Are you looking for images that spark discussion and develop children’s imagination? Using carefully chosen images is a powerful way to inspire talk and story planning.

On LearningGrids, we have six Clicker Talk Sets with open-ended images. These help learners explore ideas, ask questions and build confidence. Next, they can develop structured story plans using the related Clicker Boards. These Talk Sets and Boards support a range of ages and abilities.

Using Talk Sets to inspire talk and story planning

Structured talk builds vocabulary, confidence, curiosity and imaginative thinking. It is especially important for learners with English as an additional language (EAL) or less developed speaking and listening abilities. The Asking Questions Talk Sets encourage children to look closely at an image and generate their own questions. Each recording page includes three buttons under the image.

The three buttons can help learners practise forming different types of questions, such as:

• “What” questions to describe what is visible.
  
  
• “How” questions to explore actions and processes.
  
  
• “Why” questions to encourage reasoning and explanation.

As children become more confident, introduce “What if…?” questions. This expands their thinking and helps develop inference and creativity.

Adapting the activity to encourage talk and story planning

These activities are very flexible. You can adapt them for different learning focuses and abilities. For example, in Edit Mode you can:

• Reduce the number of recording buttons to lower the task demand.
  
  
• Add additional recording buttons to encourage deeper questioning.
  
  
• Focus on one question per character in the image.

Additionally, these sets can support collaborative learning. One child can record up to three questions and their partner can respond. This kind of planned interaction provides a purposeful speaking activity and supports the development of ideas that feed directly into story planning.

Moving from talk to story planning with Clicker Boards

Once learners are confident discussing an image, the next step is to help them develop their story ideas. The Before and After Clicker Boards provide a clear structure for this. They present the image in a simple but effective format that encourages learners to think about:

• What happened before the image.
  
  
• What is happening during the image.
  
  
• What might happen after the image.

This approach shows children how the image fits into a broader story, rather than a standalone moment. As a result, children develop the skills to structure their ideas into a clear beginning, middle and end.

Initially, learners describe what they can see in the image. They can also explain what is happening and what the characters might be thinking or feeling. They then record or type their responses in the picture cell before generating their ideas about what happened before or after the scene.

Meeting the needs of different learners

The Clicker Boards can be adapted for different levels of confidence and ability. To personalise learning further, you might:

• Add a story starter to reduce cognitive load.
  
  
• Remove the headings to provide more room for writing.
  
  
• Include guiding questions within the heading cells to structure thinking.

However, some children might still find this challenging. For these learners, consider using the image to pre-teach key vocabulary before story planning. The Clicker Board layout can be adapted to support this. For example, you can enlarge the central image, remove unused cells and add smaller ones to hold key words and phrases. Once the vocabulary is generated, the Clicker Board can easily be turned into a Word Bank that supports independent writing.

Using images in this way is an effective strategy to inspire talk and story planning. It helps learners build confidence, language and creativity.

If you are looking for more activities for creative writing, explore the Story Planning category on LearningGrids.

If you’re looking for inclusive, structured, and engaging reading resources, you’re in the right place.

The Clicker Planet Wobble series began over 20 years ago as printed books accompanied by CD-ROM activities. Today, the series is available online in the Story Corner on LearningGrids.

Let’s take a closer look at the Planet Wobble reading resources and how you can use them to support literacy progression.

A story world designed for inclusion

The creators designed the series to be inclusive. The stories follow six friends with a variety of backgrounds and experiences. The group also includes twins, as well as Holly, who uses a bespoke wheelchair.

The stories take place in the imaginative world of Planet Wobble. This setting allows the characters to have relatable experiences and adventures without real-world constraints. The collection covers many fun themes such as time travel, treasure hunting, and mystery solving. The colourful illustrations and varied storylines appeal to both developing and reluctant readers.

Structured progression across four levels

Planet Wobble stories are organised across four levels:

Level 1 – Short, predictable texts.

Level 2 – Familiar family experiences with simple dialogue.

Level 3 – Group events with richer description.

Level 4 – Longer narratives with more dialogue and a clear story structure.

How Planet Wobble reading resources support literacy development

Each story includes a book, in addition to a collection of linked activities:

• Read a Book – Read the full story about the characters.
  
  
• Read It Yourself – Read a shorter version (one sentence per page).
  
  
• Talk Set – Talk about a sequence of pictures to retell the story.
  
  
• Sentence Set – Select one word at a time to reconstruct the key sentences.
  
  
• Connect Set – Choose beginnings, middles, and endings to rewrite the story.
  
  
• Matching Set – Match story pictures to spoken sentences.
  
  
• Make a Book – Create a personalised book using the pictures and Word Banks.

This range of scaffolded tasks not only boosts confidence, but also enables learners who need to revisit language and story content to embed their learning.

Enhanced comprehension support

In addition to the resources above, most of the stories also include a Questions activity and a Do You Remember activity. These sets offer short quizzes requiring recall and comprehension skills. For young readers and SEND learners, the pictures also provide an additional layer of scaffolding. However, all Clicker resources are easy to edit and adapt to suit individual needs. For example, you can reduce the number of incorrect choices or remove the picture if you want the task to evidence children’s comprehension.

Additional resources for Level 4

Two extra activities are included for the Level 4 stories. Firstly, to support planning for writing, children can use the Story Elements Board to note the characters, setting, problem, and solution. Secondly, the related Word Banks provide key story vocabulary and character names to support children as they write more independently.

What’s coming next?

More Level 4 stories are on their way:

• The Wobble Lands takes the characters on an unusual and exciting day out.
  
  
• The Game features a unique games competition.
  

These two stories and their related activities will soon complete the Planet Wobble collection.

To explore all the Planet Wobble reading resources, visit the Planet Wobble section on LearningGrids.

To discover another group of Clicker reading materials, check out our Clicker Friends blog.

Writing SMART targets helps students reach their learning goals. This structured approach ensures targets are clear, measurable, and impactful. SMART targets are one of the most effective ways to track progress and boost achievement.

In this blog, we’ll explore how DocsPlus resources support SMART target writing, making it simple and accessible for teachers and students throughout the year.

✓ Writing SMART targets: Explained

SMART stands for:

• Specific – Clearly state what the target is.
  
  
• Measurable – Define how success will be measured (exam scores, feedback, etc.).
  
  
• Achievable – Ensure the goal is realistic, identify resources and describe what success looks like.
  
  
• Relevant – Align goals with educational and personal priorities. Make the target meaningful.
  
  
• Time-based – Set a clear deadline for achievement.
  

Writing SMART targets turns long-term aims into small, actionable steps.

✓ Why SMART targets matter

Generic targets like ‘I want to get better at maths’ are often too vague. As a result, they can feel unachievable and overwhelming. In contrast, SMART targets break big objectives into manageable steps. Achieving these smaller steps builds confidence and motivation to keep improving.

A student might say a broad, undefined goal like, “I want to improve my writing.” A SMART target turns this into a clear, short-term plan. For example: “I will include at least three sensory references in each descriptive text I write this term.” This target is realistic, linked to the GCSE syllabus, and has a deadline. It makes progress achievable, visible and motivating.

SMART targets also help students to focus on priorities, manage their time effectively and use resources wisely. In addition, this approach promotes self-monitoring and reflection, boosting achievement and building essential skills like resilience.

✓ How to start writing SMART targets with DocsPlus

The DocsPlus SMART Targets WorkSpace helps with planning and recording targets for many school purposes. It supports creating annual academic goals and skill-based or subject-specific termly targets. It also supports short-term objectives for daily or weekly learning interventions.

Each section of the WorkSpace corresponds to the SMART framework, guiding students to create structured, achievable plans. This is ideal for GCSE preparation, behaviour monitoring, SEND inclusion, and more.

✓ Top tips for teachers

Adding Voice Notes to the WorkSpace enables students to record their entries verbally. They can also add extra details or reasoning.

The WorkSpace displays a layout designed for planning one SMART target. To add more with the same layout, right-click the tab and select ‘Duplicate.’ This quick step creates additional tabs with the same structure. As a result, the one file can hold all the student’s SMART targets for the whole year or longer.

Over time, this becomes a powerful record of progress. Each tab captures the small steps and successes. These steps build towards bigger annual goals. For students with educational plans, this is especially valuable. The WorkSpace provides a clear snapshot of achievements. It also creates a long-term growth record - essential evidence for supporting EHCP outcomes.

✓ Wordbars for writing SMART targets

On LearningGrids, we also offer related Wordbars to provide different levels of scaffolding.

The SMART Target Stems Wordbar includes generic sentence starters to guide students in writing SMART targets for success.

In addition, subject specialists can add focused vocabulary on an additional grid to align targets with departmental goals.

For example:

• An English teacher could include key terms linked to writing skills or literature analysis.
  
  
• SEND specialists might add vocabulary relating to an individual’s communication or physical needs to encourage targets that promote independence.

The Setting Goals and Targets Wordbars are also offered on LearningGrids to support students who are writing SMART targets. They present target-setting vocabulary in two formats: alphabetical order or grouped as verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs.

The Smart Targets resources are designed to make target-setting a quick, meaningful and accessible task for all learners.

✓ Extra flexibility with DocsPlus SMART target resources

Students can access these resources when completing home assignments. They can refer to their targets to aid memory. They can also revisit them to present the information in a different way. This strengthens ownership. It also boosts motivation and confidence.

These resources are not just for students. Teachers can use them to write SMART targets for their own professional development or team goals too.

Writing SMART targets is one of the most effective ways to make progress visible and achievable for every learner, especially those with SEND.

