During a recent DocsPlus demonstration, someone asked me whether DocsPlus could support the school’s ‘threefold improvement plan’ by:

1. Providing access to literacy support for students across the whole school
   
   
2. Using DocsPlus as a student’s normal way of working
   
   
3. Using DocsPlus for a student’s access arrangements in exams

And the answer is, yes!

Here’s how:

Provide access to literacy support for students across the whole school

All students in secondary schools can use DocsPlus as, at its core, it is an intelligent word processor that can be of benefit to students of all abilities and ages.

Students benefit from access to DocsPlus in lessons in numerous ways, including:

• Accessing texts using the DocReader
  
  
• Planning their writing with WorkSpace
  
  
• Using Wordbars to easily include genre/topic specific vocabulary
  
  
• Accessing DocsPlus’ spell checker, speech feedback and Predictor to help construct and check their writing

Having day-to-day use of DocsPlus ensures that students are fully familiar with how the word processor and its integrated features function. By the time students require access arrangements for their formal examinations, they could have up to 3 years’ experience and expertise using DocsPlus as their normal way of working!

Use DocsPlus as students' normal way of working

To qualify for exam access arrangements, schools need ample evidence (for JCQ’s regulations) that demonstrate how the arrangements in place for the exam match how the student would normally work in the classroom.

With DocsPlus, teachers will have months’ – even years’ – worth of evidence that prove the student has completed their tasks/assignments with access to a word processor that replicates the ‘scribe’ or ‘reader’ role within an exam scenario.

DocReader

Using the DocReader, students can access texts they may have struggled to read previously. The DocReader will read the text aloud, providing them with equal access to worksheets, exam papers and more. The Dual View feature means students can access the Word Processor and the DocReader at the same time, enabling them to answer questions or create work whilst still being able to see the questions or content.

WorkSpace

Students can use a WorkSpace to organise and structure their ideas, preparing them for writing. Using this visual organising tool, students can express and arrange their ideas to help when writing coherently and with a clear theme. They can be used in lessons to prepare for essay writing or for revision preparation, including creating a revision planner to help them organise their thoughts and feel a little more in control of the situation. When students add Voice Notes to a WorkSpace, they expand on their ideas and capture their thoughts without being distracted or held back by the mechanics of writing - especially if they struggle to express themselves in written form. You can export the WorkSpace and turn it into a Wordbar!

Wordbars

Wordbars give students instant access to the specific words and phrases they need for their given topic. The different types of Wordbars can support students when using and subject-specific vocabulary and with structuring their writing. Teachers can set Wordbars across curriculum areas, which greatly benefits students who experience significant literacy barriers. They are a useful tool for revision as students could write practise answers with key vocabulary readily available. You can print them out to make them portable, and students can read the key vocabulary on their way to school in the car or on the bus!

Word Processor

At the heart of DocsPlus, is the Word Processor. With realistic speech feedback, an intelligent Predictor which suggests words based on the context and a Spell Check tool, students can make review and informed decisions, enabling them to focus on what they are trying to write and encourages them to use a wider range of vocabulary. You can toggle on and off any of these tools to ensure students' exam access arrangements and normal way of working in lessons match.

Use DocsPlus for students' access arrangements in exams

If a student qualifies for additional access arrangements in exams (access to a word processor, human reader, or human scribe), they can use DocsPlus.

The benefits for students using DocsPlus as opposed to a human scribe or reader are significant:

• Increased independence
  Using DocsPlus gives control back to the student during their exams. Because human readers are often allocated at a 1:2 ratio, students often have to wait until the reader finishes helping another student before receiving support. This can happen numerous times throughout an exam, but with DocsPlus, the power is with the student to listen to the text as frequently, and as many times, as they choose, when they choose.
  
  
• Increased confidence
  Students don’t second guess themselves when using DocsPlus. Using human scribes or readers can add an instinctive element of ‘judgement’ for the student – ‘I can’t ask them to read it again’, ‘They will know if I’m getting it wrong, so I won’t put anything’… Using DocsPlus removes this added pressure and allows students to focus entirely on answering their exam to the best of their ability.
  
  
• Increased clarity
  DocsPlus provides the opportunity for students to re-write or re-read as frequently as necessary to complete their exam to their full potential. Using a human scribe or reader can limit students’ responses as it is time-consuming to ask an ‘external resource’ to re-word or re-phrase their ideas multiple times.

