Recently, I wrote some blog posts on how you can use Clicker to support children with both early reading and early writing, which made me think about how you can use Clicker within continuous provision.

Continuous provision refers to the resources and activities provided for children to interact with daily to encourage learning through play and interaction. 

What can continuous provision look like?

Before working at Crick, I taught in EYFS across a number of different settings and introduced continuous provision in Year 1 at my last school. So I am well versed in the planning, preparation and skill required to set up valuable activities across provision! 

I would spend hours searching for inspiration (did you know we also have a Clicker Pinterest account?), making resources, and setting up my environment to create meaningful learning opportunities for my class. All whilst ensuring that these opportunities encouraged children to be independent, provided appropriate support and challenge, and they were based on our learning objectives, specific targets, as well as the children’s needs and interests. 

Once those activities were planned, I then faced the daily challenge of trying to be in 30 different places at once – scaffolding, supporting, observing, addressing misconceptions, challenging new ideas, evidencing learning… sound familiar?

The good news, is Clicker can support your continuous provision and offer pupils a wide range of activities that they can access independently.

So, how could you use Clicker within continuous provision?  

Using Clicker within continuous provision

Optimise the use of your interactive whiteboard

I have never had an early years class who didn’t love the interactive whiteboard! Whether it was for whole class teaching input, working with a small group, or putting an independent activity on during continuous provision, the children I’ve taught always engaged with the activity on-screen.

Using your interactive whiteboard is also a great way to utilise technology if you don’t have other devices available in class.

Many of Clicker’s resources are perfect for the IWB, but I always recommend Matching Sets and Sentence Sets for this purpose. They are intuitive for children to use and we have hundreds of ready-made resources on LearningGrids.

You can quickly find Matching Sets linked to a topic, text, or concept you’re exploring in class for children to access as part of their independent learning that day.  

What are Matching Sets?

Matching Sets enable pupils to match a combination of pictures, words, and sounds. If they make an incorrect choice, they’ll receive a verbal prompt to ‘try again’ until they reach success. This means they're a great activity for pupils to access without teacher support!

So, whether you’re exploring new vocabulary, consolidating maths skills, or learning new concepts – Matching Sets are an excellent resource for continuous provision! You can even create your own to tailor the activity to the needs of your children.

What are Sentence Sets?

Matching Sets aren’t the only Clicker Set that work on an IWB, you can also use Clicker’s writing grids! Sentence Sets are perfect for this as you can build a sentence by simply tapping the words on screen to add them to the document. Children can use the on-screen SoundShift tool to listen to any of the words read aloud, and they can hear their sentence read back to them by simply adding punctuation to finish their sentence and trigger the speech feedback!

Incorporate independent writing opportunities

During my teaching days, I attended many training and moderation sessions on incorporating independent writing opportunities into my early years environment. Whether this was through a dedicated mark-making area, or adding writing opportunities throughout provision, I was always searching for ways to encourage my pupils to write.

Clicker can support you with this as it provides a range of different writing grids with varying levels of scaffolding. So Clicker provides support for learners of all different abilities. Simply open a resource from LearningGrids on your device and add it to a provision area.

We have a range of writing grids on LearningGrids that would be perfect in provision – I particularly like the traditional stories resources to support with small world and role play, the maths resources, and the nursery rhyme activities.

One of the great things about Clicker resources is that they are printable. If you don’t have access to devices in your classroom you can still use these activities as a physical prompt to support your children's writing.

Top tip: print, cut and laminate Sentence Sets and Connect Sets to use as a practical sentence building activity, or simply use as a cut and stick activity - a great way to work on understanding sentence structure and vocabulary choices while developing their fine motor skills!

Encourage thought-organisation from the beginning

Another resource that particularly works as a physical prompt in provision, is a Clicker Board. Clicker Boards are an easy-to-use mind mapping tool, with lots of different purposes including planning, storyboarding, sequencing, sorting, Venn diagrams and much more! You can create your own, or print a ready-made-activity from LearningGrids. Children can then use these to collate ideas, create a plan, or gather vocabulary. Just print them out, pop them on a clipboard, and you quickly have writing enhancements for different areas in your classroom

Develop communication and language

Encouraging speaking and listening skills in an early years classroom is fundamental, but how can this be encouraged through continuous provision when you have limited adult support? I know from experience it’s impossible to capture every conversation happening in your classroom and it can feel as though you’re missing out on capturing children’s true understanding of a concept.

Clicker’s Talk Sets are amazing for gathering evidence of children’s speaking and listening skills. They allow children to explore new vocabulary, demonstrate their knowledge, and rehearse their ideas for writing.

What are Talk Sets?

Children simply need to use the sound recorder to add an audio recording alongside a picture prompt. You can then save this using your normal saving practices and have really powerful evidence to showcase a child’s understanding!

One of the things I love about Talk Sets is that you can use them for so many different areas of learning and development. I always recommend the ‘Tell the Story’ resources for gathering literacy evidence, and the wide range of maths resources available on LearningGrids.

Talk Sets for evidencing Understanding the World

I think Talk Sets are particularly powerful to use for Understanding the World, which is the area of learning I often found I had the least evidence for. As a teacher, I was confident that we were exploring this area of learning in enough detail; having conversations, going on trips, exploring texts, inviting visitors into the classroom, but I found it harder to evidence children’s understanding of these ELGs.

Using Talk Sets in provision, or as a focus activity following a teaching input or a class trip would really allow children to talk freely about what they’ve understood. They’re also great for those children who perhaps aren’t confident to share their ideas in a big group or in a conversation with an adult but still have lots to say!

Offer opportunities for independent reading

When setting up my previous classrooms, I always loved adding a linked book to my provision areas. I had baskets full of different themed books that I would bring out depending on what topics we were exploring and what the children were interested in. Having books readily available helps children to develop key skills and really develop a love of reading.

Enhance your reading provision by using Clicker Books. They are on-screen, speech supported books with built-in scaffolding. They are perfect for supporting children to access texts across the EYFS curriculum.

Whether you’re using Clicker Books on devices as a standalone resource, or alongside a physical book so children can still access the text using the built-in speech support, Clicker Books have lots of great uses within provision, and that speech support really encourages them to independently access new information and vocabulary.

Clicker Books link with writing grids, so if a child feels particularly inspired by a book, they can produce a piece of writing afterwards too!

How you can use Clicker Books in your continuous provision

You can even make your own Clicker Books using text, audio, images, and videos. Why not create a Clicker Book about a trip your class went on, or something that happened in class? In my experience, children love looking back at real-life events they were involved in, so this is a perfect activity to engage them!

This is just a small sample of the ways you could use Clicker Books; the list goes on!

Additional implementation tips

There really is so much you can do with Clicker to support your learners in continuous provision, and Clicker is very flexible depending on how your classroom is set up.

As with anything new, you’ll need to spend some time modelling Clicker to your class and giving them chances to explore it themselves before it becomes an effortless part of your continuous provision.

My number one tip would be to utilise the ready-made resources on LearningGrids, they are a great place to get started and will save you so much time! The activities are all editable, so you can quickly make changes to any resources to meet the needs of your learners.

Don’t forget, you can also print any of the activities if you don’t always have access to technology in your Early Years classroom!

Here are some other resources you may find helpful:

• Supporting writing in Early Years webinar
  
  
• Support early reading with Clicker blog post 
  
  
• Clicker and Phonics webinar 
  
  
• Book a meeting to discuss how Clicker can support your EYFS pupils