Today more than 80 percent of teachers in the U.S. turn to TpT to get the instructional materials they need. In fact, in a recent survey, we found that teachers are using TpT to meet unique student needs, and they’re doing it often, with nearly 70 percent of respondents reporting that they use resources from TpT to differentiate instruction at least once a week.
We also heard from our community that, with more than 4 million resources on TpT, it can sometimes be tough to pinpoint precisely which resources will work for you and your classroom — and that more detailed ratings & reviews would help. For example, over 50 percent of the reviews were five words or fewer and often said something like, “Great resource” which we know doesn’t provide enough information to help you decide if something will meet your needs.
We’re excited to announce a few updates we’ve made to the Ratings & Reviews system on TpT that will further help you find the right resources when you need them most. These updates enable you to provide more specific reviews about dimensions of quality that we know are so important — such as standards alignment, engagement, and appropriate level of difficulty to name a few. This will, in turn, help other educators determine whether a resource will be a good fit for them and their students. Here’s a quick look at what’s new:
1. More Detailed Questions
We’ve updated the questions to ask for more specific information regarding what grade(s) you used the resource with, how engaging it was on a scale of one to five, and, if applicable, how aligned it was to the tagged standards such as Common Core State Standards. There’s also a space to leave an open-ended review so you can share more in-depth details about your experience.
2. Resource Usage Required
To make sure that you have the opportunity to use the resource before reviewing it, you won’t be able to leave a review until 24 hours have passed from the time you downloaded the resource. This helps to ensure reviews reflect teachers’ first-hand experience using the resource, and in turn, provide more value for other educators.
3. Five-Star Reviews
In order to allow teachers to leave more precise reviews, we’ve switched from a four-star rating system to a standard five-star system. Now, you can let other educators know that a resource was truly exceptional by leaving a five-star rating.
Looking Ahead
We’re already seeing some great results and feedback from the TpT community since rolling this out. For example, the median review length has almost doubled and reviews with more than five words jumped from just 47% of all reviews to 71%.
Given the size of TpT’s community, we expect to collect over 800,000 reviews on resources just this month. With this information, we’ll do an even better job surfacing our best resources — helping you find the materials you need, whenever you need them.
Don’t forget! You can earn TpT credits by leaving reviews on paid resources that you’ve used. You can apply these credits to future purchases on TpT. Ready to get started? Leave a review.