These resources make the process simple, structured, and accessible. They help teachers and students stay on track throughout the year.

Explore the SMART Target resources on LearningGrids.

If you’d like to learn more about using DocsPlus to help learners achieve success at secondary school, you can read these blogs:

• How DocsPlus helps students tackle revision and exam stress
  
  
• 5 top tips for using DocsPlus to support struggling writers
  
  
• Supporting struggling readers to access the secondary curriculum

Weather is something we all experience. It's familiar, universal, and a topic suitable for all ages. It can also be a brilliant tool to get children thinking, talking, and writing. Since children already understand what it feels like to be cold, wet, or hot, educators can use these everyday experiences to engage learners without needing to explain complex concepts.

To support this, LearningGrids offers a wide range of ready-made weather resources. The sets are designed to help you personalise learning, promote independence, and nurture writing success.

Introduce the topic of weather with a Clicker Book

Clicker Books are a great starting point for a literacy lesson. Simply choose your topic and select the level of difficulty best suited to your learners.

Teddy’s Weather - Read a Book 

This book introduces weather vocabulary through simple, repetitive sentence structures. Each page names a type of weather and shares how Teddy responds to it. This makes it ideal for young learners and children with English as an additional language (EAL). The related writing sets reinforce the sentence patterns to support overlearning. They also help boost early writers’ confidence in sentence writing, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Weather and Climate - Read a Book

This book contains longer and more complex passages, which are ideal for older children. The book provides clear explanations of key vocabulary and concepts, such as the difference between weather and climate, and what a meteorologist does. You can use the related sets to help learners communicate their understanding through writing.

Engage learners with interactive activities

We have published lots of activities that focus on the topic of weather and offer scaffolded writing support for learners of different abilities.

Weather Symbols – Look and Read

This Matching Set features recognisable weather icons with labels. To complete the activity, pupils need to select the word from the list to match the weather shown in the main image. This helps learners with the recognition and reading of simple weather words. In ‘Edit Mode,’ the difficulty of the task can be easily adjusted to suit different learning levels.

Good and Bad Weather

Explore the positive and negative sides of different weather conditions using these Talk Sets and Clicker Boards. Each set includes a graphic to spark ideas and provides varied ways to record discussions and research findings. Children can capture their thoughts orally or in writing. Additionally, you can turn their ideas on a Clicker Board into a Word Bank for added scaffolding to support independent writing tasks.

Today’s Weather

This Connect Set offers a great short task for the start of each day. This task can be especially engaging for neurodivergent children who often benefit from structured routine activities. The resource reinforces days, months, and common weather vocabulary. Sharing the child’s completed sentences on your interactive whiteboard is a great way to celebrate success and give your reluctant writers a positive start to the day.

Build up topic-specific vocabulary

Building a strong vocabulary boosts confidence and helps learners express their ideas. You can help learners acquire the necessary vocabulary with the help of resources like the ones below.

Weather Words

Ideal for writing story settings, or comparing different weather types, this simple Word Bank includes keywords for each type of weather. In ‘Edit Mode,’ a sentence starter could be added to offer more scaffolding and support literacy development.

Describe the Weather

Building on this, these Word Banks are designed for more confident writers. They include familiar vocabulary alongside more expressive language, such as ‘sludgy’ and ‘scorching’, to inspire writers to be more adventurous with their word choices.

Shades of Meaning

To enhance vocabulary development further, encourage learners to consider word intensity by using one of these Clicker Boards alongside the Word Banks above. This task can expand children’s word choices and improve the quality of their writing.

You can explore the full Geography – Weather & Climate category on LearningGrids.

If you want to learn more about the resources we offer on LearningGrids, you can read our blogs:

• LearningGrids: Reading and writing resources for adaptive teaching
  
  
• Farm Animals: Adaptable resources to meet learners’ needs
  
  
• Adapting Clicker LearningGrids resources with Widgit Symbols

Have you seen the new DocsPlus Myths and Legends section on LearningGrids? As well as being an important part of English and History lessons, myths, legends and folklore are valuable for developing students’ understanding of social norms and moral boundaries. The Echo and Narcissus DocsPlus resources can be used to support the analysis of the text and to explore the important life lessons within this Greek myth.

Let’s start with developing students’ knowledge of the key vocabulary used in the Echo and Narcissus myth. The Key Concepts Wordbar and WorkSpace support students to write the definition, synonyms and antonyms of the key concepts addressed in the myth. This pre-reading can increase students’ reading confidence and improve their understanding and analysis skills.

Students can use the Echo and Narcissus Wordbars and WorkSpaces to recall and storyboard the main events in the myth. Headings are used to help them identify the progression of events through the story.

The Questions Wordbar encourages students to interpret and analyse the narrative. They are supported to respond to questions about the events, identify the myth’s theme and consider how the myth might relate to their own lives. The Echo and Narcissus - Life Lessons resources focus on the flaws of the main characters, and how students can learn from their mistakes.

