Here’s an iPad app that enables young learners and struggling writers to take their first steps to independent writing. It provides students with clusters of words, phrases, and/or pictures to help them build coherent text. It’s quick and easy to set up a sequence of grids for students, arranging words and phrases into clusters as you go. You get ready-made Connect Sets from Crick Software’s LearningGrids site, which is fully accessible from within the app. For additional support, you can add a picture to any cell in your grid – and you can choose from over 2,500 searchable curriculum pictures, select from your own collection or from your photo library, or snap them right in with the iPad camera. As children write, each picture goes into the document too, helping them to read back what they have written. As each sentence is completed, it is spoken aloud, helping learners to review and correct what they’ve written. And learners can listen to words and phrases in the grid before using them, to help them choose how they want to convey their ideas. Pretty cool, have a closer look.