More on using DocsPlus as students' normal way of working

If you would like to know more about using DocsPlus as students' normal way of working and to support students in their exams:

• Read our informative Technology in Exams Q&A.
  
  
• Visit the exam access page on our website which includes a 30-minute webinar recording on Using DocsPlus for exam access
  
  
• Book an exam support meeting with our expert team to ensure your DocsPlus setup is exam-ready.
  

For any other questions about using DocsPlus to support learning in your secondary school, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with our friendly team at info@cricksoft.com!

How do you track your pupils’ knowledge journey?

When I was teaching KS2 pupils, I know I found it challenging to find an effective solution to track prior and gained knowledge. At times I found myself relying on successfully filing away hundreds of sticky notes, or I felt like I was endlessly modelling how to draw a spider diagram neatly and accurately…

Thankfully, Clicker Board is the perfect solution to this problem – but goes one step further by helping you to accurately record and track knowledge throughout an entire topic!

Collect pupils' prior knowledge

The initial benefit of using Clicker Board to collect pupils’ prior knowledge is that it can easily be a whole class activity, or an independent activity.

If it is an independent activity, using Clicker Board makes it accessible to all learners. Clicker Board provides built-in writing support with intuitive word prediction, spell checker and speech feedback, helping pupils to write down their ideas with growing independence. Pupils can also use Voice Notes and images, which gives less confident writers an alternative way to demonstrate their prior knowledge.

What’s more, you can easily print Clicker Boards to stick into topic/curriculum books if you wish! Creating a Clicker Board is a more accessible way for many children to demonstrate their knowledge accurately, and neatly, than the alternative of a hand-drawn spider diagram (or collecting lots of sticky notes!)

How to collect evidence of knowledge across a topic

Clicker Board allows you to have multiple boards collated in one place by utilising ‘tabs’. These make it incredibly straightforward for you to track pupils' knowledge every lesson. In the images below, you can see that I’ve created tabs for different sessions, from ‘Prior Knowledge’ through to ‘Lesson 3’.

It’s a great way for pupils to ‘collect as they go’ or you can use it as a plenary at the end of the lesson to check how much they can remember/what they have learnt.

One idea is to have a knowledge question in the middle of the Clicker Board that children aim to add their answers to throughout the lesson. This could even be two or three focused questions that the children can collect the answers to.

Again, pupils can choose whether they type or use Voice Notes to record their knowledge.

Explore our pre-made Clicker Boards

Don’t forget, LearningGrids will often have pre-made Clicker Boards that you can use for your initial prior knowledge session, which you can simply add extra tabs to as the topic progresses!

If you have any queries about utilising Clicker Board in your topic lessons, please contact us at info@cricksoft.com. Or you can:

• Visit our Clicker Board training resources
• Book a customer care meeting if you’re a current subscriber
• Book a consultation if you’d like to explore getting Clicker into your school

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

Recently, we spoke with a teacher who said that one of their favourite features of Clicker is that you can quickly turn a Clicker Board into a Word Bank!

Pupils can contribute their ideas to a whole-class discussion on a topic, and the teacher can collate the ideas using Clicker Board on the whiteboard. The Board can then be turned into a Word Bank and shared with students to use to support their independent writing.

This allows pupils to transition seamlessly from planning a piece of writing to producing their writing using a wide range of vocabulary.

With this vocabulary available in a Word Bank, learners can easily add words to a piece of writing and use Clicker’s built-in speech support to hear any words read aloud. They will also have access to all of Clicker’s support tools throughout their writing.

Clicker is a flexible tool, so you can create mind maps related to anything that suits the needs of your learners. For example, you may wish to collate sentence starters, character descriptions, or key vocabulary linked to a topic you are studying in class.

Watch our video to find out how you can turn your Clicker Board into a Word Bank!

There are hundreds of ready-made Clicker Boards available on LearningGrids, or you can create your own!

What will you be doing this Halloween – carving pumpkins, making costumes, trick-or-treating? Be sure to add reading and writing with Clicker to that list! LearningGrids is full of great Halloween resources to inspire all your readers and writers.

Your younger learners can read about a group of friends at a Halloween party and then use the supporting sets to talk and write about the activities. Using the Connect Set Halloween Fun, or the Halloween Word Bank for more independent writers, children can write about things they do to celebrate Halloween. Or explore instruction writing with the Making a Pumpkin Lantern resources.

