New to Teaching Psych? Some Key Resources--2018 Edition

Welcome 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.

The following is a combination post with material from Chuck Schallhorn and Steve Jones.

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. Following the Psychology Summit of 2017, a new steering committee has been tasked with creating new and updated standards in the upcoming years.

Full disclosure, Steve is a former chair of TOPSS and Chuck is currently a member-at-large.




2) The College Board

Even if you don't teach AP Psychology this is a great resource -- and if you do, it's terrific! Here are some pages to start with.:

• The AP Psych home page 
• The course description (aka the Acorn Book, in PDF; updated Fall 2014) 
• The AP Psych teachers guide -- written by THSP's own Kristin Whitlock, this thing is a beauty and a GREAT place to get started if you're new to the course (also in PDF) 
• College Board Psych Activities/Resources
• Old AP Psych exam FRQ questions
• AP Psych store - you may want to buy the 2004 and 2007 released exam multiple choice questions at some point--there are released exams available through the Audit Page you will need to authorize your course
• *NEW* If you are an AP Psych teacher, be sure to join the online AP Psychology Community. 

3) 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 (PLN), and often share ideas and resources with each other.

In the past couple of years the hashtag #psychat has become a great way to share information as well. 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.

You can also follow Steve on Twitter at @highschoolpsych or Chuck at @MtnHousePsych.


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. 


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. Chuck has more than 15 alternate introductory texts--there are even activities one can do with multiple textbooks.


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. They are available on Twitter at https://twitter.com/NCSSPC

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!

Though there are still listservs (which I have purposely omitted), there is the facebook AP Psych teacher group. While there are some excellent resources shared, some of the ideas shared are not connected to standards or other reliable sources and lack pedagogical quality. The google drive there is filled with ideas, so if you have time and interest, do check it out.


 9) A Blog Plug: this Teaching High School Psychology blog 

The blog was created by Steve Jones, Kent Lorek, and Chuck Schallhorn with Chuck being the primary contributor at the moment. Other contributors include Rob McEntarffer, Nancy Diehl, and Kristin Whitlock. 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.

When planning a new unit, check out the 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!

We have a THSP Psychology folder on Google docs that has many resources for each unit. These activities have been vetted and are appropriate and quality lessons
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B28t_LsPkwHefnRSTU5aWVFQVHo3MVBSZEEzTHczTXpPT09EMzVOLXhsdVBVRmdNTmRNUms

**test out this link and make sure you can get inside each folder. Contact Chuck if there are any issues with the link.


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.


11) Chuck Schallhorn has a YouTube Channel 
This can help out with some of the more complex ideas for the students at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOG05VwbujNwGUX5UA0zcXQ



12) Chuck and Educator.com

https://www.educator.com/psychology/ap-psychology/schallhorn/ 
It costs money, but if you are desperate, this should help out. You can also search YouTube for teachers who have put their lessons online. They are of varying quality


13) APA Division 2-The Society for the Teaching of Psychology

They have an amazing set of resources on their OTRP website. 


14) Joe Swope (longtime psych teacher who is currently on the TOPSS board) has an amazing site you can sign up for at http://swopepsych.com/. There are many quality resources here including his videos on psychology.


17) Crash Course Psychology videos

The main playlist is available here--great for quick reviews, overviews, background information, or even as student homework--they are densely packed with information.


If there are any resources we missed, please leave them in the comments. posted by Chuck Schallhorn in 2018.





posted by Chuck Schallhorn

Share

Repost of Great Hanover Site on Sensation and Perception

When I began teaching this topic, I was scared because I had no idea what I was doing. I'd never had an S&P course in college and this seemed a little daunting. Over the years, with a lot of hard work, some research, and some wonderful internet sites, I learned and learned.

Today, I'd like to share and highlight the work of John H. Krantz of Hanover College in Southern Indiana. For years, he has been at the forefront of taking concepts online in an interactive format for students (and teachers). This site is about sensation and perception and its constituent parts. While I cannot use all the illustrations in an introductory course, there are some great specific ones I can use. Be sure to have the latest Java to help your experience.

Experiencing Sensation and Perception (includes cognition and neuroscience links)

Tutorials in Sensation and Perception

Psychophysics

The Stimulus and Anatomy of the Visual System

Gestalt Laws

There is lots more on this tremendous site. Poke around a bit and see what you can use.

Share

Facebook AP Psych and HS Psych Teacher Groups

There has been lots of beginning of year activity on a relatively new Advanced Placement Psychology Teacher Group.  There have been some amazing resources shared on there that I/we will be sharing on the THSP blog soon.  For now, here is the link to the group. Click the link to join--but be sure you are a teacher.

• High School Teachers of  Psych Group
• AP Psych Teacher Group

posted by Chuck Schallhorn

Share

Psychology Teacher Resources by THSP

In an attempt to share resources among teachers in the modern world, we tried the 4-shared database for a number of years. Over time, it became clunky and unwieldy. Then I created a google site as a prototype, but the data allowed on any one site was minimal and links needed to be added rather than files being uploaded.

Then Google Drive came to us through a variety of suggestions. The current organization is much like the blog, with the units being numbered consistent with the AP Psych course outline--14 units.

The link for the drive can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B28t_LsPkwHefnRSTU5aWVFQVHo3MVBSZEEzTHczTXpPT09EMzVOLXhsdVBVRmdNTmRNUms&usp=sharing

If you have an outstanding assignment that you would like to add to the mix, please send the file to this email or send us a link for us to download, review, and add the file to the drive.

