this – or any – science event.

Time of the Dinosaurs

From time long ago, get your pupils thinking about how we know so much about dinosaurs today with our Fossils book and supporting activities. They can also prepare an oral presentation of the fossilisation process over time using the Fish to Fossil Talk Set.

Evolution and Adaptation Over Time

Pupils can write about how living things inherit features and characteristics from their parents and how these can gradually change over time to help them survive, with our resources on Evolution. They can use our Animal Adaptations mind mapping activity and Word Bank to brainstorm and write about special adaptations that animals have developed over time to suit the environment in which they live.

Seasonal Change Over Time

Perhaps seasonal change is your focus. See our Seasons of an Apple Tree book to read about how the tree changes over the seasons of a year. Or use the Connect Set to write about the changes using sentence starters and endings.

Find all of these – and many more science-related Clicker resources – on LearningGrids.

We usually think of “time” as a mathematical concept, but it is interesting to get your students to consider the important role it plays in many scientific topics as well.

Here’s a quick dive into some of our Clicker resources on LearningGrids where time is integral to the science.

Time of the Dinosaurs

From time long ago, get your students thinking about how we know so much about dinosaurs today with our Fossils book and supporting activities. They can also prepare an oral presentation of the fossilization process over time using the Fish to Fossil Talk Set.

Evolution and Adaptation Over Time

Students can write about how living things inherit features and characteristics from their parents and how these can gradually change over time to help them survive, with our resources on Evolution. They can use our Animal Adaptations mind mapping activity and Word Bank to brainstorm and write about special adaptations that animals have developed over time to suit the environment in which they live.

Getting students to write confidently within a range of non-fiction genres is no easy task. But our set of WorkSpace planners for DocsPlus on LearningGrids could be just what you’re looking for if you have students starting out or struggling with writing non-fiction text types. The planners are designed to help students organise what they want to say, within a framework that is adapted to the specific writing genre. What’s more, you can use our WorkSpace planners on Win/Mac and iPad/Chromebook, so your students can have access to this fantastic tool wherever they are in school.

Let’s begin by looking at the Discussion Planner. The framework is clearly set out to encourage the thought process involved – students are guided to list their title, key points on both sides (for and against) and a conclusion.

Once the ideas have been added – you might even want to use Voice Notes so students can record key ideas and prompts – the next stage in the process can begin.

Simply by clicking on the export tool, students can use their work as direct support for their own writing. They can send their planner to the document as an image or as text. They can even create a supportive Wordbar (a bank of key words/phrases) with the text from their planner.

This introductory video to WorkSpace is a brilliant tool to understand how to best support your students’ plan and organise their writing.

There is also a Discussion Frame Wordbar available on LearningGrids, which supports students writing an argument or discussion text on any topic, providing them with a writing frame, general words and phrases, link words and phrases, and a tab to add topic-specific vocabulary.

Find these resources – as well as a range of other planners and frames for different non-fiction genres, including explanation, procedure, report and recount – by typing ‘Planner’ into LearningGrids. And if you have any questions at all, our friendly team are here to answer them - email us at info@cricksoft.com or call us on 01604 671691!

Did you know that May is National Share-A-Story Month? Storytelling is a great way of getting your pupils actively engaged and motivated in sharing stories with others, so if you’re looking for some inspiration, why not take a look at LearningGrids? We have lots of resources to support all children – even those who are not so confident – in accessing the power of story sharing.

Oral storytelling offers huge benefits in developing children’s language and literacy skills, and a fantastic boost to those children who struggle to get their ideas down with pen and paper. For many children, being able to ‘talk’ their story allows them to fully express themselves in a way that pen and paper may limit. With Clicker, children can not only practise their storytelling but also record it – so it’s a great assessment record. They can rehearse in a comfortable setting – on their own or with a partner – until they are happy, and then share their finished work as a presentation to the class. Retelling stories orally helps children to practise and internalise story patterns and language, as well as developing an understanding of narrative ‘building blocks’ like characters, settings and plot build-up.

