When I first joined Crick Software, I asked lots of students and teachers what they liked most about using Clicker. I was particularly interested to hear what features people find most useful to support writing.

You won’t be surprised to hear that I got different answers from almost everyone I spoke to. Some chose speech feedback, others opted for the child-friendly Predictor or Spell Check. One theme that shone through, however, was the fact that students liked being able to call on the scaffold they needed, whenever they want.

Clicker’s Word Pool allows users to personalize several of these support tools, making Clicker even more suited to each individual user. This feature has been popular in Clicker Desktop and is now included in the Clicker Writer App.

Add common misspellings

Clicker’s Predictor and Spell Check tools are both intelligent and phonetic – try the “alefent / elephant test” and read my blog about how much more child-friendly these tools are in Clicker than in your standard word processor. 

With the latest update of Clicker Writer, you can add common misspellings to the Word Pool to personalize this feature. A student may have a specific word they struggle with, or you might want to add common misspellings of subject specific-vocabulary. Go to the “Suggestions” tab in “Settings” to quickly add the misspellings you want the Word Pool to pick up on.

Once added, the Predictor and Spell Check will be able to recognize these common misspellings and suggest the correct word.

Don’t forget, users can always hear suggestions in the Predictor and Spell Check using right-click.

Correct pronunciation

Text-to-speech has been in Clicker since some of the earliest versions and has always been one of the most loved scaffolds. Having writing read back to students lets them quickly spot errors and check their work. Occasionally, a word won’t be pronounced as you’d expect – especially with subject-specific vocabulary. You can enter the phonetic pronunciation into the Word Pool to quickly improve the power of speech feedback.

Name recognition

We know how important name recognition is and we regularly widen our name database in Clicker’s dictionary to prevent that red squiggly line appearing. You can use the Word Pool to add any child’s name that isn't yet included.

Prevent unwanted speech

Occasionally, students will ask Clicker to speak a word that you’d prefer it didn't. To account for this, you can add these to the Word Pool and choose another word to be spoken instead. In my experience this is rare, but it is good to have a quick solution if you need it!

Get students involved

Use Clicker’s Word Pool to empower your Clicker users further. Talk to your students about words they would find useful to be added to the Word Pool. This encourages self-reflection about where they are making a common spelling error or where they are taking advantage of speech feedback. Use the Word Pool to make Clicker’s scaffolds even more powerful.

If you have any other questions about using Clicker Writer

• We have a range of tutorials to help with using the app.
  
  
• For technical questions and any issues updating the app, you can contact our technical support team.