Clicker®

Andy Gilmore
Queen Edith CP School Cambridge

I think Clicker is an amazing tool to work with for any age. I’ve used it through from Reception to Year 6 in my job as a Primary School Teacher. I use Clicker with individual children, but am a big fan of using it with a whole class. The reason I like Clicker so much is because it is such a flexible writing tool which you can adapt to any task you have in mind. The quality of the writing, learning and teaching is given a substantial boost when Clicker is used.

I saw its great benefits when using the pre-prepared “Find Out & Write About” and “Planet Wobble” series. I now very much enjoy using it in conjunction with video and audio clips. Clicker makes it very simple to embed video and audio into the grids to act as a stimulus for the children’s writing. The children really WANT to write! The good thing is that the Clicker grids, which can be created very quickly and simply, ALLOW them to write.

"My favourite projects have
involved sequencing video clips..."My favourite projects have involved sequencing video clips, each linked to an individual Clicker grid. This has meant that Clicker can actually be used to structure a piece of writing. I’ve used it when we’ve written instructions for making scrambled egg on toast! The children watch the clip and have suitable imperatives and phrases to get their creative juices going. There’s nothing worse than children sitting with a blank piece of paper saying they don’t know what to write! Clicker, acting as both a stimuli and an “ideas-provider”, enables those who are struggling to get going, whilst allowing the more able to write freely.

I now find that I am free to teach, rather than coaxing work out of children! The word-processor element in Clicker is wonderful for improving sentence-level skills, as the children are now able to edit their work and are prompted to re-read their work with the aid of the speech tool. Thank you, Crick.

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