2026-27 BACK TO SCHOOL UPDATES!

BrainPOP's Back to School 2026 lineup introduces an exciting suite of features designed to deepen classroom engagement, support independent practice, and streamline lesson planning. This school year’s major updates include the launch of Unplugged Activities for device-free collaboration, an expanded AI Literacy Collection developed with Digital Promise, and real-time interactive quizzing via Live Mode. Additionally, the platform is rolling out Hints and Rationales within quizzes to guide stuck students, alongside a brand-new Bookmarks feature arriving in August 2026 to help teachers curate and instantly access their favorite resources.

Check out the full 2026-27 back-to-school updates from BrainPop! We've highlighted some of our favorite updates below: 

Live Mode

• Live Mode is an interactive quiz experience that lets teachers lead the whole class through BrainPOP questions together, in real time.
• The questions are built from the movie content, so Live Mode isn't a separate assessment layer teachers have to build. It's already there, already connected to what students just watched, ready to run.

New Movies, Every Month

• BrainPOP adds new topics every month—expanding the library of topics teachers can use to build background knowledge, introduce new concepts, and create shared understanding across every subject.
• For example, check out the June 2026 and July 2026 Movie Roundup

Hints and Rationales

• Hints and Rationales are built-in supports that appear inside BrainPOP quizzes—helping students work through a question when they're stuck and understand why an answer is correct.
• As you can see in the example below, hints give students a nudge in the right direction without giving the answer away. 

Unplugged Activities

• Unplugged Activities are low-prep, offline learning experiences that turn a BrainPOP movie into discussion, collaboration, and interactive thinking—no devices required. Use them to introduce the topic before the movie, or deepen understanding after the movie.
• Check out the example below! Before the movie, ask students to predict the meaning of the word "pharaoh" by drawing a home for a powerful leader. This piques their curiosity—then during the movie, they'll pay extra special attention when pharaohs are introduced!

Reminder Teachers - Don't miss out BrainPop classroom swag!

• Brighten and organize your classroom with these free, time-saving printables for weekly planning, building routines, and just for fun!
• Download stickers, posters, game templates and much more!

Information for this blog post is provided by our partners at BrainPop and was a summary of the full Back to School 2026 with BrainPOP from Summer 2026.

Get a walkthrough from Deb Rayow, Vice President of Learning and Content Strategy at BrainPOP, in this recording.