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 …
Travis’ IB Psychology Course Outline – New 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 …
Why every lesson should have a guiding question.
The answer to this will probably seem pretty obvious, but there’s a little more to an effective guiding question than meets the eye. I like to keep my planning simple and a good guiding question is just one way I try to do less, but do it better. What is a guiding question? In the themantic model of curriculum design, …
5 reasons to be wary of choosing the development option
This post was originally called: “5 reasons why I wouldn’t choose the development option,” but I’ve changed it so it’s less scary for those teachers who are keen on the option. If you’re contemplating which options to go for in the new course, I personally wouldn’t be rushing into choosing development as one of them. I’ve only recently come to see just …
5 reasons why I think “depth” is better than “breadth” in IB Psychology.
When planning to teach (or study) individual topics in the new IB Psychology course, you might find yourself faced with the question: do I go for depth or breadth? For example, should you teach (or learn) three effects of hormones on behaviour, or just one? The new course has supposedly been designed to allow the choice of either approach. However, in …
What does “breadth or depth” mean?
This post accompanies my other post about why I think it’s better to aim for depth over breadth in IB Psychology. What is depth? Depth refers to studying a topic by looking at only one or two examples. Examples Studying “Biases in thinking and decision making” by focusing only one on example, e.g., confirmation bias. Studying the effects of one …
“How many studies do I need?”
By far the two most common questions IB Psychology teachers (and students) ask are: Is this a good EE question? and… How many studies do I need? You can read my answer to the first question about EEs here. In this post I want to address the second question in two ways. First the short answer, that I know many people …
Teaching Tip: How to cut content and increase understanding
When it’s time to teach the new course, if you’re a bit savvy in your curriculum design you can exploit overlaps, cut content, and best of all – enhance student understanding of psychology. How do we do all this? In this post I’ll walk you through some helpful hints and show you the value of constructing relationship chains. Keeping it Simple …
IB Psychology (HL) in less than 180 hours!
By teaching the course holistically and integrating the core and options, it’s possible to teach the IB Psychology course content in more depth and in less time. Below you can see how I intend on teaching my HL Psychology class in less than 180 hours with the help of my textbook, IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide. What I should point out …
IB Psychology (SL) in less than 125 Hours!
By teaching the course holistically and integrating the core and options it’s possible to teach the IB Psychology course in more depth and in less time. Here are two possible ways you could teach SL Psychology in less than 125 hours with the help of our textbook, IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide. Course Option #1 with Human Relationships …