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!
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:
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.
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
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!
Earlier this year, a BBC news item “Writing a Book in a Day” highlighted the work of a South African based charity called Book Dash that creates and publishes books for free, with the aim of enabling all children to “own a hundred books by the age of five”.
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?
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.
When our students find something difficult, or lack interest in it, or have an inbuilt fear of doing badly or indeed, failing; a very common anticipatory reaction is to avoid it. Constant struggles to achieve, despite working harder than others, often results in a wide range of avoidance strategies such as attendance issues; behaviour issues and limiting the fear of failure by choosing the simplest, most straightforward option.
Common transition pressures for SEND students
For students with SEND, this is often seen during and after transition to secondary school where there are so many challenges to their security - routines; expectations; new people; new spaces; new sensory inputs and an overarching thought that they are in ‘big’ school; they are ‘grownup’, and more is expected of them. So much pressure!
Let us add to this picture the pedagogical tendency to ‘chunk’ information and output expectations in order to make learning more accessible. Whilst this has clearly been shown to be effective in many learning activities, it does make it more difficult when we require students to extend and create a longer piece of work, with a level of independence. Of course we can scaffold and support via a different ‘chunking’ technique to introduce extended writing, however this does remain an area where many struggle – and this is evidenced for example by some Universities and Colleges offering induction courses in research techniques, essay writing and effective editing.
Why independent extended writing is important for all learners
So why is the ability to produce extended pieces of writing independently important? Elizabeth Bowling’s blog, ‘Beautiful Writing across the curriculum’ suggests:
“We know that clear and confident written expression is key to both academic success and success in later life. Jennifer Webb expresses it brilliantly when she says that “those that can successfully communicate have the power to change things and to show their worth”, and those that can’t are effectively disenfranchised from society (Teach Like a Writer: 2020). Written communication is necessary for self-expression, self-esteem and social empowerment.”
In all four modes of communication i.e., listening, speaking, reading and writing, our students may be challenged and yet success in learning and life is often influenced by and dependent on ability in these. Consequently, it is really important to support our students with literacy challenges, of whatever form, to understand why extended writing is going to be useful for them and then, use strategies to make success achievable for them.
The expectations for extended writing tasks
What do we mean by extended writing? UNSW in Sydney offers an explanation of why they use extended writing tasks and what they consist of:
“Extended writing tasks are text-based assignments that involve:
research and critical reading from multiple sources of information and ideas, and
the development of a sustained and well-substantiated argument or point of view.
These tasks are usually set to be undertaken within extended time frames. Students must engage in high-level reasoning and problem-solving as they generate their own creative response to the problem posed. With extended writing tasks, students can engage in deep learning, gain insights into multi-structural connections and relationships among concepts, and develop critical and creative reasoning skills.”
Three considerations for SEND learners when completing extended writing
So, extended writing is a complex structure of writing creation and production which ultimately should be produced by the student themselves. Of course, for our students there are three considerations:
- Firstly, ‘chunking’ of the various elements that will combine to form the final written version is important as the task as a whole will seem overwhelming. However, the end result should always remain in sight.
- Secondly, using assistive technology is perfectly acceptable and can support the precise needs of the individual student. It is not cheating. (I am not scribing this on a wax tablet with a stick and hopefully, the built-in spellchecker is doing its work!)
- Thirdly, if we make this activity accessible and achievable then our students will actively engage with it and instead of being a task that causes anxiety, our hope is that enjoyable engagement, and greater output, will result.
Overcoming barriers to extended writing with DocsPlus
So, if we are using technology, how can we support our students to understand and use the building blocks, then create their own piece of extended writing? There are many options available luckily, however I am going to focus on using the excellent DocsPlus by Crick Software. The reason for this is that it is a one-stop shop and within one software solution, many elements can be supported and made accessible, thus reducing the need to move between solutions. For a student who struggles with cognitive transitions, this supportive learning landscape offers safety.