Halloween is also the perfect time to write a spooky story or a ghostly poem, and we have lots of resources to support your children’s creativity. The recently published Suspense Writing Word Bank provides introductory phrases and other vocabulary to help build tension and excitement in stories. Your aspiring poets can use the Halloween Haiku or Spooky Words Word Banks to (pumpkin) spice up their poems.

Visit LearningGrids for many more Halloween resources.

The team has been hard at work updating our software and apps and I’m pleased to announce that we have just released new versions of Clicker, Clicker Writer, and Clicker Books. A lot of the changes that we’ve made are based on customer feedback and feature requests, so please do keep talking to us so that we can continue to make Clicker even better!

These updates are free for all Clicker subscribers:

• Clicker Desktop users – Visit Downloads - Crick Software UK. For standalone computers, simply run the installation package. For network deployments we recommend uninstalling first before re-deploying. Network installation instructions are here.
  
  
• iPad users – iPads with automatic updates turned on will see the new features instantly; if not, update Clicker Writer via the App Store.
  
  
• Chromebook users - A pop-up should appear in the app informing you that an update is available – click OK/yes. If it doesn’t, just close and relaunch the app to force the update.

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So, what’s new in the latest versions?

Whilst all of the adjustments that we’ve made are important, I wanted to highlight some of the key changes that have been made to the Windows/Mac version and the Clicker Books App:

Eye gaze enhancement (Win/Mac)

When eye gaze users hover over a cell in a Clicker Grid, a ‘starburst’ animation will now appear on that cell to indicate that an action has been triggered (for example, the action of sending that word into the Clicker Document). When you’re concentrating on looking at a particular cell, you may not see your word actually go into the Document above, so this immediate in-cell feedback reassures the user that they have achieved their intended action.

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Customising font sizes in Clicker Sets (Win/Mac)

It’s great that you can adjust the font to whatever size your learner needs in a Clicker Document, but we’ve had a lot of requests to be able to do this in Clicker Sets as well, particularly writing grids such as Sentence Sets, Connect Sets and Word Banks.  

In Display > Display Options > Fonts, simply click on ‘Maximise cell font size’ and use the arrow keys to click or drag the number on the font slider up or down to the size that you want (you can also access this font slider in the ‘Edit View’ of a particular Clicker Set that you’re working on).  This is a great way to make activities more accessible for visually impaired learners.

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Clicker Board (Win/Mac)

We have a couple of exciting new options within Clicker Board:

Firstly, you can now send Voice Notes that you have recorded as part of your Clicker Board into your Clicker Document. You’ll see that this option has been added to the ‘Send to Document’ menu alongside ‘Diagram’ and ‘Text’.

Secondly, our Spell Check tool is also now available in Clicker Board. When you’re editing a cell, if a word is spelt incorrectly, you’ll see the familiar red squiggly line - just right-click on it to bring up your menu of potential corrections. Part of what makes Clicker really special is having this built-in support that pupils can independently access throughout the writing process, whenever they need to!

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Clicker Books (Win/Mac/iPad/Chromebook)

Last, but certainly not least, let’s take a look at what’s changed in Clicker Books (both the Windows/Mac version and within the Clicker Books App).

Click on the three dots in the blue left-hand menu bar to reveal some new objects that you can add to your Clicker Books. These include ‘page turner’ buttons for moving forwards or backwards through the book, which can be added anywhere on the page, and easily enlarged. These buttons are much easier to see and select than the standard arrows at the bottom of the page, making them much more accessible for users who are visually impaired, touch screen users, and learners accessing books with an eye gaze device.  

Another useful object that we’ve added here is the ‘link’ object. This enables you to add links to your books that learners can select to ‘jump’ to another section of that book.  In this example, we’ve created a picture menu for the front page of our ‘Animals of the Savannah’ book so that pupils can jump to the animal they’d like to learn/write about first! You could also create some fantastic ‘branching stories’ using this object (keep your eyes peeled for a future blog post on this from our Customer Experience team!).

Finally, a real ‘wow’ moment! When we make our collections of resources for LearningGrids, we often pair a Clicker Book with a connected Sentence Set that enables pupils to recreate that story sentence by sentence. Now, when you create a Sentence Set, you have the option to also save this set as a Clicker Book! Simply go to the ‘Clicker Set’ ribbon, select ‘Save As’ and choose ‘Clicker Book’ from the ‘Save as type’ drop-down box.

