Elyse Reynolds wasn’t looking for evidence of adoption for assistive technology. She was just walking down a hallway.

But there it was, Clicker, open on a student’s laptop while writing. She didn’t recognize this particular student, and she felt that small, private win. "Clicker is just embedded," she'll tell you. "It's being used."

That's what four years of district-wide adoption looks like at Lake Washington School District, a district of 32 elementary schools outside Seattle. Not a rollout metric. A moment in a hallway nobody planned, with a kid whose name you don't know, doing exactly what you hoped they'd be doing.

Elyse and her counterpart Taylor Phu are Lake Washington's two Assistive Technology Specialists. Both came up as special education teachers — something they note is unusual in the AT world. Taylor spent fifteen years in the district, working with middle schoolers through transition-age students before moving into the role. Elyse made the shift in 2017. The classroom didn't leave them when they left it. It's the lens through which they see everything, including what it takes to get a tool into the hands of the people who need it most.

When a student who refused to write produced a full paragraph

The day after a Clicker training, a para tried something different with a student who had, up to that point, refused to write in any form. This was a student who had decided, somewhere along the way, that writing wasn't something they could do. The next morning, Taylor got a photo of a full paragraph on the screen. Pictures popping up alongside the words as the student typed, the page filling in a way that must have felt, finally, like something working the way it was supposed to.

"Paras are the backbone of special education," Taylor says. They're in the room every day. They're the ones who need something they can actually use tomorrow morning, with no preparation, no time. Getting Clicker into that para's hands, and making sure she knew what to do with it, was the whole point.

One strong support across Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3

That thinking, teacher-first and relentlessly practical, starts with how Clicker fits into Lake Washington's MTSS framework. Central to that framework is a belief Taylor and Elyse always return to that a strong support shouldn't live only at Tier 2 or Tier 3. If a tool genuinely works, it should work across all three tiers.

Because all elementary students at Lake Washington have access to Clicker, Taylor and Elyse can offer it as a genuine Tier 1 support. But what makes it hold across tiers is the range it contains. One student might be typing independently with word prediction on. Another might be working through a Sentence Set, writing in whole phrases. A third might be using switch access.

Same tool, same activity, same classroom, but calibrated differently for each kid. Nobody needs to be pulled out, and nobody gets a visibly different experience. They're all simply writing. This kind of access across tiers reflects a Universal Design for Learning approach, where support is available to all students, not just those who qualify for them.

Early on, a general education teacher looked at Elyse mid-meeting and said something that stuck, "Every student needs this tool in my class."

Keeping tools top of mind with just-in-time communication

Knowing what teachers need and when they need it comes directly from having been in the classroom themselves. "Elyse and I have a little bit of a SpEd teacher's brain," Taylor says. When they send out newsletters highlighting Clicker resources, they think about when it’s most useful, like the week before spring break, or that first week back from a long weekend. They know what a just-in-time message feels like versus a well-intentioned one. The feedback they get back confirms it. Teachers write to say, "I was able to use that Clicker Set today." Taylor says the staff's response "reignites not just their knowledge of Clicker but their excitement about it."

The newsletters are structured accordingly, as well. They keep it simple at the top and include deeper resources at the bottom, packaged so a special ed teacher can forward the whole thing to a para in one click. Even the best resource won’t gain traction if friction occurs at the handoff point.

The tech tool is never the hard part. Adoption is.

The tool is almost never the hard part in technology integration and adoption. Taylor and Elyse have spent four years building human architecture, one relationship at a time. Someone must be in the room, fluent enough to translate the technology tool into whatever problem the person in front of them is trying to solve.

Supporting multilingual learners with shared scaffolds

Nowhere is that more visible than in the classrooms that have brought Taylor and Elyse back. One MLL teacher developed a weekly plan for previewing vocabulary with her students before they entered the general education classroom. Every week she'd pull the upcoming content, adapt it inside Clicker, and send it ahead so her students could arrive with the language already in hand. When her students got to the GenEd classroom and the textbook came out, they already had the necessary prior knowledge to access the content.