Search for Tell the Story Talk Sets on LearningGrids to find lots of resources (covering fiction and non-fiction topics) which offer a framework for children’s oral retelling skills. A really fun one is the Mexican folktale of Señor Coyote and the Cheese. Children will love retelling the story of the greedy coyote and the clever rabbit who outwits him! We also have brilliant Nursery Rhyme resources that children love reading, singing and adding actions to.

Storytelling is about being expressive and having fun – let Clicker help your children do just that whilst developing their creative skills.

For more information on how Clicker can support story telling and literacy at your school, you can contact our friendly team at info@cricksoft.com!

We connected with Book Dash to enquire about supporting the resources through Clicker on LearningGrids – and received an enthusiastic response from Director Dorette Louw, confirming that we could indeed use any of the books, ending her email with the words: “We adore seeing what happens to our stories once they’re out in the world!”

A huge appeal of the stories is the range of diverse representation. So we eagerly got to work looking through the available titles (there are hundreds!) and seeing which might work well with Clicker.

The stories – all beautifully illustrated and unique – are mostly aimed at early readers and include wordless picture books too.

The first two of these books have now been published on LearningGrids:

• How Do You Sleep?
• Goldfish Genius

How Do You Sleep?

This story is beautiful, and the images are really engaging and appealing to young children.

The Reading Book has strong repetition and the graphics are so much fun – my personal favourite is definitely the owl page … and yes baby owls really do sleep on their faces! When creating the book, we could have used the images without the text, but we wanted to stay as faithful as possible to the original, especially as we felt the layout of the text was such an important design feature.

As well as making the book available for readers online, we also wanted to offer additional supporting activities where possible and relevant. For this story, we have created a Make a Book activity (where children can write about the story using beginnings/middles/endings).

There’s also a Sentence, Connect, and Talk Set to enable differentiated levels of response according to individual needs. A Board Set allows children to organise ideas about how the animals in the story sleep and about how they sleep.

Goldfish Genius

Another fun title, and one of Book Dash’s wordless stories. To distinguish this from our usual "Read a Book" sets, we called the stimulus story book a "Picture Book". Wordless picture books like this are important early reading resources as they help children learn to infer what is happening in the story – since there no words, they have to figure out the story using the pictures and their imagination. This is vital in helping to develop not only comprehension but also an overall understanding of story structure and plot.

To support this story, we also have a Make a Book activity, a Talk Set and a Clicker Board so children can record – through writing, captions or speaking – their own interpretation of what is happening in the text-free story.

We hope to add more Book Dash stories and supporting resources to LearningGrids in the future. We are so grateful for this opportunity and super excited to share a more diverse range of stories and characters in our Story Corner category on LearningGrids.

According to lecturer in education Dr Kirstin Mulholland, everyone needs a ‘stuck list’. She shared her advice in a recent article about classroom strategies to support pupils to work and tackle challenges in their learning independently, minimising the first port of call being to ask an adult for help. If this is something you use or are thinking of using, it’s worth considering how Clicker might be an important feature on your own ‘stuck list’.

Developing independence is at the very heart of Clicker, offering multi-layered support and equipping children with strategies that they can use without the assistance of an adult. These include:

• A child-friendly spell checker which is speech supported; children can listen to a word before using it.
• Speech feedback with realistic-sounding children’s voices; pupils can hear their work read back to them, encouraging them to actively review and self-correct their work.
• A library of over 4500 curriculum-related pictures which can be used as visual support in documents and writing grids – a valuable tool for supporting literacy development.
• Voice Notes which enable pupils to record their own audio notes before they write; they can rehearse their sentences or capture initial thoughts and ideas. Or use Voice Notes to add instructions for a task so children can check and re-check as and when they need to.
• Intelligent word prediction to support struggling spellers and encourage pupils to use more adventurous vocabulary; like the spell checker, the predictor is speech supported, so children can check words before using them.
• Accessible-for-all curriculum content with talking Clicker Books, Matching Sets and Talk Sets to develop speaking and listening skills – perfect for emergent or struggling readers and EAL pupils.
• Writing Grids which enable pupils to write with whole words and phrases. Emerging writers can build sentences word-by-word, while Word Banks provide scaffolding to support developing writers.
• Free resources to support the curriculum with LearningGrids, an ever-growing bank of ready-made resources, covering a wide range of subjects and topics.