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We’re here to help!

If you need any assistance updating to the latest versions, contact our technical support team. If you have any questions about the new tools and features we’ve introduced, please email our Customer Experience team via training@cricksoft.com, or book in a meeting with your Clicker Partnership Consultant to explore them in more detail.

We’re excited to share that our new training resources - tutorials on saving, sharing, and printing Clicker files – are now live on our website!

These tutorials are full of useful information to support you with saving, sharing, and printing on all devices - PC, Chromebooks, and iPads. 

You can either watch a full tutorial, or quickly jump to the information that you need using the menu to the right of the screen. Each video comes with a handy printable summary so you can print the step-by-step instructions and keep them to hand.

These tutorials are great for showing you how you can use your school’s normal saving, sharing and printing practices with Clicker files!

Saving

These tutorials guide you through how to save Clicker Documents and Clicker Sets on different devices and to different locations. Find out how to save your Clicker files in line with your school’s established saving systems.

There’s also a ‘top tips’ section where we delve into how to navigate and customise your file explorer, and how to save your Clicker files as an alternative file type. For example, saving your work as a Microsoft Word document or a PDF so that you can open it on a device that doesn’t have Clicker installed.

Sharing

We understand how important it is to be able to share files quickly and easily, from sharing files with colleagues, sharing a resource to a different device, or sharing work with parents and carers. We also understand that the number of ways you can share files can be overwhelming, particularly if it involves devices from other platforms!

So, the new tutorials guide you through different ways to share your Clicker files, providing clear explanations of which file sharing methods are available on your device, and the steps required to utilise them. Learn about how to share Clicker files, and how to open Clicker files that have been shared with you.

The tutorials include useful information on sharing Clicker files via email, cloud storage, network sharing, and sharing through AirDrop, Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams.

Printing

Whether you’re printing work to keep a physical record of learners’ progress or printing Clicker Sets to share with students and staff – these tutorials will have the information you need! They include extra information on how to add headers and footers, how to save on ink by turning off backgrounds, and how to print your Analytics information.

Our Support team is always happy to help if you have any technical questions or difficulties getting set up with our software. You can reach us by email at support@cricksoft.com, by phone at 01604 671691 or by completing this short form.

Are you using Google Workspace for Education?

If so, you may be aware of the ‘app access control settings’ feature, which enables you to control which third-party apps your users can sign into with their Google Workspace for Education Account, and the data those apps can request.

As a data protection measure, Google has announced that starting from October 23rd, 2023, users designated as under 18 won't be able to access third-party apps you haven't confirmed access settings for.

So, to ensure that your students’ access to the Clicker Apps isn’t interrupted, the Google Workplace Administrator for your organisation’s account will need to review your current settings in the Admin console before this date, and check that you have set each Clicker App to ‘Trust’.

If you’re not sure how to do this, Google has put together a handy video and step-by-step guide here.

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Recently we spoke with staff at St Catherine’s Academy to find out how they are using Clicker as a school-wide approach to learning support.

They are successfully using Clicker in a number of different ways, but I was particularly interested in how the KS2 team use Clicker to consolidate word classifications. Staff take Word Banks and colour code them to match the school’s system. For example, creating a Word Bank with a purple tab for adjectives, a green tab for nouns and an orange tab for verbs. 

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Recently, we have been speaking with schools to find out how they are using Clicker in a school-wide approach to learning support.

One school explained that they use Clicker in upper elementary classrooms to consolidate word classifications. Educators take Word Banks and color code them to match the school’s system. For example, creating a Word Bank with a yellow tab for nouns, a blue tab for verbs and an orange tab for adjectives.

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There are hundreds of ready-made Word Banks available on LearningGrids, linked to a wide range of curriculum areas, and it is quick and easy to edit them to add your own colour coding! In edit view, you can change the colour of your grids or individual words by clicking or tapping the colour palette.

Clicker is a flexible tool that allows you to add or remove this type of scaffolding depending on the needs of your learners. You can quickly remove this colour coding for your older learners, so you can identify how well the children’s understanding of word classification has progressed.

Watch our tutorial to find out how to edit a Word Bank from LearningGrids, or how to quickly create your own from scratch!

For information on how to use Clicker to support Colourful Semantics, watch our on-demand webinar or check out the resources on LearningGrids!

