Using Clicker 4 to support pupils with special educational needs
At Baltasound Junior High School on the Shetland Islands, a brother and sister with Cohen’s Syndrome use Clicker 4 programs to help achieve the targets in their individual educational plans (IEPs). Margaret Pennington, the school’s additional needs support teacher, downloads free Clicker 4 programs from the internet and creates personalised programs for the pupils to use.
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Teacher profile
Margaret Pennington is an Additional Needs Support Teacher at Baltasound Junior High School and teaches pupils from P1 to P7, depending on the need at any given time. She studied at Moray House in Edinburgh and initially taught part time in the Highlands. She has been teaching full time for 16 years, firstly at the two-teacher primary school in Haroldswick in the Shetlands and then at Baltasound Junior High School.
She has a postgraduate certificate in educational computing (Primary) from Paisley University and has attended a course on Clicker 4 given by the Mobile Training Unit. She has also done a one-day inset training course on UCT for people with additional special needs at Edinburgh University’s Communication Aids for Language and Learning (CALL) Centre.
Margaret says that she has learnt a lot about ICT by copying others and that she likes to adapt other people’s ideas to her own needs. She uses ICT extensively in the preparation of materials for individual pupils with additional special needs and is a great fan of Clicker 4.
School profile
Baltasound Junior High School on the Shetland island of Unst is the most northerly school in Britain. It opened in 1897 as Baltasound Public School and now has 125 pupils from across Unst, ranging from early years to S4. Three pupils have free school lunches and there are three pupils with special educational needs. One pupil speaks English as a second language. Baltasound Junior High School was the top ranking small school in Scotland for Standard Grade results in 2002 and 2003.
The school has 20 PCs and a dedicated ICT room. ICT training for staff is organised through continuing professional development (CPD).