As part of The Schoolhouse Review Crew, I recently received online access to the Essay Rock Star Personal Statement Writing Course, $57, from Fortuigence to review.
The Essay Rock Star Personal Statement Online Writing Course is one unit in the full Essay Rock Star program available for $197. The course is ideal for ages 12-18. This course, Personal Statement, by itself, is equal to .125 high school English credits.
Fortuigence Essay Rock Star Personal Statement Online Writing Course Review
A personal statement essay, is just that, a personal statement. The student writes about themselves, who they are, and their beliefs. The student chooses what to include in the essay. Being able to write a personal statement is important when it comes time to fill out college applications. Even some jobs require the writing of a personal statement when applying.
With the Personal Statement online writing course, your student watches videos, then writes their assignments right on the Essay Rockstar website. I like that while the lessons are on video, that the lessons are also written on the same page, below the video. For the pages that don’t have a video, there is the written lesson, with the option to listen to an audio recording of the lesson. This allows your student to learn the way that they learn best, whether they are an audio or visual learner. If they want to listen to the audio while they read, they can do that, too. The classes are not scheduled, so your student can work at their own pace.
I used the Essay Rock Star Personal Statement online writing course with my 10th grade, 16 year old, daughter. She watched the videos, and then preferred to read the rest of the lesson herself, without the audio.
This homeschool writing course contains 7 lessons.
Course Introduction, Rubrics, and Pre-Assessment
Purpose and Description, Brainstorming
Organizing Ideas
Free Writing
Revision
Editing
Wrap Up
There are no prerequisites for this writing course. As far as I can tell from the website, you can do the Essay Rock Star writing courses in any order. So your student can easily move onto the rest of the courses after finishing Personal Statement, if you want them to.
Grading writing can be difficult for the homeschool teacher. I like that with Essay Rock Star, your student submits their writing to a teacher on the website. The teacher then reads their work, and sends them an email telling them some good things about their writing, or things that they need to work on. Then tells them when they can go on to the next lesson. In our experience, it takes 1-2 days for the teacher to read the work, and send an email.
I liked that the teacher didn’t let my daughter get away with doing less work than the assignment called for. For example, my daughter tried to skip writing an outline, and submitted a couple of paragraphs instead. While her writing was on topic, she tried to skip writing the outline first. Well, the teacher called her out on it, and she had to write the outline and submit it directly to the teacher via email. The teacher was nice about it, but clear in telling her to that she needed to complete the assignment, while saving her writing for another lesson.
With the Fortuigence Essay Rock Star Personal Statement online writing course, your student will learn the steps to writing a great essay. Then your student will apply those steps to writing a personal statement that they can later use for their college applications.
To see what other Schoolhouse Review Crew members have to say about Fortuigence Essay Rock Star courses, click the graphic below.