This myth can be used to spark discussions about social customs and values, while encouraging students to reflect on how their decisions impact themselves and others. You can use the DocsPlus resources to encourage learning and debate around the themes of love, vanity, self-love and obsession - to name a few! For other themes, check out the Beowulf resources on LearningGrids.

Keep an eye out for more stories coming soon in the Myths and Legends category.

Let’s explore how our Great Barrier Reef Clicker resources can be used to develop children’s understanding of the importance, beauty and threats faced by this spectacular underwater world.

“It's surely our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth.”

(David Attenborough, Planet Earth II, BBC, 2016)

The Great Barrier Reef – Read a Book offers an overview of life in this extraordinary coral reef system. Children find out about the Great Barrier Reef’s location and ecosystem, the coral and its symbiotic relationship with algae, and the impact of human activities and climate change on the reef system. For developing readers, we have an engaging Read It Yourself Book that encapsulates the key information into nine illustrated sentences.

Encourage your learners to share what they have found out using the Talk Set. The pictures may help to jog their memory, while their recordings can be used as a plan for writing. The completed Talk Set can also provide evidence of children's comprehension skills.

Use the Great Barrier Reef Clicker Board to collect key vocabulary and information that your class have learned from the Clicker Books or other non-fiction texts. The set helps to organise facts and vocabulary into different areas; the location and climate, plants and animals, and threats posed to the health of the reef system. This offers a great planning approach for writing leaflets or books about this natural wonder of the world.

Learners needing support can use the Great Barrier Reef Sentence and Connect Sets to write about this unique area. The sets provide illustrations and content and help develop an understanding of sentence structure. For more independent writers, the vocabulary offered in this Word Bank is organised under three headings to help structure information into paragraphs or pages.

These colourful and informative resources are a great stimulus for a mini project or could be used to enhance extended research on climate change, biomes, ecosystems, interdependence or Australia. Be sure to take a look at the other Great Barrier Reef resources by searching for reef on LearningGrids.

There has been a (much–needed) focus on developing early language skills recently. Through my research, I discovered that experts are talking about the power of nursery rhymes. Did you know that a child who knows eight nursery rhymes in their early years will be among the higher achievers in reading and spelling when they are eight years old? This inspired us to create nursery rhyme resources for LearningGrids! Let’s look at how the new Incy Wincy Spider sets could help your learners.

Reading a short nursery rhyme gives children a bite-sized activity that can offer even the reluctant reader a sense of success. The repetition and patterns in language help children to hear the phonemes and syllables in words, building the foundations for reading and spelling. In the Incy Wincy Spider - Read a Book, each page focuses on a line of the rhyme with a picture to illustrate the text. The last page shows the sequence of the pictures and the complete rhyme. There is also a button so that children can hear the rhyme sung - this is great for encouraging children to sing along, improving word memory and articulation.

We have created a range of related resources to encourage children to associate the spoken rhyme with the written words. With the Incy Wincy Spider - Make a Book One, children write each line to correspond with the picture on the page. The word banks offer the beginning, middle and end segments of each line. To support children to explore rhythm, rhyme and structure of the verse, use the Connect Set - it shows the beginnings and endings of each line, all on one grid.

The Incy Wincy Spider Clicker Board helps children recognise that nursery rhymes are short stories and have an order to their events. On the Board, children sequence the lines of the rhyme by moving the text alongside the corresponding picture (or they could drag a line from the text cell to the picture). To create a more challenging task, you can jumble up the picture cells too! Using the microphone, children can add a recording to complete their presentation of the nursery rhyme.

Another fun activity related to nursery rhymes is creating word families or rhyming strings. Using the Incy Wincy Spider – Rhyming Strings Talk Set, encourage children to record a string of rhyming words for each of the pictures - these could include real and nonsense words because the focus is on hearing the rhyme, rather than spelling the word. Children will have fun listening back to their own and others’ wordplay!

We hope the Incy Wincy Spider and Hey Diddle Diddle resources enhance your learners enjoyment of language and learning. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Humpty Dumpty and The Kookaburra Song rhymes are coming soon to LearningGrids!

Have you seen the 3-D Shape Hunt Clicker resources? These colourful sets are great for helping children to identify, name and write about shapes that can be spotted within everyday objects. Read on to see how this can be a fun activity to carry out during the school holidays.

The 3-D Shape Hunt – Read a Book introduces the visual skill of identifying the 3-D shapes seen in common items. It focusses on a few familiar things found within a bedroom scene. The related Make a Book and Connect Set support children to write about the cubes, cuboids, cones, cylinders, pyramids and spheres they can see within the given pictures.

Using the 3-D Shape Hunt Talk Set, children can practise recognising, naming and saying the 3-D shapes they can spot within the bedroom scene - there are many examples of the common 3-D shapes included.

