I'm a Graduate Intern at Stowupland High School in Suffolk, England. I work with the special education department, and we have numerous students who we support on a 1-to-1 basis within the classroom.
A lot of the students I work with were particularly struggling with English assignments. They just weren’t engaging with the subject or enjoying it. Our special education team did a lot of research into different tools to help these learners progress, and DocsPlus really caught their eye. So that’s when they brought it to me to trial.
Getting up to speed with the software was very straightforward – I watched the recorded training session on Crick’s website and after that I was good to go!
"It’s a great tool for boosting writing confidence and engagement."
The trial consisted of two different tasks that I completed with a group of four students. The first was completing a journal entry as if you were a soldier in the trenches during World War I. The ready-made topic word banks that come with DocsPlus were really valuable for this activity, providing key words and phrases to help them write about rations, different elements of the war, the countries involved, etc. Alongside these we were using the speaker tool a lot, which was a fantastic feature because it gave the students the confidence to share their work without having to read it out loud to one another. And I felt that all the students really listened to one another with the computer speaking, which was lovely.
For the second task, we wrote a horror story, and for that we used one of the story planner templates, which helps you to map out the beginning, the start of the problem, how you resolve the problem, and the ending. We then transferred that into their assessment. And again, that was really successful.
DocsPlus offers so many benefits, but sometimes it’s the simplest things that make the most impact, such as automatically reading their sentence back to them when they add the period at the end. Often the students are so eager to get all their thoughts down that they just quickly move on to the next sentence without checking their work. But this actually slowed their pace down to an appropriate speed where they could really think about what they were writing, how to structure it, and whether it needed editing. The students were able to recognize where they needed to add punctuation, if there was an incorrect spelling in there, or if something didn’t make sense, and independently make those changes.
"One of my trial students is already really excited by the possibility of using DocsPlus during her assessments – when students are so comfortable with technology like this, it can make that exam situation a much calmer and more familiar environment."
Given how successful the trial was, we’ve invested in the whole-school Flexi-License so that we can widen this out from just being used with small groups to being available to everyone. It’s going to be so engaging for our KS3s (ages 11 – 14), and then of course our older students have the benefit of the Exam Mode. One of my trial students is already really excited by the possibility of using DocsPlus during her assessments – when students are so comfortable with technology like this, it can make that exam situation a much calmer and more familiar environment. I think that's something that they would favor over having an individual they’ve potentially never met before coming in to read or scribe for them.
I would definitely recommend that other schools look into DocsPlus - it’s a great tool for boosting writing confidence and engagement.
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The April/May 2019 edition of Closing The Gap Solutions contains a fantastic article, "Using Strategy Instruction and Flexible Assistive Technology Tools: A Winning Combination for Secondary Learners with Disabilities to be Able to Meet Next Generation Learning Standards in Writing," looking at two case studies in which students in separate high schools were introduced to DocsPlus to improve their written expression.
The authors:
Carol Willard is an Assistant Professor of Special Education in the Curriculum and Instruction Department at the State University of New York at Oswego, NY.
Amanda Fenlon is an Associate Professor of Special Education in the Curriculum and Instruction Department at the State University of New York at Oswego, NY.
Kelsey Wilson is a special education teacher at Altmar-Parish-Williamstown Junior Senior High School. She is a graduate of the 7-12 Master’s Special education program at SUNY Oswego.
Bailey Woodard is a 9th grade Special Education Teacher at the Liverpool High School Annex in Liverpool, NY and a graduate of the 7-12 Master’s Special education program at SUNY Oswego.
You can download or view the article in full using the links below:
You can download or view the article here
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Cathkin High School was given the opportunity to trial DocsPlus. The trial was set up by Crick Software in collaboration with the Schools Managed Service provider, RM Education, and was supported by South Lanarkshire Council.
Cathkin High School is a mainstream school in South Lanarkshire Council, in Scotland, with around 1,100 students. I am the Special Education Lead Teacher and support students with a wide range of support needs, for example students with dyslexia, ADHD, autism, etc. I also work to support staff in ensuring students’ special educaitonal needs are met within the classroom.
We have found DocsPlus to be a more multifaceted technology resource than we have been using so far. DocsPlus can be used by students with varying needs and abilities to progress and work more independently. So, for example, the spellchecker picks up on the phonics problem the students have:
“The spellchecker really helped. It helped me believe in myself, and gave me confidence with my writing.”