| Barrier to writing | How DocsPlus can help… | |
| Unsure about how they will tackle the task | Anxiety is often caused both by the task itself and the workflow to respond to it. | DocsPlus offers a clear, structured working environment which is predictable and consistent. |
| Understanding the task | To achieve in extended writing, it is vital to understand and answer the question. Many lose marks for not linking their answer to the set task. | Copy the question into DocsPlus and listen to it as often as you need to. Break down any sub sections as these can be used for structuring the answer. |
| Difficulty getting started | The key to getting started is simply having something to say, therefore the curation and research part of an extended writing task is crucial. | Use the integrated DocReader in DocsPlus to quickly read and highlight key points. Voice Notes can be used for easy thought collection. |
| Organisation and sequencing ideas | Getting this in place supports workflow when writing a logical response to the question. This reduces anxiety as it is then clear what has to be written and in what order. Poor working memory is supported by multimodal information chunked so that each section can be quickly referred to when needed. | Use WorkSpace to add ideas which can include text, pictures and even Voice Notes. These can then be moved around and organised, perhaps linked to the sub sections of a task question. Everything in WorkSpace will transform in a single click to Wordbars for writing support. |
| Spelling | Great anxiety about poor spelling often leads to choosing simpler vocabulary and avoiding richer or more complex words. | Use the integrated word predictor and grids with core and task specific vocabulary. Finally, utilise the customisable spell checker. |
| Writing fatigue | For students with literacy barriers, extended writing tasks demand a huge amount of cognitive energy and it can become overwhelming. It is helpful to be able to take a break and return with all the planning and writing in place and accessible. | Chunk the learning process through DocsPlus features, including: WorkSpace for planning, Voice Notes for easy note taking, and structured writing frames to aid writing for a specific topic or sequence. |
| Editing work | This is often problematic and when rereading work the tendency is to skip ahead and thus miss mistakes. Being able to hear the text read and follow along makes it much easier to spot errors. | Use DocsPlus’ Text-to-Speech output to have your writing read back to you. Adjust font type/size to ensure easy reading. |
| Illegible handwriting | Many students have poor handwriting, which can lead to both an unwillingness to produce written work by hand, and if they do, an inability to read what they have written. | Clear print output gives a legible end-product to be proud of. |
| Fear of failure | By working in a structured way, using an organised, stepped approach, small successes can be achieved to foster a positive attitude to complete the whole task. | WorkSpace offers a safety net of ideas and structures allowing reassurance and guidance at any point in the process. Output is clear, easy to read and ‘looks good’. |
| Accessibility | For those who require additional accessibility support, DocsPlus offers a range of options that are ready to use. | DocsPlus’ comprehensive range of proven multisensory accessibility options include: iPad use, SuperKeys, switch, eye-gaze and touch screen. |
Extended writing is undoubtably a challenging task and yet mastery of this offers success in many areas. A structured, accessible, and most importantly, achievable approach facilitates success, and this achievement will really establish a student’s confidence. The transition to secondary school demands greater depth and content in written tasks and so managing these increased demands in a way which supports rather than inhibits is so important. Technology can not only support this, but with the right choices, provide a student with the tools to use whilst in secondary education but also to take with them to support them in their future.
Carol Allen is an Education Advisor specialising in ICT and inclusion, with decades of teaching experience in both mainstream schools and schools for students with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties. She was named one of the top ten educators for 2018 in the field of educational technology for her inclusion work. Carol is also a headline speaker and workshop leader at education events across the globe.
Clicker is a great tool in supporting learners at all stages of their literacy journey. With lots of recent talk about cognitive load theory and its implications on learning, I wanted to explore some ideas about how Clicker can help.
First the science …
Children are often bombarded with information and ideas when they are learning new topics, and not surprisingly, this can be overwhelming! Often, they grasp some of the learning, but not quite all – and this impacts not only the present but also future learning outcomes.
It’s all to do with our “working (short-term) memory” and how it can only deal with a limited amount of information at any one time. Too much and the result, according to educational psychologist John Sweller, is “cognitive overload”. When we exceed the capacity of our working memory, our learning is impeded.
There are strategies to reduce the load on short-term memory, and many of these are well supported and facilitated by Clicker. Essentially, children need to build up a secure store of knowledge in their long-term memory – so they can draw on it when they meet new topics and don’t rely solely on (and overload) their short-term memory. The trick is making sure that the knowledge has been processed and fully understood in the children’s working memory first – if it has, it will be transferred to their long-term memory to support future learning.
Activating prior knowledge before starting work on new learning, encourages children to pull what they have previously learned (from their long-term memory) into their working (short-term) memory. They can then take the new information, building it onto what they already know, to create a more developed body of knowledge to store in their long-term memory for future learning.
Cloze activities in Clicker are a great way to revisit key concepts and assess children’s knowledge and understanding – as well as identifying any “gaps”. Satisfyingly quick and easy to create – simply add any text into a Cloze Document and remove keywords to check knowledge.
Say for example, we are learning about how plants grow in science. Before we begin reading our Plant Life Cycle book, we might want to do a quick recap on the names and functions of plant parts, as these will be terms revisited in a new context. So we could create a quick retrieval practice Cloze activity (I used the text from the Clicker Book About Plants – Read a Book). Prior knowledge is consolidated, and we are ready to move onto the new learning about how each these parts grow as part of a plant’s life cycle.
