Purple Mash vs Clicker 7 vs?

[drspouse]

DS has major difficulties with handwriting, he's in Y2 and really can't form letters etc. He's OK with phonics and he now has an EHCP but it has nothing about anything to help with writing, spelling etc. They just say "he's at nursery level".
We got a school login to Purple Mash a while back but my memory of it was that he couldn't use the keyboard and it doesn't have e.g. limited letter sets to help with spelling patterns.
We want to ask for something to be added to his EHCP and thought maybe Clicker 7 would be better.
We asked in Y1 if he couldn't do his spelling using e.g. magnetic letters but we were ignored.
I have also seen letter/grapheme dice, not sure if these would have limited use though.
Or something else?

DD2 uses Clicker Plus on the iPad - doesn't really limit letter sets but you can set up the keyboard options to have superkeys enabled where you tap on the area of the keyboard and it blows up that segment to make it easier to select what you want, or you can set up (or download) word banks for various topics. We tend to use it docked onto a physical keyboard just because I want DD2 to get confident typing eventually but you can just use it touch screen as well. Much much cheaper than PC clicker as well (think it was like £35 when I bought it) and obviously more portable. There are a few different levels of iPad Clicker out there depending on what level of support with writing is needed - we're at the level of basically a word processor with just text-based wordbanks - but DD2 is a cracking reader - just struggles physically forming letters.

The other one we use a lot is Snaptype Pro where you can photograph a worksheet and physically tap and type text anywhere on it. There are a few different accessible keyboards you can install on iPads as well to aid in this (we have one that's lower case letters in the open dyslexic font) - or you can use the voice dictation which is actually pretty decent bundled with iOS (it can work out what my daughter's saying and she has verbal dyspraxia as well as motor dyspraxia).

We also have done the very obvious low tech solution with the keyboard we use of bunging lower case stickers over the letters (or the even less-classy "write them on with sharpie" on the white keyed keyboard).

That Snaptype looks good, they never send home worksheets so it would be a case of trying to get school to use it.
We are still working on quite a few GPCs and have next to no spellings (due to not being able to write words - he can sound them out just fine).

Anyone else used these? I am feeling at a bit of a loss as to what Purple Mash does because of not having my login.

www.sutton.lincs.sch.uk/attachments/article/39/Purple%20Mash%20Letter%20for%20Parents.pdf - does that help with Purple Mash? (I don't know it myself)

www.cricksoft.com/uk/clicker/ipad/clicker-docs is what we use with DD2 - but there are the other "levels" of apps on there to have a look at as well. If you scroll down on that page there's an example of how their keyboard works.

Otherwise would voice recognition work for him just to be able to get his thoughts down? There's in-built features in most types of device now to use that but obviously it takes a bit of practice to get going with it - I was impressed though how far the technology's come along - it works pretty well with DD2's speech which isn't the most clear in the world (verbal dyspraxia) - I've had to disable the button temporarily or she'll go into completely bone idle mode!

We also have some success getting her to record the sentence she wants to produce and then she can play it back as many times as she wants to record it without having to keep it in her working memory. We just use some recordable postcards for that but anything works - I've used the memo function on my phone in a pinch.

DD2's not quite the same profile as your son - she can just about write but her letter formation and spacing is illegible on a bad day and very immature on a good day and the gap between what she can do on paper and what she knows is widening at a rate of knots so I tend to back off a lot at home and just let her record in alternative ways (and take the flack from the world's most disengaged teacher) so she's got some chance of success as she's starting to feel the difference between her and her peers.

Shouldn't have gone on the website - I'm now debating getting clicker books for them!

Thanks, we don't get homework (not sure if other children do and DS doesn't, or if it's just not a thing in his year - I actually suspect the latter) so it would be up to the school to do things with him.

We did try Purple Mash for drawing (he likes it), Maths (it went much too fast too quickly) and writing (he couldn't cope with the keyboard). If it has things like graduated spelling, word selection etc. it might work but I can't find out if it does.

Your child should have provision written out for every need, it sounds like they’ve done a sloppy job writing his plan

Primary computing teacher here. Def take a look at busythings.

malmontar yes we know!
Ifeel I'll look at that, thanks.