In a recent conversation with a school, science came up as a subject that teachers were keen to discuss. Particularly how children of differing reading/writing abilities can successfully discuss and record the same science investigation.

A useful way to enable all children to show their understanding in science is to use Clicker Talk Sets. The benefit of these sets is that they don’t require any form of writing, as pupils use the microphone to record their predictions, methods and observations.

A set to look at on LearningGrids is Reversible and Irreversible Changes – Talk, which looks at six materials and how they might be changed. Pupils consider whether the changes shown are permanent, or whether the materials can be returned to their original states.

The activity is open-ended – some children might describe what they can see in the pictures while others might give detailed interpretations of what has happened, and recognise for example that the candle represents both a reversible and an irreversible change. As such the activity is suitable for a range of abilities.

Having recorded their ideas, children could use the set as a prompt for writing. Some pupils may confidently write from their recordings; however, others may require further support. For those pupils, Word Banks are a great way to support their writing by providing key words that can be easily inserted into their text with a click or a tap!

LearningGrids also has a range of science investigation Word Banks and Clicker Boards that provide brilliant scaffolding for all pupils as they develop their knowledge and skills at writing up investigations.

For an overview of the science sets available on LearningGrids, you can explore the ‘Science’ tab or search for your current topic. If you would like any further guidance using Clicker to support your science lessons, you can talk to your friendly Clicker Partnership Consultant! Email us at info@cricksoft.com or call 01604 671691.

We recently ran a webinar focusing on using Clicker to support children writing their own stories. I’ve gathered some of the ideas and resources we shared here.

Planning

We started off by looking at resources for planning stories. First, we looked at our Using Question Words Clicker Board and Talk Set. These resources can be used to help learners develop their question skills or build ideas for story writing.

We then looked at some resources for plotting different stages of a story with The Alien and Planet Earth Story Steps, Storyboard 5, and Pirate Story Builder Clicker Boards. These resources are great for encouraging children to get their creative writing ideas flowing individually, in groups or as a class.

Settings

We then moved on to looking at resources for developing settings for our stories. The Pirate story builder Clicker Board includes multiple story building elements, so after identifying key plot points in the Plot tab, we moved on to using the Setting tab to gather ideas for describing the setting of our story.

Thinking about a different style of story, we then looked at the Spooky House Talk Set. This resource includes a picture prompt with lots of detail and recording buttons to encourage learners to think about how they might describe this setting in a story. Alongside this resource we looked at the Spooky House Description Word Bank, which provides powerful vocabulary learners can use to help them describe this kind of setting in their writing.

Finally, we looked at the Setting the Scene – The House. This resource encourages children to explore different senses as part of a description, rather than relying predominantly on visual aspects of the description.

Character development

Next, we looked at character development ideas. For this, we returned to our pirate story ideas with the Pirate Wanted Poster Two Clicker Book. This Make-A-Book activity allows children to draw their own pirate character and then describe them in the style of a wanted poster. There is an in-built Word Bank in the resource to support learners building their descriptions.

We then moved on to designing superhero characters with the If I was a Superhero Clicker Board, which provides several prompts for, not only describing a superhero character, but also starting to develop their backstory.

Then, we looked at characters for a different style of story – fantasy – with the Fantasy Creatures Talk Set. Main characters aren’t the only characters that need to be developed in a story; this resource is a great way to give learners a starting point for describing fantasy creatures that might be involved in their stories.

Writing

Lastly, we looked at resources to support children through the writing process of their stories. The Fantasy Story Words and Fantasy Story A-Z Word Banks are excellent resources for supporting writers at the best stage for them. Fantasy Story A-Z provides a wider range of topic vocabulary organised alphabetically -  this is great for learners who know the words they want to use but struggle with spelling. Whereas Fantasy Story Words groups words by characters, places, nouns, verbs, and adjectives, offering more support to learners who might not be as confident with the vocabulary.

For learners that need support structuring their stories, we looked at the Write a Traditional Story Connect Set. This resource gives children a selection of sentence starters, characters, and events which they can use to build their own traditional style stories.

Want to find out more? Book a meeting with your Clicker Partnership Consultant to get some additional hints and tips.

A lot of the time, we can forget the most important part of the lesson: reflection.

This period is often found during the plenary aspect of a lesson once the main activity has been completed. However, due to time restraints, a plenary can sometimes be forgotten, and the children are expected to move to the next task of the day.

