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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

If you’re using Clicker on a Chromebook, take a look at the image below. Does this appear when you open a Clicker App?

Yes? Then keep reading so you know how to make opening your Clicker Apps as smooth as possible!

Due to Google’s security policies, the Google account login window needs to appear every time a Clicker App is opened, and that’s classed as a ‘pop-up’. All you need to do is a small settings ‘tweak’ to allow, or ‘enable’, pop-ups, because we require the Google login for licensing.

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How to enable pop-ups

Pop-ups can be enabled by clicking the “Pop-up blocked” icon on the right of the address bar and selecting “Always allow”:

If the "Pop-up blocked” icon doesn’t appear, or if you want this to apply to all users, please send your IT Support the instructions below.

1. Sign in to the Google Admin Console (admin.google.com) as an administrator. On the left pane, go to Devices > Chrome > Settings > Users & browsers.

2. Select the correct organizational unit containing the users who need to have pop-ups unblocked on the Clicker Apps. We recommend unblocking them for all users.
   
3. Type pop-ups in the Search or add a filter field.

4. Under Content, you will find a section named Pop-ups. Under Allow pop-ups on these sites, enter:
   
   https://clickerwriter.apps.cricksoft.com
   https://clickerbooks.apps.cricksoft.com
   https://clickertalk.apps.cricksoft.com

5. Once you’ve entered the web addresses, click Save in the upper-right corner.

As always, if you ever need technical support, our friendly team are here to help! Please fill in our contact support form with any queries.

With any scheme or technology that you implement in school, you want to know it’s having a positive impact on learning and you’re getting value for money.

Here are some of the aspects of your pupils’ writing that Clicker can improve and how you can use the software to monitor and track their progress.

Vocabulary

By using appropriate writing grids and the Predictor, children can confidently use a wider range of topic specific and more advanced vocabulary in their writing.

In Analytics, you can track their use of vocabulary by seeing which words were typed, chosen from Clicker Sets or the Predictor. By delving further into Analytics, you can even see whether children listened to the words for confirmation before adding them into the Document.

Over time, children will need the speech support less frequently, include vocabulary that they first used with Clicker Sets and have the confidence to use this vocabulary in their writing outside of Clicker as well.

Length of writing

Clicker can have a dramatic effect on the amount of work children can produce and how quickly they can produce it.

With access to planning tools, such as Voice Notes (voice recordings) and Clicker Boards (mind maps), children can plan their writing in the way that suits them best and will find it easier to stay on track during writing tasks as they can refer back to their ideas (as opposed to having to remember them as they write). With point and click access to key vocabulary, your class can spend more time concentrating on their writing content and sentence structure, and less time focusing on spelling individual words, which can often interrupt their thought process and the flow of their writing. This should encourage your pupils to write longer sentences as their ideas won’t be forgotten, and barriers to writing longer sentences (like spelling) are removed.

To monitor Clicker’s positive impact, you can track the average length of their writing over time through Analytics. By choosing Statistics in the Analytics ribbon, you can see the total number of words in a Document, the average sentence length and the number of paragraphs. This makes it quick and easy for you to track the progress your pupils are making!

Spelling and grammar errors

Clicker can help learners check their work more effectively and correct mistakes more easily.

The speech feedback that reads out sentences when they’re completed helps learners to identify misspelled words, even if the misspelling is a different correct word (for example, writing ‘sow’ instead of ‘saw’). Learners can also use the speech feedback to be sure their sentence makes sense. Using speech feedback alongside the Predictor and the Spell Check helps learners to correct their work more independently. For learners who need further help with aspects of grammar, we have a wide selection of Clicker Sets focusing on different grammar rules and homophones.

In Analytics, you can easily see where the Predictor and Spell Check were used in a Document. By selecting the tabs, you can see whether the child listened to the options provided before making a choice or correction.

Independence

Clicker supports learners in writing and correcting more independently, reducing the amount of help they require from an adult.

