Teaching Communities Worldwide
In 2010, Jonathan and Susie Seaton, a married couple from Sheffield, United Kingdom, founded Twinkl. What started as a website to help out teachers in England grew to become a platform used in teaching communities worldwide with over 200 countries millions of educators visit Twinkl globally with thousands of resources specially tailored for the United States teachers.
Today, the platform boasts hundreds of thousands of teaching materials you you can get instant access to for a subscription fee. We’ve reviewed the platform to give you a breakdown of their services, assessment materials, usefulness for lesson planning, and online educational games as well as show you whether there’s a better alternative for high-quality teaching materials.
Table of Contents
- Teaching Communities Worldwide
- Twinkl Pricing
- What Makes Teach Simple a Better Alternative to Twinkl
- How Teach Simple Works
- Twinkl.com Vs. Teach Simple
- Overall Impression
- Other Twinkl Alternatives
Twinkl claims to have over 900,000 teaching materials on its platform, but that number goes down drastically when you start looking for state-specific ones. Before you start to browse their library, make sure to select USA Resources with curriculum aligned teaching materials for Common Core standards and curriculums used in the States.
The two best features Twinkl has to offer include:
- Extensive library of teaching materials
- Twinkl Create
Extensive Library of Teaching Materials
Even when you select to show only the twinkl website resources they made for U.S. teachers, you’ll find thousands of products on the Twinkl platform. The Twinkl resources cover grades from pre-K to sixth grade and the following topics:
- English
- ESL
- Social studies
- Classroom management
- Special education
- Christian education
- World languages
- Classroom management
- Display materials
You can use Twinkl to find ebooks, worksheets, games, flash cards, crafts, and posters
Twinkl.com Create
The new features of the Twinkl app, Twinkl Create allows you to make your own materials easily using their editing tool made specifically for this purpose. You can use Twinkl Create to make buntings, banners, flash cards, worksheets, Roll and Read games, storyboards, and a few other types of materials.
Twinkl Pricing
Twinkl is a subscription-based service, which is a welcome change from the majority of teaching sources that charge you per download and make you spend your money every time you want to get something for your class. The problem with the Twinkl app’s pricing model is that it’s misleading.
The first issue is that they display false prices. For example, they claim Ultimate membership starts from $10.99. When you make an account, however, and choose the Ultimate tier, you’ll see the price is actually higher. The license covers materials used in an educational context.
Another problem is that they claim “unlimited downloads,” but that is not the case. In their terminology, “unlimited downloads” means “unlimited access to resources,” while you can download only a selected number of saved resources.
According to their terms and conditions, they can deactivate your account if you make too many downloads, but they don’t specify how many free resources you’re allowed to download.
Additionally, since there are three tiers of memberships, some resources are not available for Core and Extra members. You don’t have an option to search only for resources available at your tier.
What Makes Teach Simple a Better Alternative to Twinkl
Teach Simple, while also being a convenient subscription-based source, offers a wider selection of materials, which includes all students (grades pre-K to 12) and a wider variety of material types and recommended resources, such as:
- Lesson plans
- Games
- Worksheets
- Audiobooks and ebooks
- Graphics
- Projects
- Curriculums
- Flash cards
- Assessment materials
Another advantage of using Teach Simple is that there is only one membership tier that grants you instant access to all the available materials. sign up for Teach Simple, you’ll receive unlimited downloads in the true sense of the word—there are no restrictions about how many resources you can download.
How Teach Simple Works
Teach Simple uploads materials from its contributors, and the contributors are experienced teachers only. Other teachers always review the products to ensure their quality and alignment with the Common Core or another country-specific standard. When you download a product, you can rest assured you’ll get a material that’s usable in your classroom and that comes from someone who knows what it takes to engage children and inspire learners to get them motivated to learn.
Register for Teach Simple for free using our trial. During the trial, you get instant access to unlimited downloads without spending a cent or making any payment obligations in the future.
Twinkl.com Vs. Teach Simple
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the two sources:
What the Source Offers | Twinkl | Teach Simple |
Free materials | ✓ | ✓ |
Materials made and reviewed by qualified teachers | ✓ | ✓ |
Thousands of high-quality teaching materials | ✓ | ✓ |
Subscription-based | ✓ | ✓ |
Free trial | ✗ | ✓ |
All materials for U.S. teachers and homeschool parents | ✗ | ✓ |
Access to all products for every member | ✗ | ✓ |
Unlimited downloads | ✗ | ✓ |
10+ different types of materials | ✗ | ✓ |
Materials for high school students | ✗ | ✓ |
Overall Impression
Twinkl offers hundreds of thousands of resources for teachers from all over the world, with resources dedicated to U.S. teachers as well. It has a subscription-based model, which is superior to charging per download, but they’ve introduced tiers and don’t offer unlimited downloads despite claiming so.
You’ll enjoy their Twinkl Create feature if you want to create your own resources for free.
If you don’t want to worry about making the mistake of using a resource that’s not according to the United States’ standards and don’t want to fall for false advertising when it comes to the number of downloads you pay for, you should visit Teach Simple. With Teach Simple, you’ll get a wider variety of material types, all aligned to the needs of the educators both in the U.S. and beyond.
Other Twinkl Alternatives
Not sure Twinkl is the right choice for you? We’ve reviewed many other similar platforms that teachers can use to find inspiration for their classes—here are our favorites:
- Scholastic Teachables
- Twinkl
- EasyTeacherWorksheets.com
- Etsy
- We Are Teachers
- Math Worksheets 4 Kids
- K5 Learning
- All Kids Network
- DadsWorksheets.com
- Learning Resources
- 123 Homeschool 4 Me
- Really Good Stuff
- Super Teacher Worksheets
- Kindergarten Worksheets and Games
- Amazon Ignite
- Teachers Pay Teachers
- Education.com
- Tes