BetterRhetor desires to better prepare students for college. They have created College-Ready Writing Essentials™ to equip high school juniors and seniors with the writing skills they need to avoid taking remedial courses and be successful in their college classes. I recently had an opportunity to use and review College-Ready Writing Essentials™. Full Package.
College-Ready Writing Essentials™ Full Package is an online course that can be accessed on a computer or mobile device. Upon completing the course your student will be able to write a thorough, well though out, research based, persuasive essay. It has 25 lessons split up into 5 sections:
Overview (1 lesson)
Planning (10 lessons) - The planning section covers task, audience, purpose, selecting and researching a topic, reading perceptively, defining an issue, mapping perspectives, taking a position, outlining your essay and peer reviews.
Drafting (8 lessons)- In the drafting section covers the parts of an essay: introduction, body, and conclusion, and peer reviews.
Revising (4 lessons)- Revising discusses self review and peer reviews.
Finalizing (2 lessons) Finalizing discusses finalizing your essay and college ready writing.
There is also a Resources section that has a pdf of Key Terms and a Bonus Guide to Culture of College Academics pdf.
The lessons are written to the student and students are able to work at their own pace. There are worksheets that need to be printed out for each lessons and examples are included. The length of the reading varies. Once the student has an account and logs in the course tracks which lessons they have completed. You can easily go back to previous lessons if there is something you would like to review.
I have been working my way through the course to see if this would be a good fit for my almost 16 year old son. One of the first challenges I had was logging in. I could not find a log in button anywhere on the site. So it took me awhile and clicking through several things to be able to figure it out. Once I was able to get logged in the navigation of the actual course was very easy. I was also able to access the course on my phone and it kept track of where I was in the course even with using different devices. I loved the ability to read on my phone though I did have to switch back to the computer to print the worksheets out.
Writing is such an important part of succeeding in college and students need to be able to communicate well to be successful in life. I loved when I read this in one of the lessons " Learning to think carefully and communicate persuasively is not merely an academic exercise to get you through a school assignment ;it is essential to your agency- that is, your capacity for power and impact in the world." The College-Ready Writing Essentials™ will prepare your student for any college level writing they have to do. It is a challenging course. The lessons are written to the student, but there is a lot to digest in each lesson. Plenty of models and examples are included. The course takes the student through the thinking and planning process into the actual writing and revising. They will learn to think deeply and explain their reasoning well to their audience.
Because it is challenging and may take several days to go through one lesson. There were several lessons I completed in one day and moved right on to the next and others I really had to think through and took several days on. Students will definitely be prepared for college level work after completing the course.
BetterRhetor offers three different packages of their course. You can try it out with the Free Mini Course, enroll in the Full Package for $49 or purchase the Premium Package which includes additional exercises and personalized feedback from Dr. Bryant for $99.
To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!
are you happy you tested it out?
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