Pupils can use LearningGrids resources to research or refer to curriculum content independently. A recent Clicker success story included a lovely example of this:

“In ‘Choosing Time’ the pupils can decide what they’d like to do, and this one child really wanted to use Clicker to write about plants. This isn’t something we’ve covered in class, but she just went off to LearningGrids and found some writing sets on the subject and presented me with this whole page of writing about the different parts of a plant, how to look after them etc, it was amazing. They can just pick Clicker up and roll with it.”

Rather than needing to check the correct option in the Spell Check with an adult, learners can listen to the options provided with the speech feedback. They can also record their tasks or ideas into Voice Notes in the Document to refer to when they need a reminder of the task they’re completing. Pupils can structure their work before starting to write with Voice Notes or a Clicker Board, and using a Word Bank ensures learners always have point and click access to key subject vocabulary.

As Clicker boosts the class’s independence when writing, teachers will find that they can spend more time with each pupil as those who usually rely on teacher help to complete a task will require less adult support. 

Alternate methods of recording

Finally, for learners who struggle to record their knowledge in writing, Clicker offers multiple options for alternate methods of recording.

Children can use Voice Notes to record their understanding orally before attempting to write it up. They could use the video recording function in Clicker Books to record their explanations as a movie book. Or they could use a Talk Set with pictures as a stimulus to express their knowledge.

By using Clicker’s alternative methods to record pupils’ understanding, teachers are able to track the learning progress of the children who struggle to demonstrate this in their writing. Talk Sets and recording functions also enable teachers to easily capture the voice of the child for speaking and listening evidence.

If you’d like to discuss using Clicker in your school in more detail, you can book a meeting with your Partnership Consultant. Otherwise, for further information you can always visit our:

• Clicker Basics training
• Clicker tutorials
• Clicker success stories
• Training webinars

We’ve got another exciting development to share with you this week…

Previously, the Clicker Board feature was only available to Windows/Mac users, but now it is also available within our Clicker Writer app for iPad and Chromebook!

Clicker Board is an incredible planning tool that helps pupils prepare for writing. Pupils can add text, images, and sounds to their planning whilst accessing all of Clicker’s support features including realistic speech feedback, word prediction and a talking spell checker.

Clicker Board now provides Clicker Writer users with many intuitive features that make planning an accessible task for all pupils, including:

Visual and audio support

Clicker Board utilises text, image and sound to ensure that every learner can plan their work in the way that suits them best. Images can be chosen from over 4500 curriculum pictures in the CrickPix library, or users can create their own using the painting tools. For strong verbal communicators, Voice Notes can be added to Clicker Boards to ensure they can capture their ideas, too.

Plans transform into structured writing support

When your pupils have completed their board, they can transform it into a word or picture bank that will sit at the bottom of the document as they are writing, providing instant touch access to key words, phrases and/or images. The bank intuitively mimics the structure of their board – which helps pupils to organise their written paragraphs and transfer their ideas to the page in a logical order.

Click here for a quick video demonstration!

Clicker’s integrated support features

All of Clicker’s support features are available while pupils create their Clicker Board. They can listen back to their text with the speech tool, use the predictor tool to help find the right word, and correct any spelling errors with the help of the talking spell checker.

Free access for current subscribers

Clicker Board is available now in Clicker Writer for all our current Clicker subscribers – simply update Clicker on your device(s) and Clicker Board will be ready to go!

If you require any further guidance, our support team will be happy to help.

Don’t have Clicker yet?

If you would like to explore how Clicker can raise literacy attainment and enjoyment across your school, we offer free 15-minute consultations where we’ll discuss your pupils’ specific learning challenges and objectives, and how Clicker can help.

You can choose the date and time that works best for you here.

We’ve also got lots more information about Clicker Writer and the complete Clicker package on our website.

For our support blog this week, we are continuing to explore the most asked questions that the Support Team receive from Clicker users. Today we are going to look at how you can make your own picture libraries available to use within Clicker for Windows/Mac.

