Essential Skills Advantage- A Look at Their Site.

Note/Disclaimer: I was not compensated to write the following review. It is unbiased as I am in no way affiliated with the company. Please note all the content of the review is solely my opinion based on my experience with the website.

Recently I was given the opportunity to review Essential Skills Advantage curriculum and website. Created by teachers and educators the content of the site aligns with most curriculae. For more than ten years ESA has been in schools across North America. With over 300, 000 students using the site demand for their business to become more accessible has led them to create a fully optimized site for home educators. As an aside for my Canadian readers this program is being used in every Province and meets the educational standards in Canada. The company is also located right here in Toronto, Ontario. Good to know. But what can I tell you from my experience with their site?

 I found the site had terrific graphics. Often other educational sites are out of date feeling. So this was a nice change. Overall Essential Skills Advantage has a clean and well laid out site which makes a difference when the students are required to navigate it. After signing in the students can choose the assignments from a wide array of learning activities. Each grade level k-6 has literally thousands of activities for the student to practice and master. The reading comprehension passages were challenging enough for my two students. My daughter in particular appreciated the highlighted difficult words as she is still improving her reading skills. If she clicked on the highlighted word the computer would read the word for her.

 I really want to say if there was anything negative about this site it was that students had to sign in multiple times to access learning material. This slows things down especially if you imagine how often a student may misplace their sign in information. That said each activity is clearly laid out with small animation type rewards for accomplishing the work correctly. Some people may find that a distraction. However this site has had a high rate of success at engaging those who have autism spectrum disorders.

 Another really helpful feature is the parent portal that organizes all the lessons and activities for your child. Each lesson is tracked to see the overall progress your child is making in a particular area of study. If you still aren't impressed you can check the program out for yourself as sign up is free and gives you limited access to the site. Should you decide to sign up it's $9.99 a month per student. ESA can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and their Blog.