Learning outside is a great motivator - turn an ordinary walk into a fun shape-learning game by encouraging children to join you in a shape scavenger hunt! The 3-D Shape Hunt Clicker Board is great for supporting children to sort and record the shapes they collect or see. They can write the names of the objects or insert photos into the cells on the appropriate shape tab.

For similar sets about a 2-D shape hunt, take a look at the What Shapes Do You See sets. For other resources to help children to identify, talk and write about 2-D and 3-D shapes, search for shapes on LearningGrids.

Have fun shape hunting!

Recently, I read an article written by teacher, author, poet and playwright Michael Morpurgo. He wrote about why schools should move away from teaching writing through a grammar-focused approach and, instead, encourage creativity and children’s love of reading and writing. I believe Clicker can help in this mission! Read on to find out ways that Clicker can empower children to express their thoughts, develop ideas and discover the joy of writing.

For some children, starting with oral storytelling is much more fun - it can enhance creativity and confidence! We have many Talk Sets to inspire storytelling, such as fantasy creatures and the story settings sets. We also have many Talk sets related to well-known stories which encourage children to retell or adapt a story they have heard.

Using a stimulus helps to inspire writers to be more descriptive and sparks imaginative ideas. Many of our Clicker Boards contain pictures and information to start discussions and aid the generation of ideas. For story planning, try out the various Before and After sets - they have illustrations that represent the middle of the story and children can discuss, write or record descriptions of what led up to and followed the event. Our Story Step Boards encourage children to think about the steps that connect two pictures of a story. For younger children this could be a simple sequence of events; for others it could form the outline of a story plot.

We know the feeling of success is a huge motivator. For some, writing a whole story is daunting and a challenging task. Our story writing Connect Sets offer a structure and ideas, while giving the writer control over the details and construction of the story. These sets enable children to write a whole story within a manageable number of sentences – this success is sure to encourage them to write another story!

Blank page syndrome is very real for many writers, but Clicker can hopefully help to avoid it! Before asking children to write a story, browse through LearningGrids. We have many Word Banks that can be open at the bottom of the document, offering children inspiration and support to start writing the story. These sets may also introduce new vocabulary and increase confidence.

Let’s increase enjoyment and success by ensuring the level of scaffolding and support is personalised to the writer’s needs. Clicker’s Document has many word processing tools that can be activated or deactivated. The predictor and spell checker tools offer extra guidance and might increase the writer’s pace and flow. The speech feedback can help with the detailed editing of the story. This reflects how good authors write – start with creativity and then focus on the grammatic details!

Try out some of the above suggestions and watch as your writers’ enjoyment and creativity grow. At Crick, we also hope to inspire story writing through this year’s Summer Story Share competition. Encourage your children to write an adventure story on the theme “If I could go anywhere...”. We look forward to reading their stories, and hopefully your school will be a winner of £250 worth of books!

Engaging children in topical debates and discussions is a great way to build their confidence and skills in speaking and writing. We have many Clicker Boards (planners) and related Word Banks (frames) to support the planning and writing of an argument or discussion text.

Are you debating the construction of a building on wasteland or other environmental issues? Our Persuasion Planner can be used with a class, group or individual to identify the main reasons and evidence that support their point of view. Children can then use the Persuasion Frame to write their persuasive text. Topic-related vocabulary can be added to the final tab to offer more specific terminology if needed - what a great way to prepare for a class debate!

When asking children to voice their opinions around a scenario or question, they are often very keen to give an immediate response. However, by using our Discussion Planner, you can promote the construction of a more reasoned, evidence-based answer. Children list the key ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments related to a question or issue and then create a conclusion. To help children write a balanced argument or discussion text, use the related Discussion Frame.

Find these resources and many more planners and related writing frames in Planners and Frames  on LearningGrids. Have fun preparing for and carrying out your class discussions!

Let’s take a closer look at the new Planet Wobble Books … The three new stories involve the Planet Wobble characters having an adventure or solving a problem - they are ideal for readers aged 5-7. Each title has a related Talk Set, a comprehension-based Custom Set and numerous writing sets that support children to recall and write about each story.

The Wrong Bag contains a mystery story where one of the Planet Wobble children picked up the wrong bag and it resulted in a crime being solved. One of the related sets, The Wrong Bag – Make a Book, enables children to insert pictures and write their own version of the story supported by word banks.

In the adventure story, The Fossil, the Planet Wobble children go back in time and they meet a wobblesaurus! After reading the story, children can retell it using the picture stimuli in the Talk Set or write the story using one of the related writing sets.

For a story about community, read The Old Man. The Planet Wobble children help an old man to tidy his garden and assist him in contacting an old friend. Using The Old Man – Questions Custom Set, children are supported to answer literal comprehension questions and write their answers in full sentences.

