When children return after a long break away from school, they will be buzzing and wanting to share news with their friends, peers and school adults. Let’s utilise this enthusiasm and channel it to recap and improve their vocabulary, sentence structures and writing stamina. We have many resources on LearningGrids that support learners to express their preferences and opinions, both orally and in writing.

Our Show and Tell Custom Set is a good tool for helping children to transition from home learning to learning in school. It enables the child to insert photos or paintings of their special objects and record information about them. The recordings can then be used to create a piece of writing.

The Clicker Books Photo Album One or Photo Album Two also enable children to add photos and talk or write about important items or events they wish to share with their classmates.

The next step would be for children to write about their preferences. To support children in this, use the My Favourite Things,  Food Likes and Dislikes, and My Spare Time Connect Sets. The resources offer sentence structures and vocabulary to enable children to write about their favourite things.

Music is a good stimulus for discussing and recording personal responses. The Responding to Music Custom Set provides a selection of music pieces for children to listen to, and after each piece they add a symbol to indicate how it made them feel. Pupils can also record an oral response to each piece of music. This offers a fantastic opportunity to spark discussion about how items and experiences make the children feel.

The My Favourite Sport A-Z Word Bank supports children to write about their favourite sporting activities. They can use the Clicker Board My Favourite Player to create a fact file about their chosen sportsperson. The central image can be changed to represent a different sport using the CrickPix Library or an imported graphic. My Favourite Team Word Bank provides sentence starters and vocabulary to support writing about a football team.

Using these resources will give learners a voice and a feeling that they are sharing and rebuilding their relationships with people in school. The completed work, along with Clicker Analytics data, can provide evidence of attainment and support you to identify the next learning steps the children need in literacy. Browse the About Me category to find more resources to support learners to express their preferences, opinions and feelings.