The following is a combination post with new material from Chuck and reminders from Steve
Updated resources for teachers new to high school psychologyWelcome new psychology teacher! Congratulate yourself on finding/stumbling on/being forced to teach the best class in high school!
There is an abundance of materials out there so you don't have to reinvent the wheel your first year (although you should feel free to after that). Here are some of the best resources to start with:
1)
TOPSS stands for Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools and is part of the American Psychological Association. Join TOPSS and you become an affiliate member of the APA at a fraction of the cost that other professionals pay, only $50 per year.
*NEW* In 2011 teachers on the TOPSS board created a
manual for new high school psychology teachers. This was written by high school psychology teachers who have "been there" with few resources and little help among your building colleagues. Be sure to check this out!
TOPSS has
lesson plans for every unit of the high school psych course and is in the process of revising older units so that the lesson plans remain vital and useful. They're created by high school teachers and are edited by psych professors. There's also a quarterly newsletter, the Psychology Teachers Network, and an annual workshop for high school teachers at Clark University. Finally, and maybe most importantly, the APA and TOPSS have created the National Standards for High School Psychology. The first version of standards was created in 2005 and the
newest version of the standards was released in 2011. (Full disclosure: I'm currently chair of the TOPSS Board.)
3) *NEW*
Twitter! You will be amazed at all the valuable resources that are at your fingertips via Twitter. Many high school psychology teachers (like myself) consider my colleagues on Twitter to be an extremely valuable part of their personal learning community, and often share ideas and resources with each other. In the past couple of years #psychat has become a great way to share information as well - see
this post for more information.
Other teachers are also using Twitter as a way to interact with their students online in many ways, such as commenting on news articles, sharing new sites and even homework reminders. In 2015-2016, the group will be tweeting the First Wednesday of each month at 8PM EST, 7PM CST, 5PM PST
4)
Teaching psychology activity books. These were compiled by Ludy Benjamin et. al. and have a wide variety of activities for intro psych courses. Some are hits and some are misses (in my opinion) so you might want to buy one and see what you think.
Here are several to try.
5)
Forty Studies that Changed Psychology. An excellent overview that will be invaluable to you if you're just getting started, and is often used by many AP Psych teachers during the year or as a summer assignment.
6) The publisher of your textbook. Find out what book you'll be using, then contact the publisher and get in touch with the high school representative for psychology. They are usually very helpful and can give you an idea of what might be available for you for free. A great tip from Michael Donner on the AP Psych list is to contact a publisher of another psychology textbook and see if you can get an exam copy of that book (or even find a used copy online). A second book can be very helpful for helping you come up with alternate examples or explanations for your students.
7) The
National Council for the Social Studies Psychology Community. This group is part of NCSS and helps psychology teachers in many ways, including annual presentations at the NCSS conference, newsletters and more. You can e-mail chair Daria Schaffeld at daria.schaffeld AT d214.org to get a copy of the latest newsletter and to find out more. Also, consider attending the
annual NCSS Conference to hear great presentations.
8) Your fellow teachers! If you know others in your district or region who teach psych, contact them and ask for help. Most psychology teachers are still the only ones in their school, so getting in touch with folks who are nearby and are willing to share can be immensely helpful. Or join an e-mail list for psychology teachers such as Psych-News, TIPS or PsychTeacher (see a full list
here) and make connections all over the world!
9) A final rec and plug: this Teaching High School Psychology blog which is run by Kent Korek, Chuck Schallhorn, Rob McEntarffer, Nancy Diehl, Kristin Whitlock, and Steve Jones. It's a site for us to share with our fellow teachers the things that we like, find interesting, have questions about, etc. Follow us via e-mail so you are notified every time we post something new, in your RSS reader or just bookmark us and visit when you can. You can also follow me (Steve) on Twitter at
@highschoolpsych.
10) Brain Games, the video series from National Geographic is outstanding for psychology and neuroscience demonstrations. In fact, it has overtaken many of our in-class demos both in terms of quality and quantity. You can purchase the DVDs online at Amazon.com or stream a couple seasons on Netflix. For
content guides for all five seasons, click here.
14) When planning a new unit, check out this blog at
http://teachinghighschoolpsychology.blogspot.com/ and do a unit search for videos and assignments that we have. You can do this by checking out the list of units in the left-hand column of the blog. There are hundreds of ideas and resources we have posted throughout the years.
One final bit of advice: Psychology is a science. It doesn't matter what your background is as long as you're willing to embrace the scientific perspective and run with it. Have fun and enjoy teaching psychology!
16) Check a later post in which Rob will take a look at the videos of Joseph Swope.
17) Check a later post in which Chuck adds Crash Course Psychology video guides.
If there are any resources we missed, please leave them in the comments.
posted by Chuck Schallhorn and Steve Jones
I begin next week with classes starting on August 13. I know, it's really early. On the off chance some are still on summer break and would like to do some review/look for some teaching insights for psych, I ran across this website that has condensed some online courses into on set of links.
One of my long favorite sources for videos has been Learner.org, a site by the Annenberg Foundation that allows registered users to stream a variety of videos from a diverse set of topics. I posted this blog back in 2009 to highlight some previous episodes available--I am reposting below.
On a daily basis, the Center of Science and Industry (COSI) in Columbus, OH includes a live show of two rats who have been conditioned to play basketball.
According to their website, "the B. F. Skinner Foundation provides historical information about the life and contributions of B. F. Skinner and supports humane practices based upon his heritage".
This is a short video of a squirrel going through a number of obstacles to reach a simple reward. The clip is a perfect demonstration of many operant conditioning concepts, especially the shaping process.
On February 9th of 2007, I remember getting inundated by students who had watched the TV show, "The Office" the night before. It seems the episode had a sequence where Jim classically conditioned Dwight to the sound of his computer booting up. My students were all ecstatic because, not only did the scene show classical conditioning, in one short segment Jim actually talked about Pavlov and his conditioning of dogs.
Dr. Mark Mather of the University of Sussex, UK, author of Foundations of Perception, has developed QuickTime video clips demonstrating a number of perceptual concepts such as stereokinetic motion, shown to the right. Each video includes a brief explanation of the concept shown. Below you will find a listing of the concepts with hyperlinks to each video. The listing can be found at http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/George_Mather/Motion/index.html
Many teachers use the "Vases or Faces" illusion when discussing figure/ground illusions, including the special vase designed for Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee as seen on the right.
*** UPDATE (9/25): after seeing several concerns on the AP Psych e-mail list I e-mailed Dr. Freberg and as it turns out, Clips for Class is a work in progress. Right now it looks like only the behavioral clips are available, but Dr. Freberg noted in an e-mail that more clips will be added over time. She also said that she will encourage her publisher to work more quickly to add content!
The Visual Cognition Lab at the University of Illinois have developed a number of short video clips demonstrating Change Blindness and Inattentional Blindness. The videos include the "woman with the umbrella" as well as the infamous "gorilla in front of the elevator".
This is a short (1:49) video of a sheep brain being dissected. If you are looking for a quick clip to show to your students, this might do the trick. The original clip can be found at http://www.wellesley.edu/Biology/Concepts/Html/sheepbrain.html or simply play the video below.
The Brain, along with Pinky's help, does a quick (1:22) run through of the major parts of the brain. If the below video fails to work, do an internet search for "Pinky and the Brain" "parts of the brain". There are a number of sites (YouTube has at least two versions) of the clip.
This video clip, from the Discovery Channel and McGraw-Hill Higher Education details how the brain can "repair" itself. The video centers around the story of Jody Miller who had a hemispherectomy, the removal of one half of the brain, to control her epileptic seizures.
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