I came up with this basic idea yesterday as I was putting together my student workbook for the Love and Marriage unit. In this entire unit (Chapter 5 of the student’s guide) there are four key studies applicable to the following topics: Hormones and behaviour (Bio) Evolution and behaviour (Bio) Methods and Ethics (Evolution – Bio) Methods and Ethics (Hormones …
The Evolution of Attraction: Extra Resources
The study of attraction is definitely one of my favourite topics. Because there’s so much interesting research in this field, I thought I’d create this post to “dump” some extra resources that you might find interesting. WARNING FOR STUDENTS: Many of the “studies” in the videos below have been replicated for the purposes of TV entertainment. They are to be used …
Experiment Results: Is an evaluation distinguishable from a discussion?
After writing and sharing a recent post, I got some questions regarding the validity of my claim that a good evaluation and discussion are indistinguishable. So I decided to put it to the test by writing an example essay following the essay structure I advise for students and seeing if it was obvious which command term was being used. I gathered …
What is “an evolutionary explanation of behaviour?”
Offering an evolutionary explanation of behaviour can be more difficult than it first appears, so I want to show two ways to do this. I don’t teach evolution and behaviour as an individual topic in my course, as there are multiple behaviours that are applicable including fear, aggression (both in Criminology), attraction (Love and Marriage) and fear conditioning (PTSD). This …
Introduction to Psychology: Powerpoint (Chapter 1)
This powerpoint is designed to accompany the introduction unit plan and the student workbook. Feel free to amend or adapt as you wish. You can download the powerpoint HERE!! I added some comments to the slides as well to hopefully make it easier to see how to use them. For those teachers using IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide, you will hopefully …
Top 5 Tips for IB Psych’ Success
As a short review activity to begin my first Grade 12 (Year Two) class for the year I asked my students to come up with “5 Tips for IB Psych’ Success” that I could then share with the Grade 11 (Year One) students. I thought their list was pretty spot-on, so I thought I’d share it here. #1. Ask Questions …
What makes an experiment “quasi?”
One key characteristic of a quasi-experiment is that one or more conditions of a true experiment cannot be met. This often includes the fact that there is no random allocation to the treatment or control conditions in the experiment. So if there is no random allocation, but there is still an IV hypothesized to have an effect on a DV, the …
Key Studies: The effects of mindfulness and meditation on the brain (Desbordes et al. 2012, and Lazar et al. 2005)
These two studies can be used to discuss: The use of technological techniques Neuroplasticity Experimental methods (quasi and true experiments) to study: The brain cognitive processes Lazar et al. (2005) There have been numerous studies that have compared the brains of Tibetan monks who have thousands of hours of practice in meditation with normal controls. These studies regularly show …
Lesson Idea: Reviewing Year One
Updated, Aug 2020 After two months of summer my students have had every chance to forget almost everything we did in year one. Even when I sit down to my desk to plan the second year I struggle to think what we’ve already covered. For this reason I like to spend the entire first lesson on reviewing what we did …
Unit Plan: Introduction to Psychology
This unit plan is for a ten lesson, “Introduction to Psychology” unit. Most of the lesson ideas in this plan have already been posted on this blog. As always, I welcome feedback so please feel free to leave a comment. You can download my Introduction to Psychology Unit Plan HERE!!!! This unit is also designed to work alongside the student …
Lesson Idea: Review Intro to Psych w/ KAHOOT
I love Kahoot, as most teachers do. It’s a great way to review “knowledge,” especially key terms. One of the features I like about Kahoot is that it actually lets you gather some good formative data. If you make sure students use real names (or some other identification so that you know who is who), you can save the results …
Lesson Idea: What do psychologists study?
I like to take my introduction to psychology quite slowly. On the very first lesson I get students to think about the definition of psychology and what they actually study by doing the following activity. There is space for students to write notes on this activity in their workbooks. Step One: Students begin working with a partner and write as …
Student Workbook (First Draft): Introduction to Psychology Unit
I began for the first time last year trialing and creating student workbooks for each of my units. The feedback from students was positive, so I’m in the process of making workbooks that accompany all my units available for teachers. What I like about hard copy workbooks for students is that all their notes and key information is in the …
Lesson Idea: Introduction to Psychology JEOPARDY
The content of this jeopardy is based on Chapter One of “IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide” At the end of a unit or after a few topics where there’s lots of content to review, I LOVE making a Jeopardy game for students to play in small groups. In my experience jeopardylabs has the easiest and most effective software to use. Here’s …
How to learn anything in three simple steps!
I devised this three-step approach to learning for my students last year during exam revision. Find what you need to know Find your knowledge gaps Fill your knowledge gaps This approach helps me articulate to my students the process of learning, which also helps me discuss their progress during assigned revision times. The language of this post is how I would …
Lesson Idea: Understanding conclusions from studies
For years I underestimated just how complex psychology studies are at first glance for brand new IB Psychology students, so I’ve made a deliberate effort in my new course to have a real gradual introduction into studies. For this activity, I like to have students in groups of three to four. They are given four studies from the criminology unit …
Lesson Idea: Thinking critically about correlations
When looking at correlational studies and quasi-experiments it’s important, I think, to allow students to make the obvious conclusion first, which is generally one of causation. But a big part of the IB Psychology course is helping them to understand the mantra: correlation does not mean causation. This activity idea works well as a follow-up to the other activity about causation …
Lesson Idea: Explaining the difference between causation and correlation
This lesson works well with in the introductory unit, topic 1.2, lesson (d) “correlation.” The following TED Talk by Adam Grant is really interesting for a number of reasons and it’s well worth a watch. I like to show students the short segment from 8:25 to 10:30 where he talks about how mozilla firefox and google chrome browser users outperform …
Why we should be “teaching to the test”
This post carries on a rant I had on facebook recently in response to hoity-toity comments about how we shouldn’t be “teaching to the test” and should just focus on teaching psychology to our students. Personally, I think this is a bollocks argument for a number of reasons. For one, as I’ve said before, if you’re not teaching to the …
Demand characteristics: What are they REALLY?
I was reading another research methods chapter in a new psychology textbook the other day and despite it’s excellent content in research methodology, it still (I think) mis-defined demand characteristics. The most common definition of demand characteristics out there goes something like, “demand characteristics are when participants are aware of the aim of the research and change their behaviour in a …
Lesson Idea: Consolidate learning with three levels of recap questions
If you like the CHACER lesson structure, or even if you’re just after a new recapping idea for the start of lessons, I like this activity because like all of my favourites: it takes minimal preparation has maximum student engagement it’s differentiated and relevant and it gives me some basic data on student progress The basic premise is that in …
Mr. Dixon’s experiences with PTSD
The purpose of this post is to make the symptoms and experiences of PTSD a little more real and concrete for students to understand. Often when we talk about symptoms of psychological disorders (e.g. PTSD) we have to be abstract because we’re covering such a wide range of traumas, experiences and symptoms. While I never had PTSD, I did experience …
Teaching Thematically Made Simple
Yesterday I wrote about why I think adopting a linear approach is a bad idea. I think most teachers agree that combining the core and the options makes sense for so many reasons, but some are hesitant because it seems too daunting. They also think it might mean throwing out all their old stuff and starting again. In this post …
5 reasons why the linear approach is a bad idea!
Planning an IB Psychology course can be stressful, even for the most experienced teachers. It’s not surprise then that it can also be incredibly daunting for new teachers. One of your sources of stress may be thinking about which approach to take: do I teach linear or thematic? In this post I’ll outline five reasons why I think the linear …
Thematic? Holistic? Integrated? What do they all mean?
If you’ve been following the conversations on the OCC and facebook forums, you’ve probably read, seen and heard people discussing approaches to teaching IB Psychology using terms like holistic, thematic and integrated. You might have even heard these terms on a workshop. For new teachers, this might be quite confusing, so in this post I’ll just quickly clarify what these …