At the start of the school year, you could use Clicker Board to create a thinking map of strategies with your class – including those above, or other strategies such as using a paper/online dictionary, looking at previous work in their books or examples on the whiteboard, or turning to the person next to you for help and advice.

Once you've finished the thinking map, you can send the text content to the Document and so create a written list which can be clearly displayed in the classroom as a reference point throughout the year.

As Dr Mulholland points out, creating a list like this with your class makes our expectations of independent working explicit and supports children to take ownership and control of their learning. It develops children’s understanding of themselves as learners (metacognition) – how they learn best and how to overcome any obstacles or barriers they meet.

So, if it’s not something you’re already using, why not give the ‘stuck list’ a go and think about how Clicker and our free resources on LearningGrids might form a vital part of your ‘stuck list’ toolkit, helping your pupils to help themselves.

Clicker is a great tool in supporting learners at all stages of their literacy journey. With lots of recent talk about cognitive load theory and its implications on learning, I wanted to explore some ideas about how Clicker can help.

First the science …

Children are often bombarded with information and ideas when they are learning new topics, and not surprisingly, this can be overwhelming! Often, they grasp some of the learning, but not quite all – and this impacts not only the present but also future learning outcomes.

It’s all to do with our “working (short-term) memory” and how it can only deal with a limited amount of information at any one time. Too much and the result, according to educational psychologist John Sweller, is “cognitive overload”. When we exceed the capacity of our working memory, our learning is impeded.

There are strategies to reduce the load on short-term memory, and many of these are well supported and facilitated by Clicker. Essentially, children need to build up a secure store of knowledge in their long-term memory – so they can draw on it when they meet new topics and don’t rely solely on (and overload) their short-term memory. The trick is making sure that the knowledge has been processed and fully understood in the children’s working memory first – if it has, it will be transferred to their long-term memory to support future learning.

Activating prior knowledge before starting work on new learning, encourages children to pull what they have previously learned (from their long-term memory) into their working (short-term) memory. They can then take the new information, building it onto what they already know, to create a more developed body of knowledge to store in their long-term memory for future learning.

Cloze activities in Clicker are a great way to revisit key concepts and assess children’s knowledge and understanding – as well as identifying any “gaps”. Satisfyingly quick and easy to create – simply add any text into a Cloze Document and remove keywords to check knowledge.

Say for example, we are learning about how plants grow in science. Before we begin reading our Plant Life Cycle book, we might want to do a quick recap on the names and functions of plant parts, as these will be terms revisited in a new context. So we could create a quick retrieval practice Cloze activity (I used the text from the Clicker Book About Plants – Read a Book). Prior knowledge is consolidated, and we are ready to move onto the new learning about how each these parts grow as part of a plant’s life cycle.

Other types of low-stakes retrieval exercises – such as Matching or Talk – also provide valuable extra practice, reinforce memory and ascertain what children do (and don’t) know. You could also use a Clicker Board at the start or end of a lesson and/or topic to create a mind map to summarise previous knowledge and understanding. Get children to use Talk Sets to orally demonstrate knowledge. They could research a topic for 10 minutes and then record an information podcast about 10 key points. Many of our Reading Books are linked to complementary Talk Sets, so this is often an activity on LearningGrids that is ready to go!

Research shows that providing frameworks and models can also support learners. The frames act as a prop, freeing up working memory capacity which then builds onto their long-term memory. The models can be gradually “faded” (removed) to encourage more independent working as learners’ knowledge and confidence grow, so they get the right level of support at each stage.