This was something I struggled with when I used to teach year 4. Having to stick to the compulsory 55 minutes per lesson, which needed to include engaging starter activities and enough time for everyone to understand and complete the objective, meant that plenaries were something that I couldn’t always plan for.

The great thing about Clicker is that we can utilise activity sets in several ways to create plenary opportunities. Lesson-appropriate activities only take a couple of minutes to plan and create but enable children to reflect on what they have learnt.

The first example of a great plenary builder is a Talk Set. Sometimes, we can over-rely on children physically writing their ideas on paper, rather than communicating with peers. Building a Talk Set allows children to share their ideas verbally, without you worrying about, “how will I show their progression if they haven’t put it on paper?” Because what’s great about Talk Sets, is that you can record ideas on the activity itself, so you don’t need to worry about losing them! Children can truly reflect and share ideas within their recordings, consolidating their understanding. This is a great way to round off a lesson.

The second example is a Connect Set. Although these are very useful for the main activities to support writing, using one at the end of a lesson would allow you to see if the children have understood the concepts covered, like fronted adverbials and expanding sentences. They could work in groups using whiteboards or even use an interactive whiteboard to create some sentences of their own.

You could even get the children to share some of their own ideas from the work they have completed in the lesson.

Plenaries are an integral part of the lesson: they allow us to consolidate understandings and reflect upon what we have learnt. They don’t have to be time consuming or overthought either; a simple retrieval activity or voice note recording can be the difference between all children demonstrating their knowledge at the end of the lesson versus only those who flourish with pen and paper.

Free ‘How to adopt Rosenshine’s 10 Principles with Clicker’ PDF!

Using plenaries is one of many pedagogical choices teachers employ in their classroom. For other examples of how Clicker can support teaching practices, our ‘How to adopt Rosenshine’s 10 Principles with Clicker’ PDF is full of handy tips and tricks to keep your children learning and engaged using Clicker.

Plenaries are an integral part of the lesson: they allow us to consolidate understandings and reflect upon what we have learnt. They don’t have to be time consuming or overthought either; a simple retrieval activity or voice note recording can be the difference between all children demonstrating their knowledge at the end of the lesson versus only those who flourish with pen and paper.

Free ‘How to adopt Rosenshine’s 10 Principles with Clicker’ PDF!

Using plenaries is one of many pedagogical choices teachers employ in their classroom. For other examples of how Clicker can support teaching practices, our ‘How to adopt Rosenshine’s 10 Principles with Clicker’ PDF is full of handy tips and tricks to keep your children learning and engaged using Clicker.

For a lot of children, the summer holiday means a break from the stresses of school. But a change to the normal routine can bring other challenges for many children. Clicker is a good tool to use to check in with a child to see how they are doing.

If your child is struggling with the change, the When My Routine Changes Connect Set or the How Do You Feel Word Bank can help them express how the change makes them feel and what they can do to feel better. Their writing can be a great conversation starter for the two of you.

With all the action and excitement that summertime brings, don’t forget to plan in some quieter moments. Practising mindfulness can help children manage their emotions and build self-control. If you are heading over to the local park or a friend’s house, why not make it a mindful walk on the way – focus on what you see, hear, smell and feel. You can read about a similar walk in the Clicker Book A Mindful Walk – Read a Book. Children can use the Clicker Board to reflect on what they experienced during their own walk.

Explore LearningGrids for many more resources that focus on Feelings and Actions.

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!

We recently ran a webinar focusing on approaches you can take to introduce Clicker to pupils. I’ve gathered some of the ideas we shared here.

Before introducing Clicker to pupils

First, we discussed some things to consider before introducing Clicker to your pupils:

• Topic selection – introducing Clicker to learners with a topic they’re already familiar with can reduce cognitive load, allowing learners to focus on getting to grips with new features and applying vocabulary they have used recently.
  
  
• Clicker Sets selection – picking an appropriate Clicker Set for the child’s ability and the learning objectives can help to ensure success and build their confidence with the software. For example, this could be offering a Connect Set to a child who needs a scaffold to support their writing or a Clicker Board to provide visual support to a child struggling to organise their ideas.
  
  
• Concepts – Which features and concepts in Clicker do you want to introduce to learners first? Whether it’s strategies for using the speech support, Voice Notes or the Predictor, many of these features are available across our resources, making it easier for learners to move between resources confidently.
  
