Success stories

The Pupil and School Support service at Birmingham City Council collaborated with Montgomery on a project to evaluate the impact of Clicker on the progress of reluctant writers, with fantastic results!

“The children went from not writing, or hardly writing at all, to producing full pieces of work! The children loved it and based on the toolkit data they all made good progress. Typically, you would aim for two to three bands of progress a year, but some of the group had already achieved that in the second term of using Clicker! Seeing such good results so quickly with Clicker was very positive.”

We spoke to Helen Pearce and Gabrielle Deed about the impact that Clicker is having on teaching and learning across the Learning Pathways Academy Trust in Essex.

“Clicker’s had a huge impact - it’s life-changing for some children. With Clicker’s help they can actively participate alongside their peers, they can record their ideas, and they can show what they know… progress with Clicker has been incredible.”

Rebecca Hammonds is writing lead and year 5 teacher at St Catherine’s Academy. They use Clicker to support writing across the school, and have seen a huge improvement in pupils' attitude to learning, writing outcomes, and ability to work more independently.

“Using Clicker makes writing more enjoyable for our pupils. The most noticeable benefit of Clicker is that it has given us so much more time within the classroom. All the teachers that I’ve spoken to agree that Clicker improves pupils’ independence in lessons, and the direct impact of that is teachers gain some ‘independence’ too as they aren’t sat beside the same children throughout an entire lesson.”

We love hearing how Clicker is making a difference in schools, and we’ve had some wonderful success stories shared with us from schools in Fife! From individual pupils to small groups and whole school access, these schools demonstrate the universal support Clicker provides to ensure they meet their cohort’s unique needs.

"Clicker opens up the world of communication and writing for all learners"

Rachel Lawson is Deputy Head at Lansdowne Primary School where they have been using Clicker for a number of years. Rachel was instrumental in implementing the software across the school’s trust – the Stour Academy Trust - as part of their 1-1 iPad program. She has seen a significant boost in writing attainment and confidence during this time.

"Over time, we saw huge, positive effects on the quality and independence of our struggling writers. I invited specialist teachers from our local area into our classrooms for an objective opinion on our writing delivery and outcomes with Clicker – and it was a success!"

Jacqui Rogers is a teacher at Forehill Primary School who uses Clicker to support the learning needs of dyslexic learners, pupils with ASN and pupils with literacy challenges. We recently spoke to Jacqui to find out how she is using Clicker to encourage their independence and enable these pupils to access the intended learning.

‘Clicker has helped some of our ASN pupils go from being unable to write independently to being able to use sentence sets to complete writing tasks, and others are now writing sentences, and some paragraphs, independently.'

Pete Thomson is a School Services Officer at Magill Primary School and uses Clicker to support individuals or groups of students with literacy challenges and other learning needs.

‘Clicker enabled students to produce writing that’s a threefold improvement on what would have been achieved with pen and paper… There’s no doubt that Clicker has transformed the writing experience and outcomes for these students – it’s brilliant and I love using it!'

Sharon Grant is an Additional Support Needs Co-ordinator at Bridge of Weir Primary School in Renfrewshire. We recently spoke with Sharon to find out how they are using Clicker to raise attainment in writing.

"Using Clicker has improved engagement levels and helped our pupils develop a far more positive attitude to writing."

Sophie is a Year 1 teacher and is also the school's computer lead. Sophie explains how they have used Clicker to help their low attainers in writing.

"We saw such a huge improvement in their use of capital letters, full stops, and just the overall standard of writing as they’d listen back to their sentences, say, “that doesn't make sense!” and go through it again."

Vanessa Simons is a parent of a primary school pupil with a variety of learning challenges. Vanessa explains how she uses Clicker to help support her son's learning at home.

"Clicker is a great tool which can scale support and challenge. It can help in many ways, not just if the child has a special need or a diagnosis. If a child struggles to get their words together, they struggle with spelling or building sentences, if they don't understand a pattern, Clicker can help. Oliver can now confidently build and self-correct his sentences, which is not something I could have imagined just four months ago."

This video was recorded at Willow Dene School, where they are using Clicker extensively to help pupils access the curriculum and find their voice.

Marianne Baird is an Assistant Headteacher and SENCo for Sunny Bank Primary School.

"The best thing about Clicker is that it boosts children’s confidence and allows them to see themselves as writers. It removes barriers to writing, and it takes away some of that cognitive demand and overload, so children can record their ideas and gain confidence."

Anita Clarke is a SENCo at Cringleford Primary School. We recently spoke with her about the successes they are seeing whilst using Clicker with their pupils.

"We committed to a whole-school approach to literacy difficulties, so we’re not just using Clicker with our special needs children. Because we have a Site License, we can roll it out across the school, so that all our pupils can show their potential and abilities."

Ellie Bennett is a teacher at Gorseland Primary School, working in the Specialist Support Unit where they support children with moderate learning difficulties and complex needs.

“Clicker has developed our children’s confidence in their own abilities to write and we have been able to share many proud moments with them through their achievements of using it.”

Emma Gorton is a member of the senior leadership team and a Year 4 teacher at Micklehurst All Saints. She is also the Key Stage 2 phase leader and the SEND Coordinator. We recently spoke with her about why the school decided to upgrade to Clicker 8 and how Clicker is removing barriers to success for the pupils.

"Clicker has truly transformed the writing experience for our pupils. The children love that they can use it to create narratives, reports, explanations – anything they want to write, they can do it with Clicker. Clicker has raised their self-esteem beyond words and revolutionised how they feel about their writing."

