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Students
across the ability range use Clicker Grids in different ways:
- Emergent and early readers click on whole words and phrases
to build sentences. These can optionally be picture supported.
- More fluent readers type from the keyboard and use a Clicker
Grid or series of grids as a talking word bank or word wall containing
vocabulary for a particular subject or topic.
- By using a sequence of grids that contain words and phrases
to make a writing frame, students of all abilities are helped
to structure their work. Grids can provide all the words to complete
a written task, or they can supply just key phrases.
When the student completes a sentence using proper punctuation
(i.e. a period, question mark, or exclamation mark), the sentence
is read back to them, so that they can review what they have written.
This helps the student to:
- Remember the importance of punctuation (without it Clicker will
not read the sentence)
- Develop the vital skill of reviewing and editing their own
writing, laying the foundation for higher-order literacy skills
Students can hear any part of their text at any time, thus encouraging
continuous reviewing of the text.
By enabling children to write with whole words, Clicker continually
teaches and reinforces whole word recognition. At the same time,
students can build words using grids containing individual letters
or groups of letters, helping children with word building and decoding
too.
Teachers can create their own grids, using words suggested by the
students, increasing student involvement in written tasks and making
a natural link between spoken and written language.
Whole Word support
Clicker supports the importance of whole word recognition for fluent
reading:
“Text reading is easiest when readers have
learned to read most of the words in the text automatically by
sight because little attention or effort is required to process
the words.” (Harris & Hodges, 1995),
the Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts
(Flood, Jensen, Lapp, & Squire (National
Reading Panel 2-107)
Although children need to learn to decode, we know that decoding
is not a relevant strategy for many words, e.g. ‘was’,
‘come’, and when children over rely on decoding, the
danger is that the meaning becomes lost as the activity becomes
merely a decoding exercise:
“When written words are unfamiliar, readers
may decode them or read them by analogy or predict the words,
but these steps take added time and shift attention at least momentarily
from the meaning of text to figuring out the words.”
(National Reading Panel 2-107)
Clicker enables children to write with whole words, phrases and
pictures, or letter-by-letter, but with the additional support provided
by a scaffolding of words, phrases and pictures.
Speech support
Giving speech support when the student asks for it means that children
take control of their own learning to improve their vocabulary.
“Davidson, Elcock and Noyes (1996) used a computer
that gave speech prompts when the learner requested them; 5- to
7-year old students improved on three measures of vocabulary with
these prompts” (National
Reading Panel 4-20)
Clicker gives speech support so non-readers can select words and
phrases to create their own meaningful writing, and access Clicker
on-screen books and activities.
Motivation
Teachers constantly tell us how motivating Clicker is for students,
as it is designed to help students of all
abilities to achieve success.
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