  
• Saving and sharing – what systems do you have in place for saving and sharing files in your school? Has Clicker been set up to make it as easy as possible to share files between devices?
  
  
• Training resources – To ensure introducing Clicker to learners goes as smoothly as possible, teachers and teaching assistants should be familiar with the features you’re planning to use. A bespoke training session or our free training resources can help staff feel confident to use Clicker in their classrooms.

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Clicker Books

Clicker Books can be a great starting point for introducing children to Clicker. They offer a simple way to introduce learners to the speech support available throughout Clicker, embedding this feature early in their experience with the software.

We have a fantastic selection of ready-to-use Clicker Books available in LearningGrids to suit a wide range of ages and needs. They can be easily edited to meet your learners’ specific requirements.

Clicker Books can also be used flexibly in the classroom. They could be used to introduce a topic, such as life cycles, to a whole class on the interactive whiteboard, giving the teacher an opportunity to model their use, or for supporting learners in researching a topic independently.

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Clicker Board

We also looked at Clicker Boards. Mind mapping is likely to be a concept that children are already familiar with, so using a Clicker Board to facilitate this can easily lead into using Clicker more widely.

Similarly to Clicker Books, Clicker Boards can be used with the whole class to support group discussions and gather ideas, giving teachers another opportunity to model key features.

Using a Clicker Board provides access to other support tools common throughout Clicker such as the speech support, Predictor, and Voice Notes. So, if these are features you’d like to encourage children to use, Clicker Board is a great place to start.

The range of Clicker Boards available through LearningGrids covers a wide range of activities from sequencing, to Venn diagrams, to story planning, making them easy to incorporate into your existing planning.

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Writing grids

The three types of writing grids; Sentence Sets, Connect Sets, and Word Banks, could also be a good option for introducing Clicker to your learners.

All three writing grid resources function similarly, so you can easily support multiple ability levels while reinforcing similar concepts. By introducing learners to using right-click or SoundShift to listen to vocabulary offered in the grid and then clicking to use that vocabulary in their writing, they’ll be able to start using any of the three writing grids independently.

Teachers can make use of these resources as starter or plenary activities displayed for the whole class to see and model their use at the same time.

Access to Analytics alongside the writing grids gives teachers clear data on how children are producing their writing and an insight into the impact Clicker has on children’s literacy.

Want to find out more? Book a meeting with your Clicker Partnership Consultant to get some additional hints and tips.

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.

During a recent training session, staff were particularly interested to find out how you could use Clicker to support EAL pupils. I thought I’d share some of the ideas we discussed around using picture support within Clicker to develop links with new vocabulary.

You can set up picture support in Pictures under the Options ribbon. Here you can tick the boxes listed at the top to tell Clicker to display pictures in the Word Processor as words are typed into the Document, in the Spell Check when words are checked, or in the Predictor as pupils write.

You can also choose to have picture support in most of the different Clicker Sets. Some examples of this might be: easily editing a Connect Set so that different words or parts of sentences have a picture to accompany them, or Picturizing a Word Bank to include visual cues for the vocabulary.

It’s also possible to incorporate pictures into other elements of Clicker. Use a Clicker Board mind-map with key vocabulary and relevant pictures to reinforce topic understanding. Or introduce and consolidate vocabulary using a Matching Set with a combination of pictures, words and sounds. The images you use can either come from CrickPix2, our library of images, or your own pictures.

It is easy to add your own picture library to Clicker. For example, if you wanted to have a class discussion about a particular topic which you have found a lot of pictures for, you simply:

1. Go to Options
2. Choose Pictures
3. Then open the Picturize tab
4. Click the + icon in the bottom-right of the window
5. Locate your chosen picture folder, select it and click ‘Ok’.
6. You can now select and insert pictures like you would with the CrickPix library

By using the picture support options available in Clicker, you can provide context and make text more accessible for your EAL pupils. Find more ideas on how you can use Clicker to support pupils with EAL in our recent webinar ‘Supporting English language learners with Clicker’.

Many of our customers purchase Flexi-subscriptions and want to find out the easiest way to install the software on numerous Windows devices.

We suggest using ‘Intune’ and following the steps below (you may want to pass these instructions on to your IT team or provider).