Other types of low-stakes retrieval exercises – such as Matching or Talk – also provide valuable extra practice, reinforce memory and ascertain what children do (and don’t) know. You could also use a Clicker Board at the start or end of a lesson and/or topic to create a mind map to summarise previous knowledge and understanding. Get children to use Talk Sets to orally demonstrate knowledge. They could research a topic for 10 minutes and then record an information podcast about 10 key points. Many of our Reading Books are linked to complementary Talk Sets, so this is often an activity on LearningGrids that is ready to go!
Research shows that providing frameworks and models can also support learners. The frames act as a prop, freeing up working memory capacity which then builds onto their long-term memory. The models can be gradually “faded” (removed) to encourage more independent working as learners’ knowledge and confidence grow, so they get the right level of support at each stage.
Continuing with the plants theme, we might start with a Sentence Set which offers a clear model to write simple sentences about parts of a plant. The next stage might be a structured writing frame with a lot of information, like our Connect Set on the same topic. This could be followed by a “frame” in the form of a Word Bank with less structure and information, although vocabulary is still arranged in topic tabs for a softer level of guidance. The ultimate goal is that learners are able to work without a writing frame, although we could still offer vocabulary in an A – Z format which requires much more independent application.
These are all great features of Clicker which can help with memory capacity and retention. Search on LearningGrids for a range of activities, including Sentence Sets, Connect Sets and Word Banks.
LearningGrids is one of Clicker’s most popular features – teachers love having instant access to a free library of curriculum resources – at the time of writing there are over 3000 available!
However, I am sometimes asked when training schools – “What if there aren’t any resources on my topic? Is it difficult to make your own?”
Well, the simple answer is ”No - it’s really easy!”
I was recently asked how Clicker could be used to support a Year 6 class studying Romeo and Juliet.
To start with, I’d suggest a class discussion on the character traits of Romeo and Juliet. Create a Clicker Board from one of the pre-made templates by selecting New Clicker Set > Planning Boards from the Quick Start screen in Clicker 8.
You can add your own pictures as a stimulus or even drag-and-drop images from search engines:
As a class group, discuss the character traits of Romeo and Juliet, filling in the cells on the Clicker Board:
Bridge the gap between planning and writing by transforming your mind map into a word bank - just click on the Export button and select ‘Create Word Bank’. Save this to your school’s cloud storage system (such as Google Drive) and it’s instantly accessible to support your class on their devices as they write!
I then searched the web for a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ synopsis – there are lots of websites that summarise the play for children in a few sentences:
I copied all the text and pasted it into Clicker (Clicker Set ribbon > New > Sentence Set). I added a couple of extra grids so I could split the longer sentences to simplify them and keep them under 12 words.
Choosing ‘View & Copy’ provides children with a model as they build their sentences.
You can use the exact same text to create an activity for your more confident writers – in the Clicker Set ribbon, select New > Word Bank, paste in the words, choose alphabetic grids, and filter out high frequency words.
And there you have it – accessible curriculum resources in a flash!
If you need a little help with creating your own Clicker Sets, take a look at these excellent short tutorials from our training team: Clicker 8 - Tutorials | Crick Software. For some one-to-one support from a Clicker Education Consultant, you can book a free Customer Care meeting here: Customer care meetings | Crick Software.
Here at Crick, we’ve all been working hard to get ready for the launch of Clicker Books for iPad and Chromebook. Now it’s here with beautiful illustrations and a huge range of resources, I can’t wait to share what’s in store for you and your learners.
Clicker Books makes lesson content more accessible and engaging for children of all abilities. Watch your pupils’ reading confidence and topic comprehension grow as our talking books bring the primary curriculum to life. Alongside Clicker 8 and Clicker Writer, this latest addition to the Clicker Apps family is available to everyone who has a current Clicker subscription.
“We’re using the pre-made Clicker Books to introduce topics on a one-to-one basis. In the new academic year, we plan to use them on the interactive whiteboard for whole class work. I’m really amazed by how much there is in LearningGrids – the scope and variety of resources is incredible.”
- Anita Clarke, SENCo at Cringleford Primary
New app, new resources
As many of our staff members have worked in education, we understand how short on time teachers are. That’s why our new app comes with hundreds of age-appropriate books available for immediate use.
Whether you’re looking for timeless tales like Jack and the Beanstalk or non-fiction resources to introduce the stages of the water cycle, our LearningGrids portal gives access to an extensive collection of creative stories and curriculum-based books.
Plus, our wonderful curriculum team will be adding exciting new titles regularly.
Build independence in your readers
Clicker Books offers the fundamental reading support that we love on the PC version of Clicker. Features like speech feedback and word highlighting provide instant visual and aural reinforcement, which is so powerful for early or struggling readers.
One of our most important aims for Clicker Books is to boost confidence in our users, so we have included a simplified “Read It Yourself” version with many of our book sets. Specifically created to encourage children to access the content unassisted, these resources help pupils explore words they’re unsure of independently and build a greater sense of personal achievement.
