Top Clicker tips from Crick Champions
We love hearing from Clicker power users about how they bring Clicker to life in their classrooms and the clever tips they’ve discovered along the way.
In our latest conversations with three Crick Champions, they revealed their Clicker top tips and one quick win you can try in your own classroom.
We spoke with:
- Chris McCartney, Deputy Headteacher at Springfield House Community Special School
- Emma O’Monaigh, SENCo at Riverside Primary School
- Louise Turnbull, SEND Leader at Chapel Allerton Primary School
Can you share one top tip for using Clicker?
“Make use of Clicker no matter what ability your learners are.”
Chris’ top tip was linked to the vast range of resources within Clicker and how Clicker really is for everyone, making it perfect to use as part of your universal offer. He said:
“Make use of the variety of resources that Clicker offers to provide support for children at their level of development. Writing can really easily be personalised to challenge the oldest or most able learners, with expansive Word Banks to increase their use of descriptive or creative vocabulary.
Equally, we have pupils at the early stages of reading and writing that can be supported with a Sentence Set or Connect Set, that allows them to access language that they can understand, with pictures and speech feedback to support them in hearing if their sentences make sense.”
With Clicker’s range of scaffolding options, learners in the same lesson can work with resources tailored to their individual needs. You might have two learners sitting next to each other. They are both using Clicker, but each child is benefiting from a different level of support.
Emma provided us with some day-to-day practical top tips
- Invest in headphones!
Emma’s first tip is simple, but really important in a busy classroom. With headphones, learners can use Clicker’s speech feedback without disrupting the lesson or letting their peers distract them.
This is also key for pupils’ confidence, as they can listen back to their writing, audio notes or key vocabulary as often as they need to.
- Remember to save the resource and document separately
This is a very important point we always highlight in our training sessions! Your Clicker Document (where pupils have produced their writing) and the Clicker Set (the supporting resource) are two different files and you need to treat them separately when saving or printing them.
Imagine a learner is writing in their exercise book but has a vocabulary mat in front of them on the table, these are two different resources – it’s the same with Clicker, just on-screen!
Check out our saving and sharing guides for more information on this.
- Use photos to personalise activities
It's easy to add your own photos to the resources in Clicker. You could insert photos as a prompt in a writing grid or Clicker Book, use photos of a class trip to support a recount in a Talk Set, or add photos you’ve taken of a science investigation in class that you want to sequence in a Clicker Board.
You can quickly browse the libraries on your device or take a picture in the moment using the device’s webcam.
Learn more about adding pictures in our tutorial.
Finally, Louise’s top tip was around the technology set-up in your classroom
Louise’s school have found it hugely beneficial to assign a specific iPad to a specific child.
Of course, this will depend on the devices you have available in school, but there are many benefits to doing this if you’re able to.
You can customise the settings in Clicker, so they’re bespoke for what individual learners need. Assigning a specific device to a pupil means that they will always have access to the tailored settings that work for them. For example, a certain background colour or font size, the speed of the speech feedback or the level of symbol support a child needs within Clicker.
Louise’s school make this work by putting coloured stickers or children’s names on iPads. Then, pupils know which colour sticker they’re looking for when collecting an iPad for the lesson.
What’s one thing you would recommend a school could do really easily with Clicker in their classrooms next week?
“Search LearningGrids – you’ve got thousands of ready-made resources and tasks that can be used instantly in lessons with no work required from staff. It will engage the children and get them used to the kind of resources that Clicker can offer, whilst at the same time building staff knowledge and confidence of the possibilities that Clicker has to offer.” – Chris McCartney
LearningGrids is a bank of ready-to-use resources included with your Clicker subscription. There are thousands of resources available to support learning across the curriculum. I always recommend that anyone new to Clicker takes some time looking through these resources as they’re a great place to start. As Chris says, the perfect way to familiarise yourself with the resources available.
For more information, watch our LearningGrids tour video.
“Create Word Banks!” – Emma O’Monaigh
Once you’re familiar with the ready-made resources, why not follow in the footsteps of Emma’s colleagues and create your own resources! You can create any resource from scratch, and we have tutorials to guide you through the process step-by-step.
Emma highlighted how useful it is to create your own Word Banks after a pre‑teach session. Staff can work with a group of children to generate ideas and vocabulary together. They can then quickly turn that into a Word Bank ready for the next lesson.
It’s quick and easy to create a Word Bank by adding your own vocabulary or copying and pasting text from another source.
This is just a snippet of the fantastic ideas our Crick Champions shared with us. Watch the recording to hear more top tips and how they’re planning to use Clicker moving forward.
Additional resources
Explore more top tips for using Clicker:
