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 …
Lesson idea: Consolidate learning with a quick game of “Key Term Tennis”
Credit for the “Key Term Tennis” activity (originally called “Verbal Tennis” goes to the late, great Paul Ginnis. I highly recommend his book, “The Teacher’s Toolkit” (Find it on amazon here). It’s filled with excellent activity ideas. At ThemEd we’re all about the practicalities of teaching, as the last thing education needs is more theory. I’ve always been a fan …
Lesson Idea: Key Terms Traffic Lights
One of the biggest challenges for many IB Psychology students is the massive amount of new vocabulary. At ThemED we’ve tried to help with this by having a full, 10 page-400+ key term glossary in our student guide textbook. But this alone won’t be enough, so one basic idea I like is to use what I call a “key terms …
Key Study: Testosterone and aggression in rats (Albert et al. 1986)
The material here was originally published in IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide. Males are more aggressive than females in almost every species. Why is this? One possible reason could be in the influence of the male sex hormone, testosterone. Testosterone is produced in the testes of males, which could be why males are more aggressive than females. While it is also …
Key Study: Serotonin, tryptophan and the brain (Passamonti et al., 2012)
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that has been correlated with numerous behaviours, including impulsive aggression, antisocial behaviour and violence. One reason for this correlation could be the effect that depleted serotonin levels could have on important parts of the brain when we perceive emotional stimuli. To test the effects of serotonin depletion on the brain, Passamonti et al. (2012) asked one …
There’s no difference between “evaluate” and “discuss.”
Before I explain why an evaluation and a discussion in a student’s IB Psychology exam answer would look exactly the same, I should first mention that Christos Halkiopoulos was aware of this long before I was and has been saying this for quite some time. It was only recently when I gave this some more thought that I realized I …
Lesson Idea: Understanding IVs and DVs
This lesson accompanies section 1.2(a) in IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide. Hook As a class, watch this clip from the BC documentary “Human Instincts” to show the replication of the MHC gene study. After this, I like to use the introduction slideshow to explain the definitions of an IV and a DV and how they were shown in this particular study …
What is a pheromone?
A pheromone is a chemical messenger that is passed from one individual to another which has an effect on the receiving individual. One technical definition offered for pheromones is that they are “…substances which are secreted to the outside by an individual and received by a second individual of the same species, in which they release a specific reaction, for example, …
What is “inattentional blindess?”
This is the first in a series of short posts that I’ll write that aim to quickly outline key concepts in psychology. Inattentional blindness is the name given to the phenomenon of not being able to see or perceive a visual stimulus, even when it’s right in front of our visual field because our attention is diverted elsewhere. This was famously …
Travis’ IB Psychology Course Outline – Old Syllabus
You can see more outlines on these two posts: IB Psychology HL in <180 Hours IB Psychology SL in <125 Hours Download my course outline here. You can also find other teachers’ outlines that have been posted on our facebook group for teachers. Feel free to post any questions about this outline or my course. Travis’ IB Psychology Course Outline …
Lesson Idea: The language of generalizations
This activity works well with lesson (b) (Studying Individuals) in the first topic in the introduction in IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide. It will be part of the second lesson in my course. Aim One of the aims of this lesson is to introduce students to the idea of how psychological studies need to make generalizations across groups of people, …
Lesson Idea: Brain dumping on psychology
Aim: There are a few purposes for this activity, which are outlined below. I do this activity in Unit 1: Topic 1: Introduction to Psychology. Activity: On the very first day of IB Psychology, I always give students a blank A3 piece of paper that just has the word “psychology” in the very middle (here’s the document: Brain Dump Psychology). Before …
Lesson Idea: Introducing Researcher Bias
Overview This lesson works well in the introductory unit after students have been introduced to the idea of the scientific approach in psychology (see other lesson idea here). Aim The aim of this lesson is to introduce students to the process of thinking critically about research methodology and how researcher bias may influence “research.” Hook The following video produced by …