Helping readers become writers
As your pupils grow in confidence, Clicker Books also provides a creative way to show how much they’ve learnt.
Unleash your children’s artistic flair by helping them write their own stories using our ‘Make a Book’ sets. With customisable writing support and the ability to add in their own photos, drawings and videos, creating a book that’s theirs will get even the most reluctant of writers excited about literacy again.
Take Clicker Books anywhere
Of course, no application would be complete without the ability to seamlessly transfer from device to device and continue where you left off. For those with a Clicker Site Licence, children can continue work at home on their own devices too.
Free access for current subscribers
We’re excited to welcome Clicker Books to the Clicker Apps family and can’t wait to update you on some other new additions we have planned for later this year.
Clicker Books is completely free to access for our Clicker 8/Clicker Writer subscribers - these easy-to-follow support guides will help you get started.
Don’t have Clicker?
If your school doesn’t have a Clicker subscription and are interested in finding out how it can benefit you and your pupils, we offer free 15-minute consultations where we’ll discuss your needs and how Clicker can help.
Contact us here and a member of our team will be in touch to find a time that suits you best.
Earlier this term, my daughter brought home a list of Year 1 common exception words that her school would like us to practise spelling with her.
Whilst we have spent some time writing these out, we realised during lockdown that she engages more enthusiastically with tasks like this when we approach it in different ways and bring Clicker into the mix!
First, I created a quick Matching activity where she could listen to the target word and then try to match it with the correct choice from the list. She really enjoyed being able to work her way through this independently.
Next, I opened LearningGrids and selected the ‘Word List One A – Z’ resource - a speech-supported Word Bank containing common words that early learners are likely to meet during their reading, including common exceptions.
For each word, my daughter started off by trying to find it in the Word Bank. If she got stuck, she was able to have Clicker read the choices out to her. Once she’d found it and had a look at it, we minimised the Word Bank and she attempted to spell it out using Clicker’s lowercase onscreen keyboard. Every time she completed a word, Clicker read it out to her, offering an opportunity to check if she was correct. This also encouraged her to attempt the next word.
Young emergent writers (particularly left-handed ones like my daughter and myself!) can find the process of physically writing quite arduous at times. Clicker enabled us to strip the activity right back and focus purely on the core learning objective of reading and spelling target words. It’s also a lot easier to go back and change things when you make a mistake, which is particularly useful for my child as she gets frustrated when she ‘spoils’ her writing with crossing out or smudges.
Most importantly, she was really proud of what she managed to achieve, was eager to practise her spellings again the next day and is making great progress.
I think that’s one of the best things about Clicker – you can take any topic or learning objective and in a matter of minutes watch a child experience real success as they access it at a level that’s just right for them, in a way that they find fun!
At the start of every year, we take a company-wide vote to decide which of the many worthy organisations in our local area will be the Crick Software ‘charity of the year.’ We then spend the next 12 months baking, quizzing, running, and undertaking all manner of other fundraising challenges to make as much money for them as we can!
This year, the runaway favourite was KidsAid – a charity born out of the realisation that there was a considerable lack of provision for young people in the community who had suffered trauma.
Why KidsAid?
According to the NHS, 1 in 6 children and adolescents have a diagnosable mental health disorder. Of those, less than 1 in 3 get access to NHS care and treatment. KidsAid is on the front line of this growing mental health crisis, with referrals to their team more than doubling since the start of the pandemic. The past few years have highlighted more than ever the importance of mental health to the wellbeing of our children, and the team felt strongly that this was the cause we wanted to pour our efforts into during 2022.
Their work
KidsAid provides early intervention in the form of creative therapies to help young people lead healthier, happier and more fulfilling lives. Through the mediums of art, dance, drama and play, their fantastic team of therapists support children struggling with bereavement, illness, neglect, bullying, abuse, family breakdown, and other traumatic circumstances.
Our team were particularly impressed by the way KidsAid also provides assistance to the child’s support network. They offer extensive joint/attachment sessions with caregivers in order to give them the best possible chance to break intergenerational trauma and move forward with their lives.
Where we come in
We have lots of fun activities planned to ensure that 2022 is our most successful fundraising year ever, including a company marathon, cake-off and bring-and-buy auction – as ever, we’ll keep you posted via our Facebook and Twitter channels.
If you’d like to find out more about KidsAid or support the vital work that they do, you can visit their website here.
Last year, I shared some information about the great Clicker resources Call Scotland created with the Scottish Book Trust. As I said, each November, Bookbug gives every Primary 1 pupil in Scotland a free bag of books and resources to inspire a love of stories and encourage reading for pleasure.
Our curriculum team also created some additional resource ideas to support children who are just starting school that I thought I’d share. These are linked to one of this year’s featured stories – the beautifully illustrated Arlo the Lion Who Couldn’t Sleep by Catherine Rayner.