As Taylor describes it, "this teacher wasn't overly simplifying key vocabulary either; she would bring down the amount of text on the page." The rigor stayed, but the barrier came down.

And whenever she made materials in Clicker for one student, she'd print extra copies and leave them in the pod area for the whole grade level. Any para, any SpEd teacher, anyone who needed them could just go grab one. Something built for a single kid with individual effort has now become a practice for an entire grade. Taylor and Elyse recognized it immediately, and it's now a system they carry into every training they do. Make it once and make it available. The student you built it for isn't the only one who needs it.

That same MLL teacher used her experience with her students with staff. A native Japanese speaker, she'd put up a sentence in Japanese — no images, just text — read it aloud, and ask the room: what did I say? After silence, she'd then put up the same sentence with Clicker images alongside the text. Suddenly the room could tell it was about the life cycle of a butterfly. For a moment, everyone in that room felt what it is to be a multilingual learner still acquiring language while the classroom keeps moving forward without you.

Translating practical takeaways from trainings

Taylor and Elyse recognized it because they'd been doing a version of the same thing for years — sitting in literacy trainings, SIOP instruction, any professional development they attend, writing in the margins: how could this be done when someone isn't confident speaking? Their answer, almost every time, is Clicker. But the answer only means something because they know what question they're trying to answer.

There's a boy Taylor describes as bright, stubborn, and completely uninterested in writing. This student finally sat down when someone showed him his writing as a Clicker Book and told him he could put his name on it because he was an author. Taylor describes it as the whole point of teaching writing, "I'm not having somebody else do this for me. This gets to be my choice."

What successful technology adoption looks like across large school districts

It comes back to that moment when Elyse saw a student she didn’t know using Clicker.

It means Clicker traveled far enough from the people who introduced it that it doesn't need them anymore. It means a teacher or para made a decision, in a room Taylor and Elyse weren't in, because someone took the time to show them how to use it, and it was simple enough to get started. "It doesn't break on kids," Taylor says. And after four years, neither does the work they've built around it.

If you want to hear Taylor and Elyse walk through their specific examples, the MLL workflow, the phonics sets, and how they made the case to district leadership, watch their webinar here:

Introduction

Recently, more schools have requested online training for using Clicker with younger learners, especially emergent readers and early reading.  

As a former early elementary teacher, I use my experience in these sessions to showcase how many of Clicker's key features are beneficial for these students.

Here are the four key elements of teaching early reading that I would focus on supporting with Clicker: 

1. Exploring vocabulary 
2. Decoding
3. Using expression 
4. Comprehension and understanding

Exploring vocabulary with early readers

Matching Sets

I am a huge advocate of using Matching Sets to support with those vital early reading skills. They are a flexible resource and intuitive for children to use independently. They also make a great teaching tool on your interactive whiteboard! Matching Sets enable students to match words, pictures, and sounds to rehearse and consolidate new vocabulary. 

I would often pre-teach vocabulary ahead of a new topic or text, and Matching Sets are a fantastic way to do this. In my experience, letting students explore new words and connect them to their sounds and images helps them read more confidently on their own. 

Teaching vocabulary is crucial for early reading, so LearningGrids offers numerous ready-made Matching Sets on various topics.

Decoding resources for early reading

Having taught younger learners, I know how important phonics activities are to help students build confidence decoding new words.

Our fantastic phonics resources on LearningGrids are easy to build into your planning to support your phonics teaching.

The recently added CVC decodable stories and activities are written with phonetically decodable text and a few high-frequency sight words, helping students to build key early reading skills. They are perfect for 1:1 reading sessions, but they also work well in a group or as a whole class activity.

Clicker Books

As reading is vital for students to fully access the curriculum, making sure early learners are secure in their knowledge of phonics is one of the key priority areas. Reading books that are decodable for a student and pitched at their stage of learning is important for building confidence.

Use the Read a Book version of the stories for added speech support. The Read It Yourself version is designed to encourage students to have a try at decoding and reading the text for themselves, so it's ideal when children are feeling more confident with the phonemes and graphemes at their level.

