As 2023 draws to a close, it’s the perfect opportunity to reflect on some of the Clicker successes we’ve celebrated this year. One of which came from Rebecca Hammonds, writing coordinator and 4th grade teacher at St. Catherine’s Academy in the UK.
St. Catherine’s started its Clicker journey back in 2022 as part of a Laurel Trust funded project, looking at how assistive technology can support learners to record their ideas. The evidence they collected was overwhelmingly positive, and, as a result, Clicker was rolled out as a school-wide approach to learning support.
Since its initial implementation at St. Catherine’s Academy, Clicker continues to improve student confidence and enjoyment in writing across the whole school, for all student groups.
Rebecca shared with us many examples of how Clicker has transformed the teaching and learning at St. Catherine’s Academy, including:
Offering flexible support
“We love the flexibility Clicker offers our school in terms of student support… we have embedded Clicker in whole class teaching, as well as small groups and support for students with high needs. Our learning support and use of Clicker is traveling through word of mouth and our successes are inspiring other schools to come and see it for themselves…”
Building resilience
“The children are really resilient learners with Clicker. We’ve noticed that very quickly the children are becoming familiar with the software and know how the features help them when they write. As a result, we’re seeing a huge improvement in their independence as writers… Our 3rd grade teacher has noticed the improvement in the quality of writing that her class produce because they’re enjoying the writing process much more with Clicker and relying less on adult support…”
Improving learning outcomes
“In general, Clicker has improved the quantity of writing our students can produce in the given time frame. They feel supported for much more of the lesson because of Clicker’s support features, and the quality of what they write has improved too.”
Optimizing teacher time during class
“The most noticeable benefit of Clicker is that it has given us so much more time within the classroom. Clicker gives us the flexibility of being able to support more children in one given session, as opposed to maybe the one or two children who require a lot more of your time and support. All the teachers that I’ve spoken to agree that Clicker improves student independence in lessons, and the direct impact of that is teachers gain “independence” too as they aren’t sitting beside the same children throughout an entire lesson…”
Increasing student independence
“We see far fewer children sitting there and not putting pen to paper for half a lesson or sitting there with their hand up constantly. It makes perfect sense that by increasing student independence, the teachers benefit too!”
To close this success story reflection, here are some words from the students themselves, who absolutely love using Clicker!
“It’s really helpful and when I can’t always have my teacher, Clicker is like my teacher. I love that it reads my work back.”
“I was struggling with writing, but Clicker makes my writing clearer. I can now read my work back so I can make the edits I need to.”
