Category Archives: psychology

My Fully Self Paced Unit Was So Successful That Now I Question My Existence As a Teacher

Posted on by

 


After Christmas break I surveyed my AP Psych class to find out what they wanted to do more of  in the upcoming quarter. I am sure that none of you are surprised to see that they wanted less “live” class and more self paced work. 

So to honor where they were and to also to give myself a challenge I created a 2 week self paced unit on Human Development. I thought a human development unit would make a  perfect self paced unit because the content is completely relatable when compared to other units on brain anatomy or statistics. 

Here is what I came up with  – Developmental Psychology Learning Menu. The learning menu consisted of:

  • 1 – Entire unit to read and outline

  • 3 –  formative multiple choice tests assessments 

  • 2 – 30+ minute podcasts with Flipgrids 

  • 5 – Crash Course Type Videos (some in Edpuzzle) 

  • A Jamboard 

  • A Schoology Discussion Board 

What did I learn?

  • Creating a self paced unit is a LOT of work on the front end. In order for this to be fully self paced all of the work needed to be ready at once. Instead of pacing out the work I chose to give it all at once so that students could choose the way they wanted to tackle the unit. Some did all the reading first and then did the learning menu, some went through the human development chronologically doing the readings and assignments accordingly. I like the way that each student got to choose how to pace out their own unit and I loved that some chose to do it in small groups. But to pull it off meant hours of preparing on the front end. I know I do not always have the time to plan lessons like this. I was more of a pace car than a coach. 

  • Students scored nearly the same on the unit exam as they did for units taught more synchronously. This is a Catch 22 for me – one one hand it makes me question if my entire existence as a teacher matters, and on the other hand I am proud of the way I was able to customize this unit in order to give them more control over their experience. 

  • Students engaged more with each other when I backed off of their discussion boards. The biggest sign for me that this lesson worked was not their test scores but they way they used the discussion boards and flip girds to give each other real feedback and encouragement. Granted I made them leave comments, I found their comments to me much better then when they knew that I was also commenting and monitoring, I am not sure what that’s about but I liked it. 

Where am I going from here?

  • Plot twist – our next unit will be almost fully synchronous. I am NOT abandoning the self paced unit forever but part of the reason why i think it worked was that it was novel. I think that if I did this for the rest of the year the engagement would slowly wane. After this next unit I will survey them to find out how they have the best of both worlds (synchronous and asynchronous) in the following units.

Where are you all with balancing these two types of units?


How do you get students to share their work…without the boring as hell presentations??

Posted on by





Help! I need to make
more time for students to share their work with each other…without being soooo boring or taking up sooooo much class time. 
This blog is really
two parts – one part is about a helpful tool I learned at iNACOL, and the other is
looking wondering how you make time for students to share their work with one
another…….that doesn’t require the brain numbing 28 person individual presentation.
One of the most
helpful takeaways from the iNACOL conference was seeing the ways that other
teachers out there were trying to differentiate learning for their students. My
favorite of these was called “The Learning Menu” – not particularly earth
shattering or mind-blowing – but something that stuck for me and that I implemented
as soon as I got back for my very burnt-out-of-lectures-seniors. 

Here is mine: 

My “Learning Menu” is a Google Doc where students in my Psych class went through different topics in the Health Psychology field. Some sections provided choice, while others required them to learn some foundational knowledge, and concluded with a chance to demonstrate some deeper learning. If you are interested in seeing the Google Doc it’s here.

Step 1 – students worked on the first two sections on their own & we jigsawed the mental health conditions out in class the following day so students could learn more about the ones they did not watch the video for. 

Step 2 – students did boxes three & four followed by a day in class where we made wellness related goals for ourselves that had to be backed by the research from the videos that they watched for these tasks plus some others that they found online. 

Step 3 – students were given a choice about how they wanted to demonstrate their deeper learning (see choices above, and full assignment here) and were off to work on their own for a bit. 

The amazing part of this assignment is that I did not have to lecture (my seniors are over lectures AND me at this point in the semester) and I STILL felt like they learned as much if not more than if I had! Because they came to class having digested some content ahead of time. Our conversations were richer, students got to learn about different psychological disorders from one another, and class time was used more effectively overall – if this seems like it would be of any value to you I would love to talk more about it. 

BUT as they completed their deeper learning assignment I was excited by their creativity and realness with the assignment. It hadn’t dawned on me that because there was so much freedom with the assignment their final products would be so varied. One student interviewed his sister (a special ed teacher) to see how she practices self care in a stressful job. One student who rarely speaks in class talked about how he cares for a family member with bi-polar disorder & why talking about mental health is so important to him – just to name two. Cool right?

While I gave them a lot of personal feedback/kudos on their assignment, it seemed like a disservice that they completed these projects in a vacuum and didn’t have the opportunity to share out what they did. 

So, to my question – how do you get your students to share out their work in a way that is meaningful and engaging?? Twenty-eight separate presentations would be boring as hell, but I worry that if I asked them to share out in small groups they would be off topic (am I just projecting my former student self?) What tips and tricks do you find that works, and how do you do it without taking days out of the unit??

Let me know if you have any ideas please! 

I imposed gender stereotypes on my DLS students and I feel like a jerk

Posted on by

When I found out I was going to be teaching Psych this
semester I was STOKED. This was my undergrad major, I have a passion for it,
and the sophomore girls that I taught in the past loved the class.
So I assumed that I too I would be teaching sophomore girls.
I imagined a class that explored the latest research on mindfulness, social
emotional learning, and self care on top of all of the great units in the scope
and sequence. Our girls are primed for this stuff since it is embedded in Frosh
Wellness and many of the programs we have on campus.
Before I left for summer I learned that this would NOT be a
class of sophomore girls but rather an elective class for seniors. Of the 28
students in the class 24 were boys. How did this happen??
Some of my assumptions about a class full of senior boys was
right – Yes they are excited to talk about some of the fascinating yet unethical psychological
experiments which traumatized children and animals. Their tolerance for gore is high and sometimes I feel like
what they want my class to be a place for watching and discussing Criminal Minds (which to be honest also sounds pretty okay).
I say all that to say that I started removing a lot of what
I had originally planned including some work with mindfulness and social
emotional learning because I assumed that the boys would not see it as relevant to their lives (which obviously says more about me than it does about them). I really went back and forth on choosing curriculum because I was sure
that they were going to think something like self care or meditation was soft, weak, & lame (this is of
course was made up in my own head and is not based on reality).
While I do feel like I needed to adapt this class as my
target audience had changed,  I had wrongly (but didn’t know it yet) told a story in my
head about who my students were, what they thought, and what we needed. So it
took every ounce of courage (I’m not even kidding, I was really nervous) to
roll out a daily mindfulness practice with them.
Here is how I rolled it out: I told them that we would be
practicing mindfulness daily (using the calm app, thank God for free teacher resources). They were invited but not required to
participate. If they did not want to participate they just had to put their
head on the desk and zone out. They were not allowed to give me their feedback
on it for TWO WEEKS. One because I was not in a place to hear their criticism
yet and two because I wanted them to really give it a chance before they
labeled it. On Friday I surveyed them and this is what I got (see below).  
To my shock not one person thought it was a waste of time and all of them want to continue it at least twice a week. I feel simultaneously super happy and like the biggest jerk for assuming what would and wouldn’t resonate with my students based solely on which side of the street they came from. 
What else am I wrongly assuming as a teacher? What stories do I need to stop making up in my head? What are the other assumptions I make that might be preventing me from opening doors to my students?