To install Clicker using Intune:

1. Download the latest Clicker installer from Subscription Management.
   
2. Run the downloaded file and click "Install" to start unpacking it.
   
3. Close the Clicker Installer that auto-starts and extract "Clicker8-enGB.msi" from the MSI subfolder.
   
4. In Intune, deploy the MSI as a "Line-of-Business" app.
   
5. Specify these parameters (where PIDKEY = your serial number and SHAREDFILES = where you’d like Clicker to save documents):
   
   /qn PIDKEY="XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX"
   SHAREDFILES="C:\Users\Public\Documents\Clicker"
   
6. If you would prefer to use cloud storage, replace SHAREDFILES="C:\Users\Public\Documents\Clicker" with EXPLORER=”OneDrive”.
   
   Possible values for EXPLORER are “OneDrive”, “Google Drive” and “DropBox”.

If you need any further help, please get in touch with our support team by filling in our support form, or you can call us on 01604 671691 and we’ll be very happy to assist you!

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!

Recently, we ran a training webinar focusing on how Clicker can be used in the Early Years.

We had lots of interest in different literacy topics, including vocabulary building activities, speaking and listening activities, and sentence building. As a former EYFS teacher, it was great to see how many resources there are available within LearningGrids that can be used in an Early Years setting! We explored Little Red Riding Hood as an example, but there are thousands more ready-made resources, linked to many other stories, themes and topics.

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Vocabulary building

For vocabulary building, we started by looking at the Look and Read Matching Set. This resource is a great way to introduce learners to the key language they are likely to encounter in the story. Children can rehearse vocabulary by matching an image from the story to the corresponding word. This is a brilliant activity for children to complete independently after a teaching input, it’s such an engaging way for them to consolidate new learning!

Next, we looked at Clicker Books. These on-screen, speech supported books empower pupils of all abilities to read more independently. We began by exploring the Little Red Riding Hood Read a Book, which provides a more detailed version of the story combining images and text to engage your learners. To make this activity more accessible, children also have the option to hear the story read aloud.

We then looked at the Read it Yourself book. These books are designed for children to read the text themselves, using a simplified version of the story to encourage independence when reading. For additional support, this resource can be edited to include a read button so children can use Clicker to read the story to them. I always enjoyed nurturing a love of reading in my classroom, and Clicker Books are a great way of encouraging this! They make reading fun for your learners and allow them to access a range of books independently.

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Speaking and listening

Next, we looked at how Clicker can be used to develop speaking and listening skills. We began by looking at the Little Red Riding Hood Keywords activity. Children can listen to core vocabulary from the story and record themselves saying these words aloud.

Once learners are familiar with the key vocabulary and plot of the story, they can use this Tell the Story Talk Set to orally retell Little Red Riding Hood. This resource includes images from the story in sequence, learners simply click a picture and record their ideas using the microphone button.  When finished, children can listen to all the recordings to hear the story retold in their own words. This resource can be completed individually, in groups, or as a whole class!

Finally, we explored Clicker Boards. With this Describe the Characters activity, children can create profile mind maps of characters from the story. Children can type key descriptive words into text boxes and further expand on their ideas by recording a voice note. I would have enjoyed using this as a whole class activity with my Reception class, the children can contribute ideas whilst the teacher collates them on the whiteboard. This board can then be turned into a word bank to support learners further with their writing!

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Sentence Building

For sentence building skills, we began by looking at the Clicker Sets available to support children of all writing abilities. First, we looked at this Sentence Set, which helps children to build a simple sentence word by word. This resource provides children with all the words needed to build their first sentence, with the words displayed in a random order. Learners click each word to bring it into the document and build their sentence whilst developing their understanding of sentence structure and word order.

If children come to a word or phrase they cannot decode, they can use the speech feedback to hear it read aloud. Once the sentence is finished and a period is added in, Clicker reads the sentence back to the children so they can listen out for any errors. For additional support when using the Sentence Set, children can look at the complete sentence to understand the correct sentence structure before having another go.

Next we explored a Connect Set to support children with retelling the story of Little Red Riding Hood. This resource provides children with a scaffold to support the writing process and encourages them to independently experiment with a wider choice of vocabulary and sentence structures. This activity contains images from the story, so learners can choose when and how they want to illustrate their writing.

It was fantastic to be able to share these ideas with so many of our customers. If you’d like more information on how you can use Clicker to support your learners in Early Years, you can:

• Watch our tutorials or book a meeting.
  
  
• Explore LearningGrids for resources on nursery rhymes, sentence patterns, positional language and thousands more!