The message of the story is one of gentle mindfulness. Arlo is exhausted but he simply cannot get to sleep. Luckily, a little owl teaches him some tricks to help him drift off to a peaceful sleep.
Use Clicker Board to get children thinking about what we might do when we can’t sleep.
Create a Sentence Set to help children retell the story in simple steps. Use the pictures in a Talk Set to retell the story orally.
When Arlo can’t sleep, he uses adjectives with the adverb ‘too’ to explain what is making it difficult for him to sleep. Use a Connect Set to recreate these sentences.
Or look at adjectives – like “tired” in the text – which can be replaced by powerful or wow words like “exhausted”.
Collect a handy selection of key vocabulary from the story, which children can use in their own writing – don’t forget, with Clicker you can use Picturize to illustrate your Word Banks too!
Clicker is such a versatile program that can be used across the school – and with children presenting so many differing needs after disruption to learning, a program like Clicker, which can be so uniquely personalised to their individual requirements, is a fantastic investment.
In today’s connected society, being able to share files quickly and easily is important.
As a result, more schools are adopting the use of cloud storage like OneDrive and Google Drive. These services enable you to store your files online, so you can access them from different devices, and share them with other users.
Having listened to customer feedback, we’ve now made it easier to access your cloud storage within Clicker 8 and DocsPlus.
The “Home” location
Until now, the Shared Files location has been the default when opening / saving. Depending on your installation, this points to a certain folder on your computer or your network. It can only be changed by your IT Support.
In the latest version of Clicker 8 and DocsPlus, this has been renamed Home and can be changed whenever you like.
If you have any of the following cloud storage accounts installed on your computer, you can easily set it as the default Home location:
- iCloud (Mac)
- Dropbox
- Google Drive
- OneDrive
Alternatively, if you want easy access to your cloud storage without it being the default, you can add it as an Additional location.
For full instructions on setting up Home, and sharing files across all platforms, please use our file sharing guide:
Contact Support
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.
Teachers and support staff use many strategies to support children who have English as an additional language (EAL) or children who have a speech or language delay. Read on to find out how the resources on LearningGrids can be used during intervention sessions.
In our New to English category, we have a range of sets that help children learn specific vocabulary related to familiar settings - a school, shopping centre, house, supermarket and street. The Custom, Talk and writing sets offer illustrated activities that enable children to learn the names of everyday objects as well as practise speaking, reading and writing of the focus vocabulary.
You can use the groups of related Clicker sets to structure a set of intervention sessions for individuals or groups of children. For example, the Patch the Cat resources can be used to teach the naming of household items and rooms in the house. To introduce the vocabulary, encourage children to listen, read and repeat the patterned language and predictable sentences in the story Patch Likes This – Read a Book.
Encourage children to practise saying and recording what they can see in the pictures using Patch Likes This – Make a Book. When children are ready to move on, they can write the words in sentence order using the related Sentence Set. The set currently provides a View and Remember model which develops children’s retrieval and memory skills, while learning the patterns of word order. This level of scaffolding can be adapted in Edit View to suit the needs of the learner. As children become more independent, use the Connect Set to construct the practised sentences using the “This is” and “Patch likes” sentence starters.
This approach helps children to overlearn the focus vocabulary, phrases and sentences. From my experience, this repetitive approach builds confidence and accuracy while developing speaking, reading and writing skills. Children will be applying their newfound vocabulary and language skills in no time!
For many more groups of ready-made resources with specific repetitive vocabulary and sentence structures, browse through the Clicker Friends, Planet Wobble and More Stories sections in our Story Corner category.
Dictation (speech-to-text) is a helpful tool that allows learners to get their ideas onto paper quickly. It can help them write content such as documents, essays, and emails by using voice narration, rather than physically typing them out. Many platforms have powerful, built-in dictation features which can be used in Clicker / DocsPlus.
Windows dictation
To initiate Windows dictation, click inside the Document (or any other text field) and press the Windows logo + H keys together on your physical keyboard. Alternatively, if you are using the Windows on-screen keyboard, click the Microphone key.
If it’s your first-time using Windows dictation, you will be asked to enable it in your Settings app first.
You should then see a box appear that turns from Initializing… to Listening…, meaning you are ready to start narrating your text. To stop, press Windows logo + H again, click the dictation icon, or wait 10 seconds.
For more information on Windows dictation, please see Microsoft’s support article.
Mac dictation
To enable Mac dictation, click the top-left Apple menu and go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Dictation to switch dictation to On.
To initiate Mac dictation, click inside the Document in Clicker 8 / DocsPlus, and then press the Control key twice. To stop, press Control twice again, or click Done.
