2025 Earth Day Activities for High School Students
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Provided by: Population Education|Published on: April 4, 2025
Lesson PlansScientist Reviewed
9101112AP
Scientist Reviewed This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Synopsis
- Celebrate Earth Day with your high school students using these four lesson plans and two readings about how we produce, use, waste, and need energy.
- Students research an energy-related topic, take on the role of a community member in Monrovia, Liberia, to investigate the intersections between poverty and climate change impacts, play a game to analyze the pros and cons of cap and trade as a policy, identify factors of importance in a sustainable community and develop models to measure those factors, read about different energy sources to better understand our energy future, and read a case study about solar energy use in Germany.
Subjects: Civics, English Language Arts, Engineering
Authors: Population Education
Region: Africa, North America, United States
Languages: English
Teaching Materials
Positives
- These lessons have a global perspective and focus on justice.
- The lessons include discussion questions with answers to prompt rich conversation with your students.
Prerequisites
- Teacher needs to submit a short questionnaire to download the packet. The download is free.
- Students will need some background in climate change. This resource can be used if needed.
- Learning about the effects of climate change can be emotionally charged for students. This educator's guide on climate emotions can help you have these conversations with your students.
- The links to ONE and Practical Action in Lesson 2, Lighting Up Lives, are broken.
- In Lesson 3, Cap and Trade Game, the directions tell the teacher to ask students to identify the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on a graph, leading them to say electricity. This answer is incorrect, and teachers will need to have students to identify the second largest source to lead into the conversation about conserving electricity.
Differentiation & Implementation
- The lesson plans have numerous links to suggested resources as well as follow-up activities to extend learning.
- To extend learning about environmental justice, these resources can be used.
- To extend learning about renewable energy, this resource can be used.
- Check out our Earth Month calendar and the Earth Month educator's guide for high school for more ideas on what to teach around Earth Day.
This resource features four lessons and two readings focused on renewable energy and climate change. All figures have sources cited, and the text has citations in footnotes throughout. The focus is placed on engaging students with sources and ensuring that they understand the bias in many industry sources. This resource highlights energy equity alongside climate concerns and is recommended for teaching.
Teaching Tips
Standards
Resource Type and Format
About the Partner Provider
Population Education
Population Education provides K-12 teachers with innovative, hands-on lesson plans and professional development to teach about human population growth and its effects on the environment and human well-being. Human population has grown from 1 billion to 8 billion in just over 200 years, so it is critical to examine human impacts on wildlife, climate, and natural resources while working toward equality and justice for the world’s people. Through memorable, standards-aligned classroom activities like simulations, cooperative challenges, and debate, Population Education inspires students to tackle a variety of real-world problems and to become positively engaged in their communities as the next generation of leaders and policy makers.
Scientist Reviewed
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Our review process ensures that every resource in our library reflects the current state of climate science.
Learn about our review process →