Continuing with the plants theme, we might start with a Sentence Set which offers a clear model to write simple sentences about parts of a plant. The next stage might be a structured writing frame with a lot of information, like our Connect Set on the same topic. This could be followed by a “frame” in the form of a Word Bank with less structure and information, although vocabulary is still arranged in topic tabs for a softer level of guidance. The ultimate goal is that learners are able to work without a writing frame, although we could still offer vocabulary in an A – Z format which requires much more independent application.

These are all great features of Clicker which can help with memory capacity and retention. Search on LearningGrids for a range of activities, including Sentence Sets, Connect Sets and Word Banks.

A recent report shared headteachers’ concerns that teenagers are more stressed about upcoming exams than they were before the Covid pandemic struck. With stress and anxiety levels higher than before 2020, according to a survey by the Association of School and College Leaders, I thought I’d share an idea about using DocsPlus to prepare a fun exam/revision planner to help learners organise their thoughts and feel a little more in control of the situation.

Having seen a couple of great exam prep mind maps online, it seemed there was an opportunity to use WorkSpace in DocsPlus to create something similar. I’ll confess it’s been a while since I did any revision planning (or revision for that matter!), but this is what I came up with – I have no doubt that you will have much better ideas!

I used the complex spider template in WorkSpace (click  in the Smart Tab ribbon tab and choose WorkSpace to see the template designs).

I added some very simple headings – What? When? How? Where? – to start breaking down the areas that needed thought and planning. Although it’s very straightforward, it’s actually a great place to start as it helps to focus in on the important revision elements that need consideration.

I then started looking at a more detailed idea which could be broken down into smaller steps. This time, rather than the revision what/when/where/how headings, I looked at the bigger picture of ‘getting ready for exams’ and thought about all the significant areas of requirement in order to make it achievable and effective. I decided that these areas were: my plan, which subjects I needed to study, what resources I would need to optimise my study time, and what personal considerations for wellbeing I needed to ensure my mind was primed for learning.

I realised that, whilst this was a great overview, I needed to break the plan down further – so for each area, I added a new tab to the WorkSpace. I then created a mind map that gave a ‘zoomed in’ view to deconstruct the detail required to achieve the goal. So, for my ‘Resources’, I broke this down into the stationery, technology, study space and teacher support I might need. For my ‘Content’, I focused in on each subject area and listed the topics or areas of learning that particularly needed revision.

However you choose to plan, having a clear road map for the weeks ahead is so important. Being mindful of the task ahead and what is required to achieve it guides our thinking and helps to reduce anxiety, ensuring a smoother, stress-free journey – with (fingers crossed) a successful destination!

And don’t forget, we have hundreds of helpful curriculum-focused DocsPlus resources to support students with their content revision on LearningGrids. Wishing you and your learners the very best of luck for the next few weeks.

Our Decodable Stories on LearningGrids for Clicker are perfect for early learners starting out on systematic phonic work. They build on children’s knowledge of the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences and the skills of blending phonemes through a word to read it.

The stories and supporting activities focus on reinforcement and application of synthetic knowledge and skills in reading and writing contexts. The carefully levelled activities provide opportunities for children to apply their phonic knowledge across a range of recording, reading and writing activities to help build their confidence and develop a level of automaticity in using phonemes and graphemes.

The stories and activities are presented within cumulative letter groups. This means that children can work at appropriate levels and progress through the groups as their confidence with an increasing range of phonemes and graphemes grows. It also means that children can move incrementally from simple to more complex phonic work, and teachers can introduce the phonemes in discrete daily phonics sessions.

For each letter group, there is a Clicker Book (including a Read It Yourself version), a Sentence, Connect and Talk Set. The text is based on phonically decodable text and common exception words and includes the phonemes/graphemes appropriate for the level – the target phonemes/graphemes for the letter group as well as cumulative phonemes/graphemes from earlier groups.

