Last year, I shared some information about the great Clicker resources Call Scotland created with the Scottish Book Trust. As I said, each November, Bookbug gives every Primary 1 pupil in Scotland a free bag of books and resources to inspire a love of stories and encourage reading for pleasure.
Our curriculum team also created some additional resource ideas to support children who are just starting school that I thought I’d share. These are linked to one of this year’s featured stories – the beautifully illustrated Arlo the Lion Who Couldn’t Sleep by Catherine Rayner.
The message of the story is one of gentle mindfulness. Arlo is exhausted but he simply cannot get to sleep. Luckily, a little owl teaches him some tricks to help him drift off to a peaceful sleep.
Use Clicker Board to get children thinking about what we might do when we can’t sleep.
Create a Sentence Set to help children retell the story in simple steps. Use the pictures in a Talk Set to retell the story orally.
When Arlo can’t sleep, he uses adjectives with the adverb ‘too’ to explain what is making it difficult for him to sleep. Use a Connect Set to recreate these sentences.
Or look at adjectives – like “tired” in the text – which can be replaced by powerful or wow words like “exhausted”.
Collect a handy selection of key vocabulary from the story, which children can use in their own writing – don’t forget, with Clicker you can use Picturize to illustrate your Word Banks too!
Clicker is such a versatile program that can be used across the school – and with children presenting so many differing needs after disruption to learning, a program like Clicker, which can be so uniquely personalised to their individual requirements, is a fantastic investment.