For more information on Mac dictation, please see Apple’s support article.
iPad dictation
To initiate iPad dictation within Clicker Writer / DocsPlus, tap the green Keyboard tool to switch to the on-screen keyboard and then tap the Dictate (microphone) key.
If this is the first time you are using dictation in the app, tap OK on the following two prompts to give the app permission to use your microphone for dictating text.
For more information on how you can control the access apps have to your iPad’s hardware features, please see Apple’s support article.
Chromebook dictation
While Chromebooks do have a dictation feature, it’s not currently possible to use this within Clicker Writer / DocsPlus. Our developers are hard at work to implement this in a free update, which will be coming soon.
If you need any assistance with dictation in Clicker / DocsPlus, or any element of our software, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@cricksoft.com, by filling in this short form or calling us on 01604 671691.
As schools close for the summer break, there is an air of anticipation of how we can all use this time not just to reflect and refresh, but to keep developing minds working and growing.
Let’s help children to feel calm and settled, and most importantly inspired and ready to face all the challenges of the new academic year.
The Oak National Academy (who provide free video lessons to support primary and secondary schools) have created a summer learning support guide.
As part of this, they have identified priority units and lessons in key curriculum subjects, so it’s a great way for children to consolidate or fill gaps in knowledge and understanding. You might find our growing bank of free LearningGrids resources invaluable for additional follow-up activities. We’ve put this guide together with a few ideas to keep children engaged in learning.
Struggling to get them started on a creative writing task? Get them planning their thoughts and ideas with one of our storyboards, analysing a character from a favourite tv show or even writing about their favourite footballer or edge-of-the-seat football match (there may be one or two this summer!).
Keep it fun and relaxed, don’t let it become a battle. Explore our LearningGrids library to find something that excites the child or children you are working with.
Recently, while researching in preparation for webinars and training sessions, I came across an article on the benefits of using different senses to aid vocabulary development. This can be beneficial for younger learners and children with EAL. While reading the article I was inspired by all the ways Clicker could be used to support this and thought I would share some ideas.
Introducing body parts
Firstly, for children to be able to talk about senses successfully, they will need to know how body parts and senses are linked. To introduce the topic to younger learners, you could use one of our ‘Body Parts – Picture Pairs’ resources. These are available for the whole body or just parts of the head. These resources focus on encouraging the child to match two pictures and are great for building confidence. To start making the connection with the vocabulary you could then edit the Matching Set’s Target and Choice options so that you’re matching a picture of the body part to a ‘Picture and Word’ or ‘Sound’ so that the name of the body part is read out instead. You could even change the sound to a clue, for example “I use these to see” spoken by Clicker, to match to an image of eyes. For older learners you could use the ‘Human Body’ Find Out and Write About resources which go into more detail on the purpose of different body parts, inside and outside.
To start building the connection for younger pupils, you could then move on to the ‘Parts of the Body’ or the ‘Body Parts and Senses’ Connect Sets.
Sight
Now that we’ve introduced body parts and their link to senses, we can explore vocabulary related to each sense in more detail.
To expand children’s use of adjectives to better describe what they can see, you could introduce them to one of the three ‘Add the Adjective’ Connect Sets. These Connect Sets offer short sentences on places, characters or objects with a selection of adjectives to choose from. This is a great way to expand children’s vocabulary for describing the things they can see in the accompanying images.
We could even potentially link this to the Scientific Observations Clicker Board where we make sure that we’re accurately recording what we can see when doing scientific experiments for cross-curriculum learning.
Taste
When moving on to taste, you could expand children’s vocabulary with more options; for example, we can use the ‘Food Likes and Dislikes’ Connect Set to encourage children to think about whether the foods they eat are good for keeping them healthy.
We could help children to develop their writing about taste further by asking them to review the food offered by the school cafeteria or a local café that they like. I’ve created this writing frame to support children completing this task.
Smell
When learning about smell we could create a Clicker Board like the example I’ve included below to gather examples from the class about things they can and can’t smell, or good and bad smells.
We could then build on this by giving an opinion on different smells and giving reasons for our opinions. We might then want to link this to previous senses that we’ve looked at by creating compound sentences with a Connect Set.
Touch
For touch, you could look at the resources available on Materials & Properties and how these properties make them suitable for certain objects. The ‘Good Materials for Toys’ Clicker Book takes several common toys and looks at why the material they’re made from is good for their purpose. This could be expanded by bringing examples of these toys into the classroom for children to explore and add their own impressions of the materials to the book in text or audio, using Record & Play buttons.
The ‘Materials and Properties’ Connect Set expands on this idea by taking common items and guiding children in explaining what they’re made from and why it’s a good choice. The options provided can easily be edited to better suit children’s vocabulary.
Sound
When exploring sounds, it’s a great opportunity for cross-curriculum learning with music. We could think about the different ways you can describe music; this vocabulary can then be gathered in a Clicker Board.