We hope you enjoy using these resources in shared or guided reading sessions, or during reading interventions. You can find these new books and many more in the Planet Wobble category on LearningGrids. Also, be sure to check out our Story Corner for a variety of stories for all ages.

When teaching children with spelling difficulties, we can't use a “one size fits all” approach. So, I have highlighted a few ways that Clicker tools and resources can be used to give these children personalised tasks and support, enabling them to experience success.

Children with significant spelling difficulties may have many different barriers to their learning. It may be that they are struggling to understand phonemes (letter sounds) and graphemes (letter shapes) and how they correlate to each other. They may also have poor visual memory affecting the misspelling of high frequency words. For these children to be successful writers, we need to consider using a variety of tools in Clicker to offer scaffolding, differentiation and overlearning opportunities.

As we know, spelling skills are dependent on a growing knowledge of spoken and written word structures. Children need to see, read and use words that are spelt correctly in many different contexts. A good starting place for younger children would be to use our Alphabet Animals sets. These sets enable children to hear and read a Clicker Book, practise saying the sounds and words using the Talk Set and write the sentences using the Sentence Set. All 26 groups of sets use four words – is, likes, can and has – to form repetitive sentences. As children become immersed in these sentences, they will become confident at reading the repeated words and begin to recognise the letter and word order required. Also, importantly, children will be experiencing success, and this will spur them on further.

With any Sentence Set in Clicker, there are various setting options – such as adding a model sentence or using guided order – which enable children to repeat the set with different scaffolding features. This overlearning also helps children to develop working memory and build confidence in their writing.

Another way to reduce the writing anxiety of a child with poor spelling skills is to offer Word Banks with relevant keywords or phrases. We have many Word Banks (and other resources) relating to a range of topics on LearningGrids. Word Banks can also be made quickly and easily by a supporting adult during the lesson. This way, the words given to the children are completely related to the learning experience in the classroom.

As children become more independent, they will be typing words into the document. It can be demoralising for poor spellers to see lots of red squiggles on all their misspelt words. Instead, it may be more helpful to target certain words for them to focus on. Within Clicker’s Spell Check settings, there is an option to “Ignore misspellings unless word is in the Word Pool.” By adding specific words to the Word Pool (such as the key words that children are learning that week), the red squiggle will only appear for those words – this acts as a good reminder of their target spellings!

Let’s remember that children really benefit from the chance to express themselves without worrying about their spelling or writing difficulties. Using Clicker’s Voice Notes or a Talk Set enables learners to record their ideas without their spelling difficulties slowing down their thought processes. Using dictation (speech-to-text) can also help them to get their ideas onto the page – see Sergio’s blog post on how to do this in Clicker on a variety of devices.

These are just a few of the many personalised scaffolding and differentiation techniques available in Clicker to support children with spelling difficulties. Visit our website for further ideas to support learners with special needs, including children with dyslexia.

Last year, I shared some information about the great Clicker resources Call Scotland created with the Scottish Book Trust. As I said, each November, Bookbug gives every Primary 1 pupil in Scotland a free bag of books and resources to inspire a love of stories and encourage reading for pleasure.

Our curriculum team also created some additional resource ideas to support children who are just starting school that I thought I’d share. These are linked to one of this year’s featured stories – the beautifully illustrated Arlo the Lion Who Couldn’t Sleep by Catherine Rayner.

The message of the story is one of gentle mindfulness. Arlo is exhausted but he simply cannot get to sleep. Luckily, a little owl teaches him some tricks to help him drift off to a peaceful sleep.

Use Clicker Board to get children thinking about what we might do when we can’t sleep.

Create a Sentence Set to help children retell the story in simple steps. Use the pictures in a Talk Set to retell the story orally.

When Arlo can’t sleep, he uses adjectives with the adverb ‘too’ to explain what is making it difficult for him to sleep. Use a Connect Set to recreate these sentences.

Or look at adjectives – like “tired” in the text – which can be replaced by powerful or wow words like “exhausted”.

Collect a handy selection of key vocabulary from the story, which children can use in their own writing – don’t forget, with Clicker you can use Picturize to illustrate your Word Banks too!

Clicker is such a versatile program that 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.

For the many people who have asked us for resources about the Tudors, we now have a new Tudor category on LearningGrids. We have added some great resources that support children to learn, read and write about Tudor Towns and Tudor Leisure.

To help children to learn about aspects of life in Tudor towns, read Tudor Towns – Read a Book. It is an illustrated non-fiction text that includes information about Tudor houses, streets, shops and people. Encourage children to use the differentiated sets to communicate their knowledge of Tudor towns.

Children can find out information about Tudor sports and leisure activities by reading Tudor Pastimes – Read a Book. They learn how the rules of the sports differ from today’s rules and how the rich and poor people enjoyed different pastimes. Using a related set, children can talk or write about the pastimes or plan a comparative piece of writing using the Tudor Pastimes – Rich v Poor Clicker Board.