Matching Sets

Another way I always recommend using Matching Sets is to support your phonics teaching. 

In my teaching days, I loved simple phonics activities and games that my class could access independently. Matching Sets are an excellent resource for students developing blending, segmenting, and grapheme-phoneme correspondence skills. They are a valuable tool for supporting early reading to help students develop their decoding skills and ability to sound out words.

Using expression as early readers

From my experience teaching 1st grade, I know that teaching expression and intonation in reading can be challenging. Though students are learning many new skills, developing expression is key to building comprehension and a love of reading.  

Adding our recording tool into a Clicker Book is a great way to support students with this. 

Clicker Books

You can edit Clicker Books to include an audio recording of students reading the text aloud. They can listen back to this to: 

• Hear the story read in their own words 
  
  
• Listen out for how they've used expression
  
  
• Check if they've paid attention to punctuation
  
  
• See if their sentences make sense 

You could also record adults reading the text aloud using these recording tools and ask the students to play teacher! If an adult purposely reads with little expression or poor punctuation, students can listen for ways to improve and give feedback - simple but effective way for students to demonstrate their understanding of these skills, without even realizing it! 

Early reading comprehension and understanding

It's great when a student can read a word, a full sentence, or even a whole book but how can we ensure they've actually understood what they've read?

Comprehension skills are a vital part of early reading, and Clicker has a few ways to help!

Reading into writing

One of the things I love about using Clicker Books from LearningGrids is the corresponding writing activities. Writing grids vary in scaffolding and help students write about the book they've read. This is perfect for helping them to consolidate the text and show their understanding.

Speaking and listening

Talk Sets are another fantastic way to gauge a student's understanding of a text. They allow children to verbally share what they've read and are especially useful for students who struggle to express themselves in written form. They can record their thoughts about different parts of the text, describe characters or settings, retell a story, and so much more!

Conclusion

Clicker offers a wide range of resources that can support early reading skills, from pre-reading skills such as exploring new vocabulary, to post-reading comprehension activities.

By incorporating Clicker's interactive activities into your lessons, students are provided with valuable opportunities to practice and consolidate a range of key reading skills, allowing them to gain confidence in accessing content across the curriculum.

This is just a small snippet of how Clicker can help with early reading skills. Here are some other resources you might find helpful: 

The science of reading and Clicker's decodable books

Decodable stories - Clicker's CVC early reading resources

Using Clicker with traditional stories

In a recent blog post, I looked at how our new CVC decodable Clicker Books support a science of reading approach to phonics instruction. Today I want to explore some of the additional Clicker resources on LearningGrids that can be used alongside the decodable stories.

For each of the books (Tig in Mud, Bug in a Bin, and Peg and Bob), there is a series of activities related to:

• Pre-reading revision

• Text comprehension and vocabulary extension

• Decoding skills

Decodable stories: Pre-reading revision

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, it is important to use decodable books that are based on sound-spellings that readers have already been taught. The Letters & Words Clicker Board can be used before any of the books to revise and reinforce the letters and sounds that will be covered in the text. The CVC words from the story are also included on the Clicker Board to practice segmenting and blending the words before they come across them in the Clicker Book.

The Key Words Matching Set reinforces the CVC words in the decodable stories' text.

Text comprehension and vocabulary extension

Talking about the plot and exploring the children’s understanding is an important part of using decodable stories. The stories and pictures have been authored so that there are things to talk about and ways to extend vocabulary, even starting on the cover – “Who do you think Tig is?” “What do you think will happen to Tig?”

Once students have read the stories, they can use the Tell the Story activity or the Clicker Board sequencing activity to retell the story in their own words.

Decoding skills

A Connect Set and a Sentence Set are also included, allowing students to rewrite the story while practicing their decoding skills. With the Connect Set, students need to sound out the last word to choose the correct CVC word to complete the sentence.

The Sentence Set provides another opportunity to decode the text from the decodable stories, as well as reinforce an understanding of sentence structure. To make it a greater challenge for some students, the model sentence could be changed to a spoken model so that students have to listen to the sentence and then decode the word choices to recreate the sentence.