Building on the theme of music, we could explore different instruments and the sounds they make with the resources in the Sounds & Music collection. The ‘Responding to Music’ Custom Set is particularly good for encouraging children to think about how music makes them feel.
We could also link what we know about sound to science lessons by using the Changing Pitch of Sound resources to explore how we can affect sound in different ways.
We might also want to link this to English lessons, particularly focusing on phonics and the sounds different graphemes make. There are lots of resources in Sounds & Letters on helping children to identify groups of words that share similar vowel sounds and building the phonological awareness with the Rhyming and Alliteration resources.
All senses
You could introduce each sense with one of the ‘I Can…’ Connect Sets. There is one of these for each sense introducing the construction ‘I can’ and ‘I can’t’ alongside the different senses for various items they might encounter daily. There are images throughout the resources to support children accessing new vocabulary.
These can easily be edited in Edit View or by shift + clicking the cell you want to change to better accommodate children’s vocabulary for things they might encounter in their classroom. We could also adapt these resources to introduce new vocabulary such as adjectives, conjunctions, or figurative language to help describe with our senses.
Once we’ve built vocabulary around each of the senses individually, we could then move on to talking about the senses together.
We could use the Setting the Scene Connect Sets to encourage children to use all of their senses when using descriptive language. This can be expanded with the Senses Words Word Bank which has lots of vocabulary that can be used to extend writing about the different senses. Some children could then move on to setting their own scenes using their new vocabulary using the Setting the Scene Planner Clicker Board.
These examples are for a specific topic, but there are many resources that can be applied to different subjects with Clicker.
If you have a particular topic or lesson idea that you would like some help with, you can contact me via phone at 01604 671691 or email at gemma.dean@cricksoft.com.
For the past few years, we’ve nominated various charities to be our charity of the year. For 2021, we are proud to be working with Filling in the Blanks. Filling in the Blanks is a fantastic organisation based in Norwalk, Connecticut which provides food bags to thousands of children who suffer from food insecurity.
For these children, weekends, summers and snow days are scary times as they may not know where their next meal is coming from – and the COVID pandemic has only escalated these fears. Filling in the Blanks delivers food bags to schools before the weekend as well as during summer break (including summer camps) to ensure that children have nutritious meals even when they’re not at school.
Since its founding in 2013, the organisation has gone from strength to strength, growing from a small operation in the founders’ homes to occupying a warehouse with 5000 square foot of space with volunteers who store and process the food bags that go to schools today.
We have lots of fundraising ideas for the next few months, including:
- A Virtual Food Drive.
- This is an ongoing effort in which we can either purchase a selection of food items Filling in the Blanks needs or donate cash directly.
- A Virtual 5K – April 25th to April 30th.
- Traditionally, the 5K event would have been organised so everyone ran the same route, but to be COVID-safe, this year we can run, walk, or cycle anywhere. This should be a fantastic opportunity for both our UK and US teams to take part and raise funds.
- Golf outing – May 18th.
- A sponsored round of golf around the prestigious GlenArbor Golf Club in New York.
- Various opportunities to volunteer.
- We know that our team members in the US office are very keen to get hands on with Filling in the Blanks’ work and make up some food bags.
- Holiday Backpack Drive.
- Over the holidays, Filling in the Blanks provides sturdy backpacks to every child who receives their food bags. They also fill these backpacks with holiday-appropriate food (like pancake mix), an age-appropriate book and toy, hats, gloves, socks, and a dental kit. This is another opportunity for us be directly involved by volunteering our time to help fill the backpacks.
- Kindness Note.
- These are handwritten notes that are added to the Weekend Meals Bags – a personal note of encouragement that can make a big difference to the children receiving them.
We also have some seasonal events planned for Halloween and Christmas. Keep an eye on our social media channels for announcements regarding these.
If you want to find out more about the work of this brilliant charity, please visit their website.
At the start of a new year, many of us look for ways to lead healthier lives and we often encourage children to do the same. There are a variety of resources on LearningGrids to encourage children to talk, read and write about the importance of making healthy choices.
Our Keeping Healthy – Read a Book is a great resource for introducing the importance of good hygiene, sleep, regular exercise and a healthy diet. The related Talk, Make a Book, Connect, Sentence and Word Bank sets enable children to record their understanding of how to lead healthy lives. We have also recently published Washing Hands – Read a Book with linked resources to support children in writing about another way to help keep themselves and others healthy.
Brushing My Teeth – Read a Book focuses on good dental hygiene. The Clicker Book is supported by Sentence and Connect sets so that children can write about a simple tooth brushing routine. Older children can read about the location and function of different types of teeth in the Find Out About Teeth Custom Set. Search for teeth on LearningGrids for more related resources.