The email for this new GDrive account is:
thspblog@gmail.com

We are uploading only items that are commonly shared/personally created and that are not copyright violations, so no videos or other works that are owned by someone else. We can access those via other methods.


posted by Chuck Schallhorn

Share

Guest Post: Eric Castro and Writing in Psychology

Hello THSP Readers,

I (Chuck) am very happy to share with you a piece of writing from one of our West Coast colleagues, Eric Castro of St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco.  I was reading the archives of #psychat (on http://twitter.com) when I ran across the files he linked to and the ideas he had for writing in the psychology classroom. He was kind enough to put together this information and links below.

So thank you very much Eric!  We are very pleased and happy to have you on THSP as a guest poster.  For the rest of you who have great ideas to share, please reach out to one of us.  We want to include more voices in our psychological conversation.

========================================================
I feel a little disingenuous writing about “writing in Psychology” because I don’t think I do a particularly good job at it. That is not to say my students are not good writers; in fact, I think they’re excellent[1] — I just can’t claim any of the credit! Our English department and the others in the Social Science department teach my students how to write well. I don’t know how, I’m just grateful that they do.

If you’re still reading this, Chuck asked me to share one particular writing assignment that we do in the Development Unit; we call it The Toy Project. Based on those two pieces of information – Development unit and “Toy project” – you already guessed that it’s based on Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development. As you suspect, students go to a toy store near them, choose a toy that corresponds to a stage of cognitive development, and they write about it[2].

If you’re still reading this, there are a few additional details that we work into the project[3]. Here is how the project is currently assigned. Note:

• Students work in groups of their own choosing, from across any section/ any instructor
• Students can ‘Google Doc’ their paper (thereby collaboratively writing it), but do not have to
• Students have to take pictures of themselves in the toy store for full credit[4]
• The finished product is uploaded to Canvas, in our case, where I grade it — and Canvas automatically forwards the paper to turnitin.com for “checking”…
• There are three distinct parts to the paper. Part 1 connects one toy with each of Piaget’s Stages; part 2 harkens back to the Research Methods unit; and Part 3 connects to our discussion of gender schema theory vis-a-vis elements in the design of toys and toy stores.

One of the things that I like so much about this paper is that it can be done with any amount of technology. I had students take physical photos back in the aughts; they paperclipped Polaroids or 3x5 photos to their printed paper. That evolved into inserting digital images into their word processed paper before printing it. For a few years, every student had their own blog for Psychology (using Blogger), and they posted their assignment and embedded their images there. For a few years, I had them share a Google Doc with me, like this one. And now they use whatever they want to word process the paper, export it to a PDF, and upload it to our LMS.

As an aside, we do two other “projects” like this. One is the Scary Movie Project, which coincides with Sensation & Perception, and the other is a Social Norms Project. When I share any of these three, I’m invariably asked, “What’s your rubric for assessment?” This may stray from what Chuck was looking for… but I don’t have a rubric for these. First, the assignments are constructed in such a way that they guide students through each step or part of the assignment. Second, as I read the resulting paper, I am correcting for conceptual understanding, correct usage of Psychology vocabulary, and correct application of the concepts. I am not grading for grammar, syntax, spelling, or anything else like that. Again, this goes back to the I-don’t-teach-students–how-to-write… I’m lucky that they come prepared for this work. Third, I grade these papers on a very simple scale: A, B, C, D, or F. For these three papers, it is – frankly – rare for students to not receive full credit. Now, part of that is because these are sort of enrichment activities. They’re kinda just for fun. I certainly don’t tell them that! But it’s part of my hidden curriculum; I want them to have enjoyable experiences while studying Psychology.
On a final note, for each chapter besides the three mentioned above students complete a traditional free-response question, modeled on the FRQs from the AP Psychology exam, and those are graded according to strict College Board-esque rubrics.
I hope that gives some insight into one way of doing “writing in Psychology.” If you have any questions at all, give me a tweet!

---

1. At the bottom of page 1 and page 3 of my 2014 AP Psychology Instructional Planning Report, you can see how my students did on the Free Response Question portion of the exam. I hadn’t been scanning the Instructional Planning Report, but you can see how my students did for 2011–2012 and 2012–2013.
   
2. I’ve been assigning this project/paper for 15-years… and I can’t remember where I got the initial idea. Toys + Piaget’s Stages seems like such an obvious assignment idea, I’m pretty darned sure I didn’t come up with it first. If I got it from you 15-years ago… THANKS!!
   
3. I say “we” because there are two Psychology instructors at St Ignatius College Prep, Yosup Joo and me. At our school, Psych is an elective for juniors or seniors.
   
4. The pictures must be inserted into the document (whether a Google Doc or otherwise word processed) as evidence that they know how to do this before going to college.
   

Share

Careers in Psych--Updated for the Online World

Last week, I posted a "Careers in Psychology" document from Drew Appleby, a retired psychology professor.  Someone shared the post with him and he sent me some updated sources that are great for the internet. Simply amazing stuff.  Check out this list, it has 172 majors of interest to psychology majors.  Included are multiple links for each profession.

http://www.teachpsych.org/resources/Documents/otrp/resources/appleby11.pdf


posted by Chuck Schallhorn

Share