We were recently asked about using DocsPlus to support students in Vocational subject studies. With Wordbars to support structured written work and WorkSpaces to organise ideas and plan for writing, it’s certainly a great program to support your students.
In terms of content on LearningGrids, you will find ready-made vocabulary support for some vocational subjects within our curriculum categories – for example, a Healthy Human Diet Wordbar in our Science category for studies in Health and Catering.
As you can imagine, comprehensive coverage across the vast number of different courses (and exam boards) is a bit tricky. And with the style of written work expected from students often being quite particular to contextual situations (multiple-choice questions, report card/form filling etc.), providing ready-made content may not always be a good fit. However, what’s great about DocsPlus is how incredibly quick and easy it is to make truly personalised resources from scratch, which are absolutely the right fit for your courses and your students.
For example, as part of a Hair and Beauty course, we are looking at health and safety. Students are asked for responses to a range of different hazards that might be met. We could use a mind map in WorkSpace offering different hazard scenarios, and students make notes in response to each hazard. And what’s more, we can export the content of the plan to a document for direct support while writing.
Another example might be to get students to add labels to a diagram from a textbook or a photograph from a case study – such as a vehicle system as part of a Motor Vehicle course. And once the words have been added, they can be highlighted and used to create a Wordbar, so students have access to relevant vocabulary to support any additional writing.
This is just an outline of how the features of DocsPlus can be applied to any subject – both within and beyond the curriculum – where writing or planning is involved. For more information about getting the best out of all of the features of DocsPlus, see our fantastic video support tutorials for DocsPlus on the Crick Software website.