Have fun using our new resources and look out for more history resources coming soon on LearningGrids.

As part of Book Week Scotland, the Scottish Book Trust gave out the 3 new books that were shortlisted for The Bookbug Picture Book Prize 2022 to all Primary 1 children in Scottish schools. The books that were gifted were:

• ‘Arlo the Lion Who Couldn’t Sleep’ by Catherine Raynor
• ‘Inch and Grub’ by Alastair Chisholm and David Roberts
• ‘My First Book of Woodland Animals’ illustrated by Zoe Ingram

CALL SCOTLAND have created some really great symbolised resources and Clicker Sets to work alongside these books. Anyone who has Clicker 8 or the Clicker Writer app can access the Clicker resources.

For each book, they have created 2 Clicker resources, a Clicker Sentence Set to support pupils to retell the story and a Clicker Connect Set which guides and support pupils to write their own book review.

You can find out all about these resources and download them from the link below.
Bookbug Picture Book Prize 2022 Clicker Writing Resources (callscotland.org.uk)

Crick have also created some Clicker Sets around the ‘Arlo the Lion’ book by Catherine Raynor. You can download these from our Learning Grids website.

There are a number of different resources including writing grids, talk sets and Clicker Boards. These can be used to reinforce sentence building, creative writing, story re-telling and speaking or grammar concepts.

All of these sets work beautifully with the Scottish ‘Rhona’ voice in Clicker. This is available to download for free from our website here.

CALL SCOTLAND have additional Scottish voices that you can use with Clicker 8. There are both male and female adult and children’s voices that schools can download for free. Find out more here.

If you have any questions around these Clicker resources or would like to see them in action then just get in touch to book in a demo or short meeting with me here.

Teachers and support staff use many strategies to support children who have English as an additional language (EAL) or children who have a speech or language delay. Read on to find out how the resources on LearningGrids can be used during intervention sessions.

In our New to English category, we have a range of sets that help children learn specific vocabulary related to familiar settings - a school, shopping centre, house, supermarket and street. The Custom, Talk and writing sets offer illustrated activities that enable children to learn the names of everyday objects as well as practise speaking, reading and writing of the focus vocabulary.

You can use the groups of related Clicker sets to structure a set of intervention sessions for individuals or groups of children. For example, the Patch the Cat resources can be used to teach the naming of household items and rooms in the house. To introduce the vocabulary, encourage children to listen, read and repeat the patterned language and predictable sentences in the story Patch Likes This – Read a Book.

Encourage children to practise saying and recording what they can see in the pictures using Patch Likes This – Make a Book. When children are ready to move on, they can write the words in sentence order using the related Sentence Set. The set currently provides a View and Remember model which develops children’s retrieval and memory skills, while learning the patterns of word order. This level of scaffolding can be adapted in Edit View to suit the needs of the learner. As children become more independent, use the Connect Set to construct the practised sentences using the “This is” and “Patch likes” sentence starters.

This approach helps children to overlearn the focus vocabulary, phrases and sentences. From my experience, this repetitive approach builds confidence and accuracy while developing speaking, reading and writing skills. Children will be applying their newfound vocabulary and language skills in no time!

For many more groups of ready-made resources with specific repetitive vocabulary and sentence structures, browse through the Clicker Friends, Planet Wobble and More Stories sections in our Story Corner category.

May 12^th is International Nurses Day - a great time to value nurses of today and celebrate pioneering nurses from the past. We have recently published some differentiated Florence Nightingale sets that are a fantastic resource for supporting students to read, write, and talk about this famous nurse and how she improved hospital conditions and developed training for nurses around the world.

The Clicker Book Florence Nightingale – Read a Book offers a great starting point for learning about Florence’s life. The chronological text and illustrations provide information about her early life, her experiences during the Crimean War and how she influenced changes in the hospitals and healthcare around the world.

To develop children’s knowledge, discussion and observational skills, use the Scutari Hospital – Before and After Clicker Board. The first detailed picture is a representation of the hospital when Florence arrived in Scutari. Use this to note the poor conditions and reasons why wounded soldiers were not getting better. Extra cells can be added if required. The second picture represents the improved hospital - explain how Florence influenced the changes in hygiene and patient care. When the Boards are complete, they can be exported as a Word Bank and children can use this to support their follow-up writing. Children can write a letter from Florence explaining the poor conditions and how she aimed to improve them, or write a before and after comparison of the hospital.

Take a look at the other new sets we have in the Florence Nightingale category and visit Famous People on LearningGrids for other Clicker sets about significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.

As many of you already know, using traditional tales as a starting point for learning is a fantastic way to engage children of all ages. Below I have highlighted a few of our recently published sets based on the Norwegian folktale the Billy Goats Gruff.

