Lesson 1 

Ha Ha, I caught some of you out with a ‘read the question first’ activity 🙂  There was a lesson there if you think about it. Never race into answering exam questions without reading the whole question first, turn the page to check over leaf just in case it continues.

Then we played a game of ‘who would say that?’, this was a way to warm up and revisit the approaches in psychology. If you found this difficult it suggests that you need to revise this part of the course 🙂

Have you made a revision card for each of the approaches? 

You then spent the rest of the lesson enduring a baseline assessment test – sorry!!

Lesson 2

I checked whether you had read the hand book by asking about VCOP and I checked you knew the ethical guidelines. Then you did an activity to check your understanding of levels of data, measures of central tendency, and how to draw and label graphs.  Whilst this was happening I fed back to you individually on your summer assignments 🙂

Lesson 3 

One to one feedback continued whilst you completed a key words activity and you also evaluated the psycho-dynamic approach.

Using terminology correctly is incredibly important. Why write a paragraph when a word or short phrase will suffice?

Lesson 4 and 5 

Time for presentations 🙂  This was all about revisiting the approaches in Psychology.

OMG….how good were you guys??? I especially loved the films of Grace and Issy and Molly and Vivian 🙂

I handed out your own version of the specification to be kept in your file for regular checking. We went through the ‘Approaches’ section together. If there are words or concepts you do not understand please do some additional research. Ensure you are confident now. Don’t leave it until it’s too late.

Prep

Your task is now to create a revision card for each approach. On one side you should write the key assumptions of the approach i.e. – what does a behaviourist believe about behaviour? Include on this side any key terms, main psychologists and major theories.

On the reverse side evaluate the approach. You will need a minimum of one strength and one limitation. Explain the evaluation point by giving additional detail and say why it is important. Use the PHG revision guide as a template.   DUE 26th Sept 

Get ready for next week – I will be assessing Paper 2 – do some revision, AND we will be looking at the Nomothetic vs Idiographic debate in psychology  as well as Freewill and Determinism and Nature vs Nurture 🙂

https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/issues-debates-evaluating-the-nomothetic-approach

ADDITIONALLY

Do use the GHG digi book to check your Research Methods basics are in place. You should re-visit the research methods section, specifically pages 190-195. Ensure you know about types of data, descriptive statistics and graphs. 40% of the final examination depends on your understanding the basics.

FUTHERMORE….

Have you discovered the amazing resources at the tutor2U website yet? e.g……..

https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/wundts-contribution-to-psychology

https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/introspection-early-use

Extension Activity

How do you fancy doing an open university module? It is a great certificated course that will give you a massive insight into the history of psychology. Follow the link if you’d like to take advantage of this opportunity. If you complete the course and gain the certificate it can be included in your personal statement 🙂

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/psychology/epoch-psychology-history-timeline/content-section-0?active-tab=description-tab

 

 

Lesson 1-3  our very first session!

My goodness me what a massive lesson 🙂 Didn’t we all do well?? You guys were magnificent 🙂

We covered a great deal today. Hopefully you are now following this blog (become a follower by putting in your school email in the follow button).

I hope you have found the Psychology folder in your shared student drive.

DO read the student handbook – you will see it includes links to both digital text books and both year 12 and 13 blogs.

DO look around and start exploring the specification, ethical guidelines for 2018 etc.

For ETHICS think DDRIPP into the big C of competence. See >>>> Ethics DRIPP sheet -I will check your memory for this soon!

Having explored the shared area, we recapped levels of data (measurement) ‘NOIR’ -we linked each level with the appropriate measure of central tendency (Mode, Mean and Median).

We then started to think about they year 2 course and the importance of pre-reading and consolidation reading – you are really encouraged to develop yourself as an effective learner. My job is to help you become ready for university and future careers. I aim to help you become self-sufficient and confident in your own ability to learn. You might want to print the learning poster and put in it your file.

In order to recap the approaches we read a poem about some blind men and an elephant! Each approach in psychology views the issue slightly differently but to fully understand anything an INTERACTIVE APPROACH is best 🙂

Prep:

Your assignment >>>>> Marketing approaches task

Due Wednesday 12th September – during this  double session you will be marketing your approach to your classmates – we will watch your film clips and smile a lot 🙂

Lesson 4-5

We started the lesson listening to KADY Lang singing ‘Constant Craving’.

As students I know you are constantly craving better grades 🙂

To achieve this you will need to actively engage with the questions you are asked. This means really thinking about how you can use your knowledge to answer the question.

Knowledge (AO1) is of course important, but the ‘A’ level examiner assumes you have some knowledge, after-all, you will have been studying the course for 2 years by the time you sit the exam. BUT nowadays we can easily get knowledge from google! So do not try to become an encyclopedia. This is not how to get an A/A* grade.

The key to exam success is being able to APPLY (AO2) the knowledge you do have in an intelligent and thoughtful way.

Next you should be able to critically evaluate the points you are making. This is what we mean by intelligent discussion (AO3). A discussion is like a written argument where you are writing down different points of view.

To reach the top mark band your answer must make sense. It needs to be coherent. How you use the English LANGuage to express yourself is really important.

REMEMBER   ‘KADY LANG’

---

Next we played a scrabble game to get you thinking about the psychological terms we discussed last lesson.

You then designed a “terrible student” – obviously your goal this year is to be the complete opposite of poor Trisha!!

But WHY was Trisha such a weak student? You used the 5 approaches to explain her poor behaviour. This was an opportunity to recall your knowledge of the approaches and to apply your understanding to explain Trisha’s behaviour.

To revisit the Psychodynamic approach you played triominoes and then you matched different characters to Freud’s tripartitie personality.

PREP

As well as the marketing campaign task, I would like you to pre-read the double page spread on idiographic and nomethetic explanations. This is one of the issues and debates we need to become familiar with this year. Use the digital text book. I want you to do more than just read the material. There are videos to watch, key words to learn, a multi choice quiz, and Apply it questions to attempt.

IF YOU WANT A GOOD GRADE IN PSYCHOLOGY YOU MUST BE PREPARED TO DO MORE (PUT IN MORE EFFORT) THAN 90% OF OTHER STUDENTS IN THE COUNTRY. 

MOST STUDENTS WILL NOT DO THE EXTRA WORK REQUIRED FOR HIGH GRADES……..will!

Hi, and well done for finding this blog

You need to click the ‘ follow’ button so that you receive a notification every time I post on the blog – please note, you need to check the blog before and after every lesson as I will add to each post a couple of times every week. This blog will keep you up to date with what we’ve been up to in lessons as well as details of home work and deadlines. Power points, work sheets etc will also be attached.   If you miss a lesson for any reason you need to ensure you catch up…………………..”I wasn’t here when you did………………..” and “I wasn’t here when you set the HW” is no longer an issue as you can access everything from here.

I suggest you print out the blog at the end of each half term so that you have a running order of the course. This will help you keep your notes in order. It is a really good idea to put the date on your class notes as you make them, that way if you get in a muddle you’ll be able to get yourself organized again.

You can search for materials using key words using the search option —>

You can also search by month so it is very useful to date your notes.

Any materials, links or resources will be in a red colour. You may need to right click and save the document as some documents will not let you edit. If it is something you just want to view, clicking on it will take you to the documents / link.

To access the PHG digi book click this link. I will provide you with the log in details in lesson >>> http://www.illuminate.digital/aqapsych2/ …….. Save this link for future reference

You are always welcome to add comments to the blog or rate it for usefulness.

Best wishes everyone… and I am looking forward to working with you all.

Ms Alexander