In both the “old” and “new” IB Psychology syllabi, students have to be able to discuss the use of research methods (and brain imaging techniques). Before we see how to do this, it’s important to make one clarification first: the IB considers the following to be research methods: Experiments (including true, natural, quasi and field experiments) Case studies Correlational studies Interviews …
Teaching Tip: 3 ways to save hours of teaching time
As we’re all figuring out the new course, including course plans, this first year or two you might be feeling like you’re behind and you’re worried about getting everything covered in time for the exams. This post will explain how you can cut masses of content from your course, while still being assured your kids will be fine for the …
Lesson/Revision Idea: The Two Minute Drill
How it works… Put two minutes on a timer (I use a trusty kitchen timer) Project a possible exam question, maybe one for a topic that you’ve been working on or revising Students have two minutes to outline a plan of how they’d answer that question A4 pieces of paper cut in half are good to use Collect all answers …
Teaching Tip: 10 Ways to Teach Studies
I’ve found that talking about study after study in IB Psychology can become a little tedious, not just for me but for the students, too. I like a bit of variation and these ten activities could be applied to any study. Picture puzzles Murder mystery Painting picasso’s Replication Re-enactment Silent sorting Unscrambling Memory tests Speed dating Consolidating quizzes Here they …
Love and Marriage Support Pack is Now Available
We’re pleased to announce that we’ve added another support pack to the store. Chapter 5 – Love and Marriage is now ready to roll. Go to our store (link) and you’ll find our support packs We’ve tried to make the resource better by implementing some feedback: We’ve made them easier to edit so teachers can adapt them more easily We’ve …
When drug trials go wrong…
When testing a new drug there always has to be volunteers for the first human participants to take the drug. But what happens if the trial fails. Like, fails really badly? This is what happened in 2006 when eight male volunteers signed up to be participants in a “first in humans” study. The treatment was a proposed cancer treatment, but …
So you want to assess population validity?
If you’re reading this it might be because you’ve written something like this in your answer and tried to fob it off as critical thinking: “One of the limitations of this study was that it has a small sample size and so lacks population validity.” The thing to remember when trying to show critical thinking is that it takes …
5 reasons why evaluating every study is a bad idea.
I’ve been teaching the new IB Psychology course for two months and haven’t evaluated a single study in my class. In this post you’ll see why. If you’re evaluating all the studies you’re using in your course, I’d strongly recommend dropping this approach in favour of some alternative approaches. In this post I’ll explain why I think “evaluating as you …
5 teacher tips for evaluating studies
This post goes with my other post about why it’s a bad idea to evaluate studies “as you go.” Tip 1: Drip-feed critical thinking extensions when students are ready… I introduce evaluative points of studies when individual students are ready for it. In all of my lessons I follow the very basic CHACER structure. The E is for Extend and …
Teaching Idea: Question Counters
Question-driven lessons are by far the most effective way to cause learning and the students that ask the most questions tend to achieve the highest. But if your students are anything like mine, there’s always a few who like to hide in the shadows and never ask questions, or they struggle and toil away on their own thinking that it’s …