These letter groups are organised as follows:

1. s, a, t, p, i, n
   
2. c/k, e, h, r, m, d (+ cumulative phonemes/graphemes from earlier groups)
   
3. g, o, u, l, f, b (+ cumulative phonemes/graphemes from earlier groups)
   
4. ai, j, or, oa, ie, ee (+ cumulative phonemes/graphemes from earlier groups)
   
5. z, w, v, ng, long/short oo (+ cumulative phonemes/graphemes from earlier groups)
   
6. y, x, ch, sh, hard/soft th (+ cumulative phonemes/graphemes from earlier groups)
   
7. qu, ou, oi, ue, er, ar, ear, air (+ cumulative phonemes/graphemes from earlier groups)

All of these beautifully-illustrated stories and activities are available now on LearningGrids. We are continuing to work on additional activities to support early synthetic phonics work. These will include Matching and Speaking/Listening activities that introduce and focus on the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences (within the phoneme groups), enabling children to learn new letters and sounds then practise grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Watch this space!

I recently read an interesting article that considered the use of worksheets in schools. It’s a contentious issue, especially in the light of environmental concerns. Whatever your views, we thought we would offer up our top 5 alternatives to using worksheets with Clicker.

1. Use Cloze activities in Clicker as a great way to assess your pupils’ topic comprehension, reading skills, and ability to use semantic and contextual clues to reconstruct a piece of text. You can paste in any text and create activities in seconds! It’s great for low-stakes testing and informal assessments. And it’s so easy to customise so pupils get the right level of challenge – making this a versatile and targeted activity, rather than simply a ‘one-size-fits-all’ worksheet. Even better, once an activity has been completed, teachers can find out at a glance how pupils have done by viewing the ‘Analytics’ tab.

2. Use our Storyboard templates on LearningGrids when children are planning for writing – they can add pictures and/or words to plan out ideas (ranging from simple beginning/middle/ending formats to more complex build-up/problem/resolution formats). The bonus with this on-screen story planner is that children can record ideas too – and for many children who struggle with writing, this is an ideal way of getting started.

3. We have a range of Connect Sets for all ages in Clicker and these can be a great worksheet alternative. You might be focusing on particular sentence grammar aspects as in our Expanding Sentences resource. Children can explore different ways of enhancing their sentences and the options offered encourage them to become more adventurous in their use of language. And of course, as with all Clicker Sets, when they send their sentence to the document, they get instant speech feedback, so they can evaluate and re-draft as they go. At the very early stage of simple sentence construction, you can use Clicker’s ‘Guided Order’ facility, so pupils are forced to choose sentence components in a grammatically ordered way. AND, as with all Clicker Sets, pupils can listen to any word or phrase before adding it to their sentence, encouraging them to be independent.

4. Matching is a great activity in Clicker, whether it’s matching pictures, words or sounds. What’s more, it’s so easy to change the focus of the activity instantly by simply changing the target or choice! So, for some pupils a straight word-to-picture matching activity is appropriate, but for others, you may want to offer additional support by changing the matching choice to ‘picture and word’. And Matching is not just for younger pupils – you could use it for matching fractions to picture representations in maths, or matching pictures of river features to their names in geography.

5. Clicker Board is a great worksheet alternative and can be used in so many ways – for organising ideas, making notes and preparing for writing. In our Setting the Scene resources, children add adjectives to describe a setting – easy enough to do on a worksheet, BUT with Board you can convert the collection of descriptive words into a Word Bank, giving a child instant appropriate support as they move on to the next stage of writing.

So, there we have just a few ideas (from so many I could have chosen) of where I think Clicker would most certainly be a better alternative to the traditional paper-based worksheet. Not just from an environmental and logistical perspective but from an educational perspective too. Clicker goes beyond the worksheet offering and encourages children to become independent, self-reliant, reflective and more confident learners. And that is truly worth its weight in gold!

According to recent research by the NFER, primary pupils are lagging two months behind in reading and maths due to school disruptions during the Covid crisis. And what’s worse is that disadvantaged pupils are seven months behind their peers in both subjects.

This growing attainment gap and the pandemic’s impact on learning is heart-breaking, but we hope that we are able to support you and your pupils through this challenging time. It’s not necessarily about catching up, but rather about finding out where children are and giving them the necessary “stepping stones” to facilitate their progress in learning.