Whether used for visual stimulation, talking points, or to aid understanding, pictures are a valuable tool for supporting literacy development, so…

Clicker’s ‘Picturize’ button enables you to instantly add pictures to cells in any Clicker Set, including Sentence Sets, Connect Sets, Word Banks, and to whole passages of text within a document. You can choose from over 4500 Clicker curriculum pictures, but you may wish to incorporate your own images and photos too. Here’s how:

1. Begin by creating a folder on your computer (choose somewhere it won’t be easily deleted).
   To create a folder, right-click and choose New, then Folder
   
2. Place all images you would like to be used in Picturize inside this folder. Make sure they are named after the word you would like them to represent.

1. Inside Clicker, head to the top Options ribbon tab, then Pictures.
   
2. Click the Picturize tab.
   
3. Click the + icon in the bottom-right corner.
   
4. Choose Browse, then find the folder you created and click OK.
   
5. Either leave the Label as it is or change it. This doesn’t affect anything, other than what it’s displayed as.
   
6. You should now see the newly added folder in the Get pictures from: list. Click the folder, then click the  arrow to move it up the list.
   
   The higher it is up the list, the more it is prioritised. For example, if CrickPix2 has an image for “dog” and you also have an image for “dog”, as long as your folder is higher up the list, your image will be used.

After following these steps, Picturize will automatically select the newly added pictures.  

Remember, if you ever need our support, we’re just a phone call or a click away:

Call: 01604 671691 or visit: technical support

We’re extremely pleased to announce that Clicker is a Bett Awards finalist in the ‘Primary – Digital Learning Product – Literacy and Language’ category.

The Bett Awards are a global celebration of the inspiring creativity and innovation that can be found throughout technology for education. This is the first year that Bett have included a literacy and language category, so we are very excited to be on the shortlist.

Over the years, Clicker has won nine Bett Awards – we really hope that this will be our chance to get into double figures. Last year, our founders John and Ann Crick were the proud recipients of Bett’s ‘Outstanding Achievement Award’.

Having been at the forefront of inclusive software development for more than a quarter of a century, John and Ann continue to help new generations of learners to experience feelings of pride and success in their writing. Their commitment to universal design and helping every child become a better, more confident writer has empowered young writers in thousands of schools around the world.  

The winner for the ‘Primary – Digital Learning Product – Literacy and Language’ category will be announced during the Bett Show in March, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed until then!

We have thoroughly enjoyed supporting KidsAid over the last year through a range of fundraising activities.

Our mission was to help KidsAid refurnish and resource the therapy rooms that play such an important role in the support they provide for local children and their families.

Over the year, we have raised £2,565 for KidsAid with some memorable moments along the way – including our colleague, Celia, abseiling the National Lift Tower (a whopping 418ft!) to help our fundraising mission.

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In December, we were lucky enough to visit KidsAid and see the incredible progress that’s been made with their therapy rooms over the year. They are looking brilliant!

BEFORE

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AFTER

KidsAid recently shared the following on their website:

Our Partnership with Crick Software
With the support of Crick Software, we are excited to share that we have refurnished our therapy rooms and purchased new toys, creative materials, and therapy resources.

John and Ann Crick are passionate about helping young people in need and have made the decision to partner with KidsAid for another year! We are excited to continue working with them and could not be more grateful for their continued support.

We are also delighted to continue working with KidsAid in 2023 and are excited to support their fantastic work within the local community for another year!

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

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

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

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

• How Do You Sleep?
• Goldfish Genius

How Do You Sleep?

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

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

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

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

Goldfish Genius

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

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

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

The predictor is one of the many fabulous features of Clicker and DocsPlus. Using the predictor results in greatly improved coherence, spelling and grammar, and helps to increase the writing productivity of learners who struggle to transfer their knowledge and ideas to the page. Sometimes you may find that the predictor is ‘unavailable’ to use – but don’t worry, this isn’t the case! And there’s a really simple fix that I’m going to walk you through here.

What happens when the predictor isn’t available?

