Reviews

Literacy for Emergent Writers
Sharing Resources, Spring 2002

Working with a large number of students with learning disabilities over the years, I have experienced a variety of barriers that block these students from building their writing skills. Of course the dilemma has always been, how do we get this group of students to write and be able to express themselves if their skills are so poor? As a group, many of these students not only have difficulty forming their letters but also have a hard time with spelling words. Even words that are part of their sight vocabulary are often too difficult for them to remember when doing written language tasks with pencil and paper. With this in mind, how do we support and encourage emergent writers so that they can express themselves and begin to practice the important craft of writing?

Over the past couple of years there have been a number of software applications that allow teachers to support emergent writers by using pictures or visual supports for the writing process. Teaming text up with a picture frees students up and allows them to express themselves by writing with picture support. In essence, students recognize the picture first, and then by clicking on it, the computer sends the text for the picture. The teacher sets up software applications such as these so that the student is constructing sentences word-by-word instead of letter-by-letter. In most of these applications the students are able to receive auditory feedback and can listen to how their sentences sound. Clicker 4 from Crick Software (www.cricksoft.com) is a good resource for this strategy.

Clicker 4 is comprised of a talking word processor that has the ability to create grids. Grids hold words, pictures, or both pictures and words. Once a word has been entered into the grid, the accompanying picture from the picture library is looked up and placed into the cell. The program ships with a picture library of over 1000 pictures and additional picture libraries can be purchased. For students who are unable to read the text in a cell, text is read by the computer by clicking on a cell.

Students can construct sentences in Clicker 4 by clicking on one cell at a time. After the sentence is constructed, students can listen to the computer read the sentence back to them exactly as they wrote it. A helpful strategy to build awareness and learn parts of speech would include color-coding the words that make up the sentence. While teachers can develop their own color-coding strategy, one popular color-coding strategy is called the Fitzgerald Key. This has been used with nonverbal students and could be used as a guide.

Using a color-coding strategy will help students locate the text and begin to identify the parts of speech. Similarly, for students who need to model appropriate grammar, the teacher can set up the words in the cells so that students click from left to right in a grid to write a sentence. Grids can be linked for more sophisticated students so that there are more picture and word options. Having the picture and auditory supports in place in Clicker 4 allows students to play with words and construct sentences without the usual frustration. Using this very playful writing program allows students to experiment with the writing process and experience a true sense of success, something that is often hard for them to come by. For those students who need visual supports for writing, this is an ideal program.

© 2001 Brian S. Friedlander, Ph.D.

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