Erika Lye is the founder of Mountain Movers, an inclusive education charity that supports children with complex needs. We recently spoke with her about the positive writing outcomes they are seeing since they started using Clicker 8.

“We focus on children with additional needs, but we always make sure we’re including everybody who wants to participate. For children who may otherwise feel disengaged by literacy tasks, Clicker is a real confidence booster because it gives them a medium to express themselves."

Betsy Caporale has been working in the field of AAC/AT for over 25 years. She has worked with the California Department of Education and is the owner of Augmentative Communication Solutions. She has been using Clicker with a student whom she has worked with for 14 years, with great success.

 “Jane has made incredible progress in just one school year – from using Sentence Sets to writing a speech for her public speaking class with support from Clicker Word Banks!”

Carol Allen, Education Advisor for ICT and Inclusion, and John Galloway, Advisory Teacher for ICT/ SEN and Inclusion, recently joined the SENDcast podcast on the ‘Low Cost, No Cost Technology Ideas’ episode.

“I would say Clicker is the gold standard piece of software to support reading and writing for any age, primary, secondary, higher education.”

Andrew Simpson reviews Clicker for Access: technology north, an AT consultancy service that works with disabled children to provide technology solutions that support and enable communication, entertainment, learning and independence.

 "For those who are unfamiliar with Clicker, it is a child-friendly word processor that’s jam-packed with assistive features to facilitate extended writing and help to develop literacy skills, available on Windows, Mac and iOS."

Mike Davies shares his thoughts on Clicker for Teach Primary magazine.

“While not only aimed at struggling writers, you can really see how Clicker can provide valuable support to pupils who fall into this category, as well as those with accessibility issues or for whom English is not their first language."

Lauren Woolf is a primary school teacher with a passion for literacy and uses her site That Little Outfit to provide a hub for teachers, parents and carers to help children develop a love of reading and their literacy skills. Here, she gives her verdict on Clicker and how its supportive features benefit pupils and teachers alike.

“Having thoroughly tested the software with different tasks, Clicker appears to be ideal for all primary school aged pupils as it offers such a varied amount of support and challenge for learners, no matter their writing ability. It genuinely does help children to create meaningful pieces of writing, one sentence at a time.”

Cheryl Gaughan tells us how Clicker is raising enthusiasm for writing and giving a voice to children at Talbot Specialist School.

"Although I use it a lot with children who have SEND, the good thing about Clicker is that you can use it with both children who have SEND and those who don’t. A child doesn’t have to have a disability or a need, because it’s useful and engaging for every child. I think that’s the nice thing about it, is that it’s not seen as something that only SEND children can use but all children in any setting, too."

Sheila Robertson is a Principal Teacher at Wallacestone Primary in Falkirk. She works in the management team managing their PEF funding as well as a variety of children with different educational needs.

 "I can understand that for teachers who have been teaching for a number of years, the thought of using any kind of technology can be daunting, but this is something that is so user-friendly that anyone could begin using it. We have a vision across the school management that this will definitely fit into, so I would absolutely recommend Clicker to other schools."

Garnock Community Campus used some of their Pupil Equity Funding to purchase Clicker to help close the attainment gap.

"The real success of Clicker has been the way that it gives our young people who struggle to access the curriculum due to literacy challenges the confidence that they really can produce extended pieces of writing. It’s such a motivational tool, and it’s really helping pupils to reach their potential."

Recently, June Howard sent us a message to share how Clicker has made a world of difference to a year 9 student she works with – not only in terms of his learning, but also his behaviour in school and at home.

“He has behaviour and learning difficulties but since using Clicker his behaviour has improved immensely and he is now above target in 8 subjects - all the teaching staff are amazed at his improvement!"

Ricardo Morais is a class teacher at Oaktree Special School. He shares with us how they have been using Clicker, and the difference it has made to the students' writing confidence.

"When I consider the positive impact that Clicker is having, there’s one particular student who comes to mind in my class. Tom* was a very reluctant writer when he joined our school... But with Clicker, being able to customise the program so much gave Tom the confidence to have a go at writing. It’s fantastic, Tom has gone from writing very simplistically to wanting to write lots more."

Sally Bouwman tells us why she actively promotes the use of Clicker in all 19 Ark primary schools:

"We have found Clicker to be one of the most powerful assistive technology tools to implement in the primary setting with children experiencing reading and writing difficulties. The program addresses a lot of key areas and is particularly effective when used to support reluctant writers and children with weak writing stamina."

Anne Harris shares how St Joseph's are using Clicker to target dyslexia and increase writing confidence across the curriculum.

"For me, the best thing about Clicker is how it increases writing confidence. He knows that if he goes wrong or gets in a muddle with his spellings, it doesn’t matter because he can have another go and there is something there to support him and help him put it right. Not only did this improve his writing within Clicker; he has since been able to write much more with pen and paper too."

Kate McKay is using Clicker to support children of all ages at Dunnottar School, which caters for children with a range of physical and learning disabilities including cerebral palsy, Down’s Syndrome and autism.

"Within a day of their training, teachers were telling me of activities they had tried with their students and the fantastic success they were having along with the interest being shown by the students. They could see student self-esteem rising with each push of a button."

Emma Dibden has been using Clicker to increase student motivation and make writing more accessible for learners with literacy difficulties.

"From the anecdotal feedback from the children, there are several of them who were previously totally turned off by writing, but absolutely rave about it now they have Clicker! We’ve had their parents come in celebrating the amount of work they’re able to produce now, and the ideas they’re finally able to get down on paper. Clicker has really inspired and excited these children about writing, which is exactly what we had hoped for."