The Key Words Talk Set can also be used for decoding practice, either before or after they read the Clicker Book. Initially students may need to record themselves segmenting and blending the words (/c/ /ă/ /t/ - cat). But with enough decoding practice, orthographic mapping will allow most children to read the words from sight – without having to sound them out each time.

Click on the links below to see the CVC decodable stories and their supporting Clicker Sets in LearningGrids:

• Tig in Mud

• Bug in a Bin

• Peg and Bob

Be sure to check out the Sounds & Letters category on LearningGrids for many other phonics related activities. Here are some other resources you might find helpful:

• Support early reading with Clicker

• Clicker and Phonics webinar

As many schools revise their reading instruction to be more aligned with the science of reading, phonics has gained greater traction in early elementary classrooms. Decodable books have an important role to play in the teaching of phonics, and on LearningGrids we have recently published three CVC decodable Clicker Books.

What is the science of reading?

The science of reading is a collection of research from the past few decades that has explored effective strategies for teaching children to read. The strategies are especially important for struggling readers. The research provides a framework for evidence-based reading instruction and focuses on five main areas:

1. Phonemic awareness
   
2. Phonics
   
3. Fluency
   
4. Vocabulary
   
5. Comprehension

Let’s have a closer look at phonics, in particular.

What is phonics?

Phonics involves matching the sounds (phonemes) of spoken English with the individual letters (graphemes) or groups of letters. Phonics instruction helps students increase their ability to sound out, or decode, new words.

How does phonics align with the science of reading?

One of the main findings from the science of reading is that there needs to be explicit and systematic instruction. For phonics, this means teachers usually follow a plan. This plan shows what sounds they teach and the order they teach them.

There isn’t an overarching scope and sequence that all schools use. However, most schools begin by teaching short vowel sounds. This means that CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words are usually among the first words children can read.

With explicit and systematic phonics instruction, students need to be given lots of ways to practice the new sounds and letters that they are taught. This is why decodable books are so important.

What are decodable books?

Decodable books are texts that focus on specific phonics patterns. The books give students the opportunity to use their segmenting and blending skills to decode words in context. It is important that students are offered decodable books based on what sound-spellings they have already been taught. The majority of the words in the text should be able to be sounded out based on the student’s phonic knowledge.

Clicker’s CVC decodable books

In the case of our new CVC decodable Clicker Books (Tig in Mud, Bug in a Bin, and Peg and Bob), we highlight in the notes exactly which sounds/letters each book focuses on. Almost all the words in the books are CVCs, but they do include a couple of high-frequency sight words, such as “the” and “is”.

We offer two versions of each book – a Read a Book and a Read It Yourself. Since many educators suggest getting a child to attempt to decode the text on their own first, you may want to use the Read It Yourself book. The only difference from the Read a Book version is that the speaker button has been removed – so that students can’t just listen to the book.

While the texts are simple, we have worked hard to create stories (and illustrations) that will catch the interest and imagination of young readers. Your students will have fun reading about the different characters: a mischievous dog, a mud-loving cat, and a large bug lurking in a toy bin!

In an upcoming blog post, I’ll explore the other Clicker activities that have been created to support these decodable Clicker Books. In the meantime, here are some other resources that you might find helpful:

• Support early reading with Clicker
  
• Building phonic confidence with Clicker webinar
  
• Clicker & phonics webinar

Twenty-five years ago, my classroom was filled with chalkboards, overhead projectors, and handouts.  Technology was used sparingly, and classrooms had only a few computers for an entire room of children.  Now, technology has transformed the classroom with interactive whiteboards, learning management systems, and loads of educational programs for students.  Teachers and students have access to a wealth of information right at their fingertips.  

As an educator, this shift required me to evolve, as I had to learn new tools, incorporate technology into my lessons, and embrace the change.  It wasn’t always easy, but it reminded me that teaching is, at its core, about lifelong learning - for both the teacher and the student.   

