Clicker 4 - Software to Support Students' Literacy Development by Jenni Donohoo

What is Clicker 4?
Clicker 4 is a Ministry Licensed software program that provides support for developing writers. Its combination of a talking word processor and 'grids' (which can consist of pictures, words, phrases or sentences) provides assistance to writers at any level and across disciplines.

You can type on the keyboard or send words or phrases to the word processor by clicking on the items in the grid.

A number of the sample grids that are included with the software provide support for early literacy development. In 'Word Cards', each page displays one high frequency word. The pages are opened randomly so that they can be used like flash cards to aid the reinforcement and learning of high frequency words. Grids are easily modified so that the teacher can insert words from themes and classroom reading materials. The 'Science' grids illustrate how Clicker can be used to support writing in different curriculum areas. The 'Properties' grid enables students to record the results of their investigations quickly and simply. A variety of 'Sentence Building' grids are also available, demonstrating ways in which teachers can use Clicker to introduce and develop sentence building in early literacy work.

Additional grids have been made available inside a folder entitled 'grids'. Below is an example of an additional grid that would be appropriate for use in a primary classroom. There are five activities to choose from including place value, comparing, ordering, estimating and numbers to 100. When students choose the activity, by clicking in the cell, the talking word processor is launched and the activity grid opens in a window underneath the word processor. Students can send words and phrases to the word processor with the click of a mouse, avoiding the endless hunt for keys on the keyboard.

Some of the additional grids provide support for writers in the content areas. Higher level activities such as categorizing are also built into some of the additional grids. This type of grid, Living and Non-Living Things, (left) could provide reinforcement of concepts or it could be used as a diagonstic assessment prior to teaching a unit.

The Writing Frames grids are easily customized allowing for the provision of varying levels of structure and the extention of classroom themes. Each of the Writing Frames provides an 'outline' or sentence starters for a persuasive or expositiory piece. The words, phrases and sentences cells are empty but ready to be populated with words, phrases and sentences for the topic of choice. Below is an example of the words grid that has begun to be filled with appropriate vocabulary for a student to express his or her opinion on the topic of 'bullying'. The teacher may populate this grid or assign the brainstorming of topic words as a pre-writing activity for his or her students.

My favourite feature is the 'alternative sugestions' feature that is a part of the spell check and can be set in each user's preferences. If set, the 'alternative suggestions' will check the document for overused or plain language and give the users choices for more 'colourful' or interesting words.

A program like Clicker 4 helps younger students become independent technology users because of the supports it provides. It also aids junior and intermediate students in learning how to better structure their writing. It is definately a piece of software that is worth investigating.