Back to School 2026
- Fresh ideas
- Ready-to-use lessons
- Real-world learning
Start the school year with free, classroom-ready resources that get students thinking critically about population, people, and our changing world. Whatever you teach, find resources to spark curiosity and get students engaged.
Start With a Classroom Favorite
Popular PopEd activities to get students talking, moving, collaborating, and thinking.
Students participate in a “push/pull” simulation to identify reasons people migrate from one place to another and analyze the similarities... Read more »
Students compare the life cycle stages of four everyday products in order to hypothesize which item has the lowest environmental... Read more »
Students experience the changing pace of population growth by actively simulating the Earth’s population growth over a 500-year span. Students... Read more »
New & Updated for 2026
Fresh resources to add to your lesson plans this fall.
Popular PopEd lessons with scaffolding for ELL/MLL in inclusive, of ESOL, classrooms. Lesson plans are topic-forward with both content objectives and language objectives.
Set of 13 lesson plans and 6 readings on U.S. population history and trends.
Explores how the amount of carbon emitted and vulnerability to climate-related risks varies between countries.
World of 8 Billion video contest
The student contest challenges students to create a short video that connects human population growth with one other global topic, and offer their idea for a sustainable solution.
Go To ResourceSee a Lesson Plan in Action
Not sure how an activity works? Watch a quick walkthrough before trying it with your students.
In Go Fish!, students in grades K‑2 engage in a hands‑on resource distribution simulation where they share bowls of goldfish... Read more »
Students begin by observing a brief but powerful demonstration of how Earth’s freshwater is distributed across the globe. They then... Read more »
In this powerful environmental science and civics role-playing activity, students simulate a city council meeting to determine the location for... Read more »
Teacher Tips and Ideas
Fun ideas and practical strategies for the classroom.
Gen Z is the most globally aware generation in history. So what’s standing between awareness and action? In classrooms across... Read more »
Do you want to try place-based learning in your classroom, but don’t know where to start? You don’t have to... Read more »
As 2025 comes to a close, let’s take a look at which PopEd resources teachers like you found most useful.... Read more »