With these changes has come immense success.  There is nothing quite like seeing a student “get it.”  Those moments of understanding and accomplishment, when a student realizes they can do it!  Technology plays a huge part in helping students learn and can bridge gaps for students who otherwise struggle with the traditional ways of learning.   

Clicker is literacy software that supports all students, not just your struggling readers and writers.  

Here are 5 things about Clicker that promote the reading and writing outcomes of students: 

1. Accessibility for all students  
2. “Teacher, I’m stuck!” 
3. Clicker Boards for planning support 
4. Save time with LearningGrids  
5. Analyzing student work 

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1. Accessibility for all students 

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2. “Teacher, I’m stuck!” 

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3. Clicker Boards for planning support 

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4. Save time with LearningGrids 

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5. Analyzing student work 

These are just 5 ways that Clicker supports the reading and writing outcomes of your students.   

Here are some other resources you might find helpful: 

• Write stories with Clicker 
• Clicker for whole class teaching 
• LearningGrids tutorial 
• Clicker Analytics tutorial 

Recently, more schools have requested online training for using Clicker with younger learners, especially emergent readers.

As a former early elementary teacher, I use my experience in these sessions to showcase how many of Clicker’s key features are beneficial for these students. 

Here are the four key elements of teaching early reading that I would focus on supporting with Clicker: 

1. Exploring vocabulary 
2. Decoding 
3. Using expression 
4. Comprehension and understanding

1) Exploring vocabulary

Matching Sets

I am a huge advocate of using Matching Sets to support with those vital early reading skills. They are a flexible resource and intuitive for students to use independently. They also make a great teaching tool on your interactive whiteboard! Matching Sets enable children to match words, pictures, and sounds to rehearse and consolidate new vocabulary.

I would often pre-teach vocabulary ahead of a new topic or text, and Matching Sets are a fantastic way to do this. In my experience, letting children explore new words and connect them to their sounds and images helps them read more confidently on their own. 

Teaching vocabulary is crucial for early reading, so LearningGrids offers numerous ready-made Matching Sets on various topics. 

2) Decoding

Having taught younger learners, I know how important phonics activities are to help students build confidence in decoding new words.

Our fantastic phonics resources on LearningGrids are easy to build into your planning to support your phonics teaching.

Decodable stories

The Tig in Mud Clicker Books are based on CVC decodable text, helping children to build key early reading skills. These books can include speech support, providing extra support for children to listen to the text read aloud. They are perfect for 1:1 reading sessions, but they also work as a group read or as a whole-class activity.

Matching Sets

Another way I always recommend using Matching Sets is to support your phonics teaching. 

In my teaching days, I loved simple phonics activities and games that my class could access independently. Matching Sets are an excellent resource for students developing blending, segmenting, and grapheme-phoneme correspondence skills. They are a valuable tool for supporting early reading to help children develop their decoding skills and ability to sound out words.

3) Using expression

From my experience teaching first grade, I know that teaching expression and intonation in reading can be challenging. Though students are learning many new skills, developing expression is key to building comprehension and a love of reading.  

Adding a record button in a Clicker Book is a great way to support children with this. 

Clicker Books

You can edit Clicker Books to include an audio recording of students reading the text aloud. They can listen back to this to:

• Hear the story read in their own words
• Listen out for how they’ve used expression
• Check if they’ve paid attention to punctuation 
• See if their sentences make sense 

You could also record adults reading the text aloud using the record button and ask the students to “play teacher”! If an adult purposely reads with little expression or poor punctuation, children can listen for ways to improve and give feedback. This is a simple but effective way for students to be demonstrating their understanding of these skills, without even realizing! 

4) Check comprehension and understanding

It’s great when a student can read a word, a full sentence, or even a whole book – but how can we ensure they’ve actually understood what they’ve read?

Comprehension skills are a vital part of early reading, and Clicker has a few ways to help!

Reading into writing

One of the things I love about using Clicker Books from LearningGrids is the corresponding writing activities. Writing grids vary in scaffolding and help students write about the book they’ve read. This is perfect for helping them to consolidate the text and show their understanding.  