If you find that the predictor is dimmed or ‘greyed out’ and can’t be used, this is only temporary and can be easily fixed.  

So why does this happen?

This usually happens when the program is launched and then closed in quick succession, this can lead to the predictor not being able to load fully.  

How do we fix this?

By following the steps given below you will be up and running in no time at all!

If Clicker has been updated within the past month, you can:

1. Head to the “Options” ribbon tab up top, then “Manage”.
2. Go to the “Advanced” tab.
3. Click “Rebuild Predictor database…”, then “Yes”.

It may take a few seconds, but after that the predictor should work.

If you haven’t updated Clicker, we recommend doing so by visiting activate.cricksoft.com and either entering your serial number or log in details.

REMEMBER: YOU CAN UPDATE CLICKER 8 BY INSTALLING THIS VERSION OVER THE CURRENT VERSION, WITHOUT THE NEED TO UNINSTALL!

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For those who haven’t updated Clicker in the last month or use DocsPlus:

WINDOWS

1. Close Clicker / DocsPlus.
2. Right-click the Windows Start button and choose Run.
3. Type C:\ProgramData\Crick Software into the box and click OK.
4. Right-click the Predictor folder and choose Delete.

Your Windows account may not have permission to access the ProgramData folder. If so, please forward this to your IT Support.

MAC

1. Close Clicker / DocsPlus.
2. Browse to this location in Finder:
   Macintosh HD\Library\Application Support\Crick Software
3. Right-click (or hold ‘Control’ and then click) the Predictor folder and choose Move to Trash.

After following these steps, launch Clicker / DocsPlus. The predictor icon should become active within 5 to 50 seconds.

And just like that, predictor will be available again for you to use! Remember, if you ever need our support, we’re just a phone call or a click away:

Call: 01604 671691 or contact support

We recently received a wonderful Clicker success story from Pete Thomson who is the Student Services Officer at Magill School.

Pete has been using Clicker for over a decade and is a huge advocate of the support it provides pupils and the progress they make.

Magill use Clicker across the school to support a range of learners. Pete has shared with us the wonderful results he has seen recently by using Clicker with a non-verbal student and a pupil who had a negative relationship with writing.   

In the first success that Pete shared with us, he used Clicker to help his non-verbal student to access the curriculum.

“James* has Clicker on his computer which he controls through Clicker’s touchscreen compatibility. By using the software, he accesses similar learning as his peers, but in a way that is best suited to his learning needs.

I created word banks to scaffold James’ writing that included key words. Using Clicker’s speech feedback, we would right-click so that James could hear each word and then make his choice.

The results were amazing! James successfully wrote an information report and he was very proud of his work! It’s safe to say that Clicker enabled James to participate in a project that closely matched the learning intention of his peers - whereas, without Clicker, he would have struggled to access this writing task at all.”

Pete used Clicker’s word banks to help his reluctant writer, too – but found that they boosted her writing confidence in a way that handwritten work alone struggled to achieve.

“Molly* was brought to my attention by her teacher who knew that Clicker was a must-try to see if it would improve her engagement and attitude to writing.

I decided to make some writing word banks for her with some sentence openers, adjective and verb suggestions etc. Instantly with minimal scaffolding, Molly wrote a sentence for the word ‘jet’. The sentence was, ‘I flew in an aeroplane jet.’ It was great to see that she was successfully using her word banks!”

Over time, Pete saw a huge change in Molly’s attitude to writing as she confidently and enthusiastically engaged with sentence writing on Clicker.

“When I next saw Molly, she began her sentence with, ‘The boy’. I asked her if she could add a bit more about the boy, and her response was, ‘You mean an adjective?’… I was totally blown away! Using the word banks she wrote, ‘The fast and clever boy played in the beach.’

It was incredible to see how Molly’s negative relationship with writing had changed, and how she was now happily writing and editing her sentences independently with Clicker.

There’s no doubt that Clicker has transformed the writing experience and outcomes for these students – it’s brilliant and I love using it!”

To read the full story, click here.

*Names changed for privacy purposes