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Non-fiction writing with Clicker

19th June 2024

We spoke with Sophie, a Year 1 teacher who was using Clicker to support her pupils with non-fiction writing. Sophie showed us how she used Clicker’s ready-made writing grids to help her class with instruction writing. Sophie was amazed by how Clicker supported low attainers in her class whilst extending high attainers and allowed all her pupils to be more independent with their non-fiction writing. Check out this success story to read about the instruction writing her class produced! 

LearningGrids has a range of resources available to support pupils with a variety of non-fiction writing. Let’s explore how we could use these ready-made resources to plan a sequence of lessons linked to a recount learning objective. 

Non-fiction writing with Clicker-1

First, this Recount Planner is a brilliant resource for preparing and planning a piece of recount writing. Pupils can add in key information to create a plan, and then refer to it when writing their final piece. This is a flexible resource and could be used as a whole class planning tool by displaying the Clicker Board on your interactive whiteboard, or children could access it in groups or individually. From my teaching experience, I know having a good plan really influences the quality of a final piece of writing! 

Non-fiction writing with Clicker-2

Next, this Connect Set is great for developing writers, and allows them to take steps towards creating a piece of non-fiction writing independently. This writing grid offers useful vocabulary and phrases to help children to organise their writing and includes time connectives to support pupils with creating a cohesive recount. When the sentence is finished with a full stop, Clicker will read the sentence back - this is a great tool for encouraging children to proofread their own work. Sophie noted that, with this speech feedback, her pupils were picking up on errors they would not have ordinarily recognised! 

Non-fiction writing with Clicker-3

Finally, for your more independent writers, this Word Bank contains starters and useful vocabulary to support your pupils with writing a simple recount. They can click or tap the words to add them to the Document and use Clicker’s built-in speech support to hear any of the words or phrases read aloud. Sophie commented that having these banks of vocabulary and visual prompts really encouraged her Year 1 pupils to extend their writing! 

This is just a sample of the non-fiction resources available; you can find a range of different Clicker Sets to support your pupils on LearningGrids. There are resources to support letter writing, creating advertisements, planning discussions and more!

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