Talk Sets

Talk Sets are another fantastic way to gauge a student’s understanding of a text. They allow children to verbally share what they’ve read and are especially useful for students who struggle to express themselves in written form. They can record their thoughts about different parts of the text, describe characters or settings, retell a story, and so much more! 

This is just a small snippet of how Clicker can help with early reading skills. Here are some other resources you might find helpful:

• Sounds & Letters LearningGrids resources
• Story Corner reading resources 
• Clicker for whole class teaching blog post

For many schools there has been a renewed push towards phonics to help early or struggling readers and writers. This has impacted many aspects of reading and writing instruction, including the way that students are taught traditional “sight words.”

In the past we often told students that they had to just memorize these high frequency words. We would try to get students to focus on the “whole word,” looking at its shape, length, etc. in order to learn the word. But there is significant evidence to show that this doesn’t work for a lot of kids. Research indicates that successful readers use phonics and “orthographic mapping” to learn new words – connecting sounds (the phonemes) to the letters (the graphemes) in the word. They permanently store the connected sounds and letters to instantly recognize the words. These words then become actual sight words.

Many of the high frequency words from lists, such as Dolch, are words that follow normal phonemic rules. Rather than memorizing the whole word, the words can be taught as part of phonics lessons. For example, the word “did” can be included when learning other short i cvc words.

There are, however, some words on the Dolch list that don’t fully follow phonetic patterns. These words are often called heart words – meaning that there is one (or more) part of the word that has a tricky part that you have to learn by heart.

We have recently published some Heart Words Clicker Sets on LearningGrids. The sets, which include Word Banks, Talk Sets, and Matching Sets, focus on the Dolch list of heart words and are broken down into eight groups, allowing you to focus on a smaller set of words at time.

Let’s look at how the different types of Clicker Sets can be used.

Word Banks and Clicker Document

The Word Banks can be used effectively with the Clicker Document to introduce students to the different groups of heart words.

• Send a word from the Word Bank to the Document.
• Get students to say the word with you.
• Ask students to use the word in a sentence (understanding the meaning of the word is an important part of the orthographic mapping process).
• Send the word again and this time get students to tap out the sounds in the word.
• Ask them to say the phonemes in the words – s-ĕ-d.
• Ask them what sound they hear at the beginning and what letter we use for that sound – highlight the s in green.
• Ask them what sound they hear at the end and what letter we use for that sound – highlight the d in green.
• Explain how that leaves us with the middle sound which is ĕ, but because this is a heart word, it has a tricky part that we have learn by heart –highlight the ai in red.
• Open the onscreen keyboard and write out the word again. Have students say the letters with you.

Talk and Matching Sets

Once you have introduced all the words from the Word Bank, students can then use the Talk and Matching Sets to consolidate their understanding of the words.

With the Talk Set, students can use it as a normal Listen and Say activity – where they click on the word to hear it and then they record themselves saying it. But to really engage in the orthographic process, get students to record themselves saying the word, using the word in a sentence, and breaking the word into its parts – both the sounds and the letters.

The Matching Set is designed as a reinforcement activity or quick assessment to see if students can recognize the words. They click on the speaker to hear a word and then choose the written word to match the sound.  

Be sure to visit LearningGrids for other Clicker resources focusing on Sounds & Letters.

Have you met the Alphabet Animals, Clicker’s newest characters on LearningGrids? These colorful creatures have been designed to help children learn the letters of the alphabet, develop an understanding of alliteration, and explore the initial sounds in words.

In Alphabet Animals – Read a Book, learners are introduced to Annie ant, Desmond dolphin, Gary goose and the other 23 characters. Additional Connect and Custom Sets, including Alphabet Animals – Who Can and Alphabet Animals – Presents, start to develop children’s ability to distinguish between different initial sounds in words.

Each animal character, such as Benny badger, also has their own book so that your class can find out what the animal likes, has and can do. All the Clicker Books have recorded speech and are supported by speaking and writing activities to explore the particular letter/sound and to help write alliterative sentences.

Visit LearningGrids to find the full range of Alphabet Animal resources. And let these fun Clicker characters give your learners a strong foundation for reading and writing!