Introduce your learners to the story with the Clicker Book The Billy Goats Gruff – Read a Book. The text follows the classic fairy tale structure with repetitive phrases and alliteration. It is a great resource for encouraging discussion about the story elements and inspiring children to become storytellers.

We have also created lots of activities to help your children jump into the story, empathise with the characters and develop their comprehension skills. Children can retell the story with the Talk Set, answer questions with Can You Remember and take on the role of different characters with Character Talk.

The Billy Goats Gruff Sentence Set offers a simplified version of the book text and allows emergent or reluctant writers to practise their sentence skills – watch their faces beam with pride when they have written the whole story! The Connect Set also helps children to write the story using their own, more detailed sentences.

You’ll find other activities designed to enhance literacy learning in the Billy Goats Gruff category on LearningGrids. Our Story Corner is a growing collection of story books and related Clicker Sets - look out for more resources coming soon!

When children return after a long break away from school, they will be buzzing and wanting to share news with their friends, peers and school adults. Let’s utilise this enthusiasm and channel it to recap and improve their vocabulary, sentence structures and writing stamina. We have many resources on LearningGrids that support learners to express their preferences and opinions, both orally and in writing.

Our Show and Tell Custom Set is a good tool for helping children to transition from home learning to learning in school. It enables the child to insert photos or paintings of their special objects and record information about them. The recordings can then be used to create a piece of writing.

The Clicker Books Photo Album One or Photo Album Two also enable children to add photos and talk or write about important items or events they wish to share with their classmates.

The next step would be for children to write about their preferences. To support children in this, use the My Favourite Things,  Food Likes and Dislikes, and My Spare Time Connect Sets. The resources offer sentence structures and vocabulary to enable children to write about their favourite things.

Music is a good stimulus for discussing and recording personal responses. The Responding to Music Custom Set provides a selection of music pieces for children to listen to, and after each piece they add a symbol to indicate how it made them feel. Pupils can also record an oral response to each piece of music. This offers a fantastic opportunity to spark discussion about how items and experiences make the children feel.

The My Favourite Sport A-Z Word Bank supports children to write about their favourite sporting activities. They can use the Clicker Board My Favourite Player to create a fact file about their chosen sportsperson. The central image can be changed to represent a different sport using the CrickPix Library or an imported graphic. My Favourite Team Word Bank provides sentence starters and vocabulary to support writing about a football team.

Using these resources will give learners a voice and a feeling that they are sharing and rebuilding their relationships with people in school. The completed work, along with Clicker Analytics data, can provide evidence of attainment and support you to identify the next learning steps the children need in literacy. Browse the About Me category to find more resources to support learners to express their preferences, opinions and feelings.

At the start of a new year, many of us look for ways to lead healthier lives and we often encourage children to do the same. There are a variety of resources on LearningGrids to encourage children to talk, read and write about the importance of making healthy choices.

Our Keeping Healthy – Read a Book is a great resource for introducing the importance of good hygiene, sleep, regular exercise and a healthy diet. The related Talk, Make a Book,  Connect, Sentence and Word Bank sets enable children to record their understanding of how to lead healthy lives. We have also recently published Washing Hands – Read a Book with linked resources to support children in writing about another way to help keep themselves and others healthy.

Brushing My Teeth – Read a Book focuses on good dental hygiene. The Clicker Book is supported by Sentence and Connect sets so that children can write about a simple tooth brushing routine. Older children can read about the location and function of different types of teeth in the Find Out About Teeth Custom Set. Search for teeth on LearningGrids for more related resources.

Our Human Body 1/2/3 differentiated Find Out and Write About activities encourage children to read and write about how other parts of the body work. For more independent writers, there are also Word Banks such as Human Health and Development to support writing about healthy growth and development.

Use the Exercise and Pulse Rates Talk Set for an active way to investigate the effects of exercise on the body. Children talk about the different exercises and predict what changes might happen to the body after the exercise, and then they record the pulse rate and body changes that actually happen. The Pulse Rate Investigation Word Bank supports learners in writing up the investigation and their findings.

There are also a lot of resources on LearningGrids that focus on food and healthy eating, such as the Food Groups and Food A - Z Word Banks. The Food and Nutrition-Sorting Connect Set encourages children to sort foods into how nutritionally valuable they are. For an engaging way to encourage children to explore the impact of unhealthy snacks and whether they should be allowed in schools, read the Clicker Book Junk Food – Viewpoints. Children consider the different viewpoints on the Junk Food - For or Against Clicker Board. Their completed mind map, along with the Junk Food – Persuasive Writing Word Bank, can be used to plan a speech or to structure a piece of persuasive writing.

As you know, a healthy lifestyle also includes a focus on mental wellbeing. We have many resources in the Feelings category to encourage children to be aware of their feelings and to talk or write about them. Browse the Our Bodies or Keeping Healthy categories on LearningGrids for many more resources available to support learning about being healthy.