Our Human Body 1/2/3 differentiated Find Out and Write About activities encourage children to read and write about how other parts of the body work. For more independent writers, there are also Word Banks such as Human Health and Development to support writing about healthy growth and development.
Use the Exercise and Pulse Rates Talk Set for an active way to investigate the effects of exercise on the body. Children talk about the different exercises and predict what changes might happen to the body after the exercise, and then they record the pulse rate and body changes that actually happen. The Pulse Rate Investigation Word Bank supports learners in writing up the investigation and their findings.
There are also a lot of resources on LearningGrids that focus on food and healthy eating, such as the Food Groups and Food A - Z Word Banks. The Food and Nutrition-Sorting Connect Set encourages children to sort foods into how nutritionally valuable they are. For an engaging way to encourage children to explore the impact of unhealthy snacks and whether they should be allowed in schools, read the Clicker Book Junk Food – Viewpoints. Children consider the different viewpoints on the Junk Food - For or Against Clicker Board. Their completed mind map, along with the Junk Food – Persuasive Writing Word Bank, can be used to plan a speech or to structure a piece of persuasive writing.
As you know, a healthy lifestyle also includes a focus on mental wellbeing. We have many resources in the Feelings category to encourage children to be aware of their feelings and to talk or write about them. Browse the Our Bodies or Keeping Healthy categories on LearningGrids for many more resources available to support learning about being healthy.
Flipped learning is by no means a new concept, but the technique has certainly seen a revival due to the Coronavirus pandemic and an increase in remote learning. For those new to this idea, flipped learning is an approach whereby traditional teaching methods – exposing children to new material or ideas in the classroom, then consolidating knowledge outside the classroom with homework – are quite literally ‘flipped’! So, children learn new content at home, and then use classroom time for further practice, consolidation and extension.
The benefit of this approach is that the children can really take their time at home, learning the essentials about the new content, and then come to school ready with background knowledge and further questions about the topic. The classroom becomes the place for active and deeper learning, as children explore questions and resolve any misunderstandings through collaborative interaction with their peers and teachers.
Here at Crick, we think that Clicker is a fantastic platform for delivering accessible and engaging content to acquire initial knowledge outside of the classroom in this flipped learning approach. Let’s take a look at two examples to highlight how this might work for you.
Children learning about the water cycle as part of their geography studies could read our Clicker Book on the topic at home. With built-in reading support, the text is accessible to all readers. They can read independently – or even share the book with parents or carers at home, who therefore increase their own understanding and confidence in supporting their child’s home learning. Children are in control when they are learning this way – they can read and re-read the text as much as they need to and pause to really reflect on and absorb what they have read. This gives you more time as the teacher to actively support and extend the children’s learning after their reading. Get them to use the Talk Set to explain the process they have learned about, or demonstrate their understanding by writing about the stages of the water cycle using word bank support.
There are so many topics covered on LearningGrids that you’re sure to find something to engage your pupils in this flipped classroom learning approach. You may even want to take on bigger topics – take a look at our collection of Find Out and Write About titles. As these titles are split into smaller sub-topics, you might even get children to focus on different aspects of the topic – for example, in your Ancient Egyptians topic, one child reads about farming, another about pyramids, another about gods and pharaohs.
What a great way to get children fired up about and really engaging with their learning. It’s in their hands, which hopefully means they are full of enthusiasm and bursting with excitement to share their learning and questions when they are back with the group!
Safer Internet Day takes place every February. It’s an important event celebrated in countries around the world. And never has safe internet use seemed more important than right now with so many of us using technology to work, learn and socialise through online connections. To mark this year’s event – on February 9th – we have teamed up with Childnet to put together some resources to help children learn about staying safe online. Childnet works across the world to help make the internet a great and safe place for children.
Our new resources on LearningGrids are designed to work alongside Childnet’s SMART Adventure animations: The Adventures of Kara, Winston and the Smart Crew. They focus on SMART rules, which have been proven to be effective in helping younger children understand the importance of keeping safe online. During their travels, Kara and Winston use the internet, mobile phones, social networking pages and chat, to negotiate and find their way through the adventure. On their journey, they interact with a real-life SMART crew who give advice to help Kara and Winston stay safe.
There are a range of differentiated Clicker resources which accompany the SMART Adventure animations, designed to support children in thinking about e-safety issues.
- There are five Clicker Books covering each chapter of the adventure story. These are simplified on-screen talking book versions of the animations, designed to reinforce the key e-safety SMART rule messages. Children can also create an oral retelling of the books to demonstrate their understanding.
- In addition to these, a collection of differentiated activities – including speaking, sentence building, scaffolded writing and word banks – enable children to write about e-safety SMART rules which help them make safe online decisions.
Find all our Safer Internet Day resources on LearningGrids and let’s keep young people working (and playing) online safely.