We used DocsPlus with a freshman English class as part of a transition exercise we do where the students write Christmas letters to the middle school students about things to look out for, things to look forward to, and hints and tips before they move up to high school. Verbally, the students can easily give you lots of ideas and examples but committing these ideas to paper is much harder for them as they struggle with starting extended writing tasks and structuring them.
The spellchecker really helped. It helped me believe in myself, and gave me confidence with my writing.
For some students this process of moving from a blank piece of paper to a coherent piece of writing is a real struggle. So, DocsPlus does something other word processors can’t: it gives them that scaffolding, that frame so they have a starting point with their thinking. DocsPlus is great as it has many ready-made templates or Wordbars which staff can use or edit.
We created banks of useful vocabulary and writing frames, which are called "Wordbars" in DocsPlus, to help the students with their work. We found they were a great way to provide accessible, topic-specific phrases and sentences for the students to use. This hugely improved the speed and accuracy of their writing! With the letter task I mentioned earlier, the Wordbar tabs were organized to guide the students through the entire letter writing process:
“The different sections of the Wordbar were really helpful; it helped you write the letter in order and gave ideas about what to write next.”
DocsPlus made it so much easier for them to structure and order things – it gave them confidence in their writing.
I think one of the loveliest comments we got was to do with the word predictor. One of the children said:
“When you started to write a word at the bottom, the word appeared, and you just clicked on it to add it. If you didn’t know how to spell a word, if you put in the first couple of letters, it would just come up. It let me use bigger words I wouldn’t be able to spell.”
DocsPlus was helping to improve the quality of their writing too and gave them the confidence to use the sophisticated vocabulary they knew in their heads but couldn’t get down on paper before. It was great to see!
Children in South Lanarkshire already have access to Clicker at the elementary school level, so they are used to having a writing support tool in place. It would make a lot of sense for them to transition to an age-appropriate tool like this when they move into high school.
When you started to write a word at the bottom, the word appeared, and you just clicked on it to add it. If you didn’t know how to spell a word, if you put in the first couple of letters, it would just come up. It let me use bigger words I wouldn’t be able to spell.
There’s no doubt that DocsPlus had a massive impact on the students during our trial. It improved their self-esteem, confidence, and motivation with writing tasks. Certainly in the English department we found that their level of writing improved significantly. The letters the students wrote were comfortably receiving higher grades – so there was definitely a tangible improvement in the quality of their written work.
Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is get students working and achieving independently. We want them to be actively doing things for themselves; increasing resilience and independence, and I think DocsPlus really helps with that. I think this would be a fantastic tool for all high schools to have access to.
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I’m the Head of Inclusion at Aldar Academies Al Bateen Academy – a leading secondary English Curriculum and International Baccalaureate Diploma School in Abu Dhabi. I previously worked in an elementary school where we used Clicker, and I was a massive fan! I thought it was a fantastic support tool for so many of our students because, regardless of whether or not they had special educational needs, English is a challenging area – especially in terms of writing. I had a group of 1st grade students that would write just one sentence in an hour, and with Clicker they were producing whole paragraphs – it was so fantastic!
Last September, I moved over to working at the secondary level at Al Bateen Academy and was looking for a more ‘grown up’ version of Clicker for my students. I met with Phil at Crick Software and the minute he started talking about DocsPlus I knew we needed it. The big issue we have is exam access arrangements. When I started here it was really evident that our students in grades 10 and 12 were going to need a lot of input – I soon realized how many students required readers and/or scribes, and I was thinking ‘there’s no way we’re going to be able to find the human resources to do this!’ I went on a DocsPlus training session and I was blown away when Phil demonstrated Exam Mode – that was a real wow moment.
I used to be a reader for students doing exams and I found that often students would be too embarrassed to ask you to repeat something, because they felt too self-conscious. That whole element has been eradicated with DocsPlus, and I just love it! With the number of students we have requiring access arrangements, and the number of exams that they’ve done, I estimate that we would’ve had to pay about AED 29000 ($8,000) this year alone to cover the cost of readers and scribes! So not only is DocsPlus a massive financial savings, it’s a huge savings on human resources. But more than that, it gives those students the independence to know they’re fully in control - there’s no one listening; they’re not embarrassed to keep listening back. I am massively sold on it!
As a dyslexia specialist teacher, I can also really see the benefit of using DocsPlus for learners with dyslexia. Very often, students will be trying to work out how to spell a word and because it’s just too difficult, they will use a different, easier word instead. So, it’s brilliant that with tools like the Predictor, they’re able to show me what they know and be independent. It gives them that extra little bit of scaffolding and confidence to let them flourish.
At the moment, I’m looking to train one staff member in each department to be a ‘DocsPlus expert’ and share their knowledge with the rest of the team. Many of our skilled teachers across a range of curriculum areas are embracing this technology, recognizing the benefits for students in building confidence and independence, and in raising attainment and engagement.
A large percentage of our learners are not native English language speakers and therefore they need a frame or scaffold to help organize their written work. It’s so easy to create a DocsPlus Wordbar (a key word bank) or enable students to practice their speech with the Voice Note tool, which allows students to write far more in less time and of far better quality. There’s so much scope to support ELL students.
Recently I was teaching an 8th grade ELL class, and the second they sat down with a Wordbar they could just start writing. It was brilliant for me, and so good for their own self-esteem – being able to produce a whole sheet of paper, when they would’ve previously struggled to write even a few sentences without DocsPlus! They were all, obviously, proud of themselves.
DocsPlus just checks off all the boxes! Having worked in special education for so long, I know the impact this can have on students. To be struggling so much, spending every lesson having to really stop and think, ‘how am I going to word this?’ or ‘how can I show what I know?’; it’s really tiring and demoralizing for them. So, I think it’s great that they’ve got this new sense of confidence and are so happy using DocsPlus.
Regardless of all the human resources and money it has saved us, the most important benefit has been the hugely positive impact on our students and their writing.
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I have long been a fan of Crick's Clicker software, in all its iterations (yes, I am that old), as a tool in a learning and working environment to support inclusive literacy. Many of my students continued to use Clicker throughout middle and high school…and one even took it to college with him. Despite it being an elementary school product, the underlying functionality was so useful to them, that they continued to benefit from the support it offers.
Now, I have the option of transitioning students to DocsPlus. For those who are familiar with Clicker, it possesses many of the same features. For example, if someone prefers to mind map their ideas before formulating a final text version, not only is there a mind mapping feature (with audio note taker support), but with one single click on the finished map, a series of grids are instantly produced to support the writing of the final written version.
In middle and high school, the volume of reading expected each day increases steadily as students progress towards college exams. For a student with barriers to literacy, or whatever type of print impairment, anxiety, and/or energy issues, this is a common cause for difficulties to arise. Word documents and PDFs can be read aloud to the student using the built-in DocReader – and this can also read test papers! For many, the ability to re-read, or proof read, their own work is problematic. Once again this is a facility offered by DocsPlus, so students can hear what they have written and hopefully spot mistakes, or points that need re-phrasing or clarification.
"Students are able to take control of their own learning and require less intervention from other adults or peers."
The ability to have word prediction, curriculum vocabulary grids, writing frames and structures, in addition to the accessibility features (including eye gaze and SuperKeys), offers a rich toolbox of support, all of which is there to use, or not use, in a single writing environment. These features help with structuring their work and avoiding time-wasting moments of checking for key topic vocabulary.
What does this offer? It offers independence as a reader and writer. It offers scaffolded support which can be tailored to individual need AND it can cater for a flexible learning approach, whereby more support features are needed for some projects and fewer supports are needed for others. Most importantly, it offers control and success. Students are able to take control of their own learning and require less intervention from other adults or peers. Success is seen when the student who always "plays it safe", rather than attempt writing at a level that they feel unsure about, now has a platform that will enable them to demonstrate their understanding of the topic and task.
Most excitingly, we are finally moving towards acceptance of assistive technology in test settings, as long as it is the student's usual working method (more information on this can be found here). This is a real step forward as we are acknowledging that for some students, assistive technology is their usual way of working and way of demonstrating their learning and achievements.
It can be difficult to understand the impact of literacy barriers that many students face daily. Exhaustion from having to put so much more effort into work completion than others; anxiety caused by the demands of an educational system that doesn't always allow for complex learning differences, and the emotional disturbance caused by a daily struggle to demonstrate your understanding and learning, when your peers seem to do so with relatively little effort. In an educational age where we are looking with clarity at well-being, is it not sensible to offer a "usual way of working" that will help so many?
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