Scholastic is one of the old-school companies that have been around for over a century. They first appeared in 1920, when the Western Pennsylvania Scholastic was published for the first time. Since then, they’ve grown as a company, and today, they offer top-quality books and teaching tools.
In 2017, they launched Scholastic Teachables, a subdomain that offers teaching materials for students from pre-K to grade 8.
Let’s dive into an unbiased review of the platform and explore some of the alternative options for finding top-quality teaching resources for your needs.
Main Benefits of Scholastic Teachables
Scholastic Teachables is a platform with an easy-to-use navigational system, and you’ll have no trouble finding what you need. You can combine various filters to show only the results you’re interested in. You can filter the results by:
- Grade
- Subject
- The Common Core standards
- Material type
- Theme
- Genre
Aside from having a user-friendly UI, you’ll enjoy using Scholastic Teachables for its:
- Variety of materials
- Mini-books
The Variety of Materials
Scholastic Teachables offers over 30,000 materials for pre-K and K-8 students. They don’t focus only on a single type of material but offer 10+ different kinds, including:
- Assessments
- Crafts
- Classroom management tools
- Flash cards
- Ebooks
- Games
- Lesson plans
The materials that stand out are their differentiation collections. With over 200 of them, these collections include sets of printables on the same topic that are adjusted to students of different learning levels.
The Mini-Books
Mini-books are specially adapted foldable books for children. When you print a mini-book, it’ll be one or two sheets of paper. Your children or students will be able to color the pictures and then cut and staple the paper together to put the pages in order.
It’s a great way to combine crafting and (independent or guided) reading, leaving the children feeling as if the mini-book is their own creation.
Scholastic Teachables Pricing
If you want to use Scholastic Teachables’ materials, you’ll need to create an account and subscribe. Once you do that, you’ll gain unlimited access to their materials. Note that this refers only to the Scholastic Teachables subdomain—the subscription doesn’t cover Scholastic books.
The price of the subscription is $59.99 per year, and they offer a 30-day trial. You can visit the website often to see if they’re offering a discount, as in the image above.
Scholastic Teachables combines the subscription and pay-per-item model, as some of the materials are available for a fixed price if you don’t want to sign up. This refers to a limited number of resources only.
Why You Should Consider Teach Simple
Teach Simple is another subscription-based source of high-quality teaching materials. The difference is that, unlike Scholastic Teachables, our platform offers free materials, as well as thousands of materials for students in high school.
You can use Teach Simple to get access to:
- Worksheets
- Flash cards
- Games
- Projects
- Assessments
- Curriculums
- Lesson plans
You can register for free with a 30-day trial and explore all our resources without any restrictions.
How Teach Simple Works
When you sign up for Teach Simple, you’ll gain access to thousands of teaching materials that will cover every aspect of your teaching, from planning your lesson and assessing your students to handing out homework and giving books they can read in their spare time.
All of our materials are created by teachers who know the trade and have been in the classroom for years. Before we publish any product, other teachers review it to make sure it meets government standards and our quality requirements.
When you join Teach Simple, you won’t have to rely on your luck and hope that the money you spend on each product is money well spent. You can download anything that catches your eye, and you won’t have to take out your credit card every time you do it.
Scholastic Teachables vs. Teach Simple
Check out the table to see what Teach Simple offers that Scholastic Teachables lacks and vice versa:
What the Source Offers | Scholastic Teachables | Teach Simple |
Free materials | ✗ | ✓ |
Charge per download | ✓ | ✗ |
Subscription fee | ✓ | ✓ |
Free trial | ✓ | ✓ |
Ebooks and audiobooks | ✓ | ✓ |
Flash cards | ✓ | ✓ |
10+ teaching material types | ✓ | ✓ |
Materials for high school students | ✗ | ✓ |
Overall Impression
As part of a household name for children’s books, Scholastic Teachables doesn’t disappoint. They offer 30,000+ materials for students from pre-K to middle school, including the mini-books that help children improve their reading skills and show their creativity.
They are a subscription-based source, but they also have a charge-per-product model for some of their materials, meaning you’ll need to pay the full price for an item before you can check it out and see what it’s all about.
With Teach Simple, you can download books and other materials and see if they check your boxes without breaking the bank. You can always rely on products created by our experienced teachers.
Other Scholastic Teachables Alternatives
Not sure Scholastic Teachables 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: