Widgit Online
I’m lucky in that, in my job, I experience a range of different approaches, interventions and inspirational people, all working to enact inclusion in education. In today’s blog, I want to discuss Widgit Online.
I had known about Widgit for many years but had never felt compelled to try it. I guess my initial response was formed by my exposure to it, as a glorified labelling system; used by some to pay lip service to support communication by adding a symbol to a word and then being stuck on a cupboard, wall or door.
My opinion now, however, is different. I use it whenever I can. I’m going to describe the ways in which it has helped me to adapt and create resources that enhance inclusion.
Supporting children in written work: topic lessons
I usually start each term by asking the teachers I work with to share their topic planning with me. Teachers are busy people and have a whole class of children to consider, and a National Curriculum to cover. Every so often, SEND children fall through the cracks in everyday lesson planning. My aim is to demonstrate to teachers how simple adaptations and a positive spin can be all that’s needed to ensure they are included.
So, to topic planning. I look to the learning outcomes of each lesson and build from there. Quite often, lessons will require some writing. This, I have found through my experience, is a hard task for many SEND children. How can we get SEND children to meet lesson objectives and write quickly. Step up, Widgit Online!
Two examples
I’m going to share two examples that I created after receiving topic planning from teachers. The first is quite simple. The topic was the human body. No disrespect to schools or teachers, but the amount of coverage in such lessons is now vast. I wanted a quick way for my caseload children to access the work and produce some writing. I also had the aim of supporting independence.
The objective was for the children to answer the question : what are the functions of our muscles? This is a Year 4 class and my two children in this instance have autism, difficulty in attending to tasks, and communication difficulties.
So I produced this:
From this, the children could then write four independent sentences. It took no time to put together.
To offer further support. I put the document in a good-quality poly pocket and numbered the squares using a whiteboard pen. For example, ‘Muscles’ would be 1, and ‘are attached to bones’ could be 2. So the children then know they would write ‘Muscles are attached to bones’ and are reminded to finish with a full stop. Boom! One sentence down. The process repeats again, with ‘Muscles’ being 1 again, and the children deciding which square would be 2 next.
Here’s my second example. The topic this time was Antarctica. For context, this was for Year 2 children, and my particular caseload child has speech, language and communication difficulties and was born prematurely and was very poorly in his early development. But what a trooper and an absolute inspiration who has inspired me to do better.
In this instance, we had to write a diary of Earnest Shackleton’s journey to Antarctica. I know! You’ll see here that I employed the same tactic as before, giving my child options that meant he could write a number of sentences for each diary entry. I used the same technique with the poly pocket, which meant the squares could then be numbered. He became adept at doing this himself, which over time all children could do. Here’s what I produced for him:
You’ll also notice that I have coloured the squares here to match the colours used in Colourful Semantics. This demonstrates another great use of Widgit Online. I had introduced Colourful Semantics to this boy and his TA a year earlier, and we were having success with this. So I decided to include it here.
I love Widgit Online. I use it in other ways too. For example, I use it to make TEACCH tasks and visual timetables. If nothing else, documents can be copied and pasted into it, which then includes the Widgit symbols, immediately making the document more accessible. There are many ways to use this resource, probably much more creatively than I have. What’s great about it is that as you use it, you start to think of other ways that it can help with accessibility and inclusion. It can be addictive! There are resource banks created by users that might just be what you’re looking for!
Widgit Online can be found here: https://widgitonline.com/en/home
They offer a free trial. I definitely recommend it!
That SEND Teacher 