Back to School 2025
- Ready-to-Use Lesson Plans
- Lesson Demo Videos
- Teacher Feedback
Ready to start the year with lessons that get students thinking about people and the planet? This Back to School hub offers classroom-ready activities, top resources, and new videos that connect global challenges with meaningful learning. You’ll also find opportunities to be featured in our educator spotlights and to introduce your students to the World of 8 Billion video contest. Whatever you teach, you’ll find something to energize your classroom this fall.
Back to School Essentials
The most popular teaching resources from PopEd
Panther Hunt
Students act as panthers hunting for food in a model habitat to learn about dependence on resources and carrying capacity,…
Go To Resource
This powerful population growth video provides a fast-paced visual overview of human population trends from 1 CE to the present,... Read more »
An apple is used as a model to illustrate the limited farmland available on Earth.
Students conduct a census of their schoolmates’ households, graph their data, and then analyze the results to make a decision... Read more »
Updated Lesson Plans
Don't miss these newly updated materials that have current data and best practice strategies
Students use real-world data to construct and interpret population pyramids and discuss differences in population growth rates among several different... Read more »
Students use small manipulatives and a sampling method to estimate the population of flowers in a field. Students will be... Read more »
Students listen to The Lorax, discuss lessons from the book, and then play a cooperative board game to model replanting... Read more »
Lesson Plans in Action
Watch PopEd staff explain some of our favorite lessons in short videos
In this engaging classroom activity, students take part in two cooperative, noncompetitive physical games designed to highlight the challenges of... Read more »
This interactive social studies and geography activity has students take part in a push-pull migration simulation to identify factors driving... Read more »
Explore how cap-and-trade systems work with this engaging classroom simulation video. Designed for middle and high school students, the Cap... Read more »
Featured Back to School Projects and Articles
The new school brings the opportunity for new projects and approaches
This fall, we’re shining a spotlight on educators who bring PopEd lessons to life in their classrooms. Share your voice... Read more »
Your students are not just studying the world, they are living it. Climate chaos, wealth and education gaps, digital overload,... Read more »
The wait is over – the World of 8 Billion student video contest has officially opened for the 2025-2026 school... Read more »