So, how can we help? A great starting point is to head to our Story Corner category on LearningGrids. Children are sure to find something of interest – whether that’s traditional stories, myths and legends or even phonically decodable stories. If it’s non-fiction texts you’re after, try our Find Out and Write About collection of linked reading and writing grids on a range of geography, history and science topics. Or simply choose Clicker Books in the Clicker Resources list on the LearningGrids home page. You’ll be offered a list of hundreds of books on many different topics and aimed at many different abilities.

The great thing about many of our Clicker Books is the level of support built-in as part of Clicker itself and also with follow-up support activities so that children can actively consolidate their learning.

With our Clicker Books, use the speaker button to hear the text on the page read aloud. (Click/tap it again at any point to stop). This is a great way of encouraging children to be independent in their reading. You might be sharing the book on-screen with a whole class. Why not get children to have a go at reading the text – where they get stuck, they can click/tap on any word to have that word read aloud. Another great way of encouraging children to take those small next steps in becoming independent (and confident) readers. With many of our Clicker “Read a Book” sets, we also offer “Read It Yourself” versions, which are designed to encourage children to read themselves (no microphone button is offered, although this can very easily be added if required).

Children can consolidate and reinforce their learning from these books by using any of the follow-up resources as appropriate – for example, they may want to retell the story or talk about what they have read. Or they can tackle different writing tasks based on the text with varying levels of difficulty – from simple sentence building through to topic Word Banks.

While our main focus is literacy, we are still able to offer some curriculum resources for maths – and this very much follows the format as for the books above, and with all the supporting features of Clicker. From simple Counting Books and follow-up activities, to reading about fractions and tackling an equivalent fractions matching activity.

Clicker is such a versatile program which can be used across the school – and with children presenting so many differing needs after disruption to learning, a program like Clicker, which can be so uniquely personalised to their individual requirements, is a fantastic investment.

As schools close for the summer break, there is an air of anticipation of how we can all use this time not just to reflect and refresh, but to keep developing minds working and growing.

Let’s help children to feel calm and settled, and most importantly inspired and ready to face all the challenges of the new academic year.

The Oak National Academy (who provide free video lessons to support primary and secondary schools) have created a summer learning support guide.

As part of this, they have identified priority units and lessons in key curriculum subjects, so it’s a great way for children to consolidate or fill gaps in knowledge and understanding. You might find our growing bank of free LearningGrids resources invaluable for additional follow-up activities. We’ve put this guide together with a few ideas to keep children engaged in learning.

Struggling to get them started on a creative writing task? Get them planning their thoughts and ideas with one of our storyboards, analysing a character from a favourite tv show or even writing about their favourite footballer or edge-of-the-seat football match (there may be one or two this summer!).

Keep it fun and relaxed, don’t let it become a battle. Explore our LearningGrids library to find something that excites the child or children you are working with.

Subtitles are great, aren’t they? The only problem is, sometimes they miss the mark (cue the hilarity when the word displayed isn’t quite what the speaker intended). There’s been much talk lately of switching on television subtitles to boost children’s reading skills which is a great idea. Here at Crick, we are number one fans of the multi-sensory approach to literacy. All those layers – seeing the word, hearing it, seeing an associated picture cue – all work together to support children’s cognitive acquisition of phonics knowledge and sight-words.

So, let’s return to that little television subtitles snag … I’m hearing the words, seeing the text … but they don’t match. Confusion reigns! But don’t give up on that idea of seeing and hearing text to boost reading. It’s a feature which sits at the very heart of Clicker, and so important.

Any text in Clicker – whether that’s something that has been presented in a Clicker Book, or something children have written themselves in the Document – can be read aloud to the child by Clicker’s authentic (child voice) speech feedback. And not just that, it’s highlighted too as each word is read. So, we get that instant visual and aural reinforcement. Really simple – but hugely powerful to early or struggling readers. And especially fantastic if you are working with children new to English language. (See our New to English range available FREE on LearningGrids.)