You are bound to come across KS 3-5 students who struggle with writing. If they are allowed to type, you can still find out what they have learnt and they will be able to publish their work neatly.

You will want to help them speed up typing: Doorway Online is a good website for practicing typing  http://www.doorwayonline.org.uk/typing/texttype2/ Some practice each day,  will help to build up speed and possibly wrist strength.

Your  pupil could use a voice recorder to make notes about writing s/he is about to do. Or s/he can make voice notes about instructions from a teacher.  Some pupils could use the voice recorder facility on their ‘phone rather than buy any special equipment. Whist we are considering mobile phones, could your student dictate work onto a ‘phone and then email it to the computer?

Read Write TextHelp https://www.texthelp.com/en-gb/products/read-write/  is a possible solution too, £150 for an annual licence. It offers :

• Hear web pages and documents read aloud to improve reading comprehension, with choice of natural voices
• Understand unfamiliar words with text and picture dictionaries
• Develop writing skills with word prediction
• Support independent student research with valuable study skills tools
• Offers bilingual support for a growing number of languages

Maybe word processing software that allows the user to type words as well as letters (i.e. has word banks and word predictor) could lessen the amount of typing…. DocsPlus from Cricksoft    http://www.cricksoft.com/uk/docsplus  (This also comes as an app for iPads and for Chromebooks)  (£250 for one computer licence, £30 for an app on iPad or Chromebook)

Also (in the London are)  https://www.lgfl.net/learning-resources/summary-page/wordq-speakq WordQ SpeakQ is free to schools who use the LGFL and, whilst not as “good to look at” as DocsPlus, offers word prediction and topic banks.

Otherwise Speech to Text software may be useful if your student speaks clearly and works in a quiet space s/he could dictate some work onto the computer. Dragon “Naturally Speaking”  http://www.software4students.co.uk/products/dragon-naturally-speaking-13-home-edition costs about £75 and is reviewed well. (WordQ SpeakQ also offers a speech to text tool.)

Most machines with Windows OS will offer speech recognition for controlling the computer and also for dictation.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/14213/windows-how-to-use-speech-recognition

To dictate a document with the Windows 7 speech recognition feature:

1. Start the speech recognition feature and click on the microphone icon on the speech recognition control to enter listening mode.
2. Say “Open” followed by the name of the word processing program you will be using.
3. Start your dictation.

If using Google docs and Chrome, he would be able to use Google Voice

Start voice typing in a document

1. Check that your microphone works.
2. Open a document in Google Docs with a Chrome browser.
3. Click Tools Voice typing. …
4. When you’re ready to speak, click the microphone.